As usual, I just have time to post a quick take on Day 1 from the conference, along with some photos. I'll be writing up my thoughts in a separate post after the event, and will be posting that on UCStrategies, so watch for that over the next few days.
In short, Genband is making big strides with Kandy as a platform play to help carriers compete in today's hyper-competitive market. Much like how Cisco is focusing heavily on Spark for their collaboration story - instead of all the other pieces around this LOB - Kandy is the main story so far here. Genband is transitioning away from hardware - but it's still the biggest part of their revenues - and so far, we haven't heard anything about those lines of business. So, to whatever extent Kandy is actually generating revenue, it's the big focus here, and perhaps it's necessary to keep their carrier customers in-house rather than drifting over to the unspoken competitor, BroadSoft.
That said, there's a lot to like about what Genband is doing with Kandy, and I'll have more to say about that in my proper analysis. So far, Genband has done a great job articulating the opportunity for carriers to differentiate via Kandy, but takeup has been slower than expected, and there are lots of reasons around this.To be fair, we heard about lots of success stories, so good things are happening here. Otherwise, Genband is in a "quiet period" with Sonus, so nothing is being said about where that's going, but it seems like a logical move, especially if you view Genband as a consolidator along the lines of what Mitel is doing, most recently with Toshiba.
The other partnership of note is with Five9, and we heard a good update from Wendell Black. Adding contact center may seem like a stretch for Genband, but the integration with Kandy makes this an appealing option, especially for SMBs who are frustrated by how long it takes for their incumbent vendor to make changes to enable a better customer experience. Given how service providers are being wooed away by the likes of Twilio and various OTT players, this is an important move by Genband to help their customers retain more business, especially as the lines between UC and the contact center become blurred.
Time's up, so I'll stop now, and hope you'll read my follow-on post after I digest everything from the conference. Until then, here are some photos to give you a sense of the vibe here from Day 1. Otherwise, you can keep tabs in real time by following the conference twitter feed - #GBP17.
