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A short note for navigating this section - scroll below for the most recent posts, and then for more, click on the Blog Archive box, where you can view all of my posts, going back to the beginning in March 2005.
Got a new white paper to share - this one is for NICE, and is a bit of a sequel to an earlier white paper I did for them. I touched on it briefly during a webinar last week, and to get the full story, here’s the registration link for downloading.
I’ve had a lot of new work hitting at the same time, and that’s put me behind on blogging, so this is an ICYMI post. I was recently invited back to be a guest on Big CX News, hosted by Charlie Mitchell, and the current episode was posted last week.
You may have caught it via social media already, but if not, I’m in the mix for some lively discussion about, well, big CX news - is AWS really a CCaaS player, where does Avaya go from here, and will ChatGPT put us analysts out of work??? Check it out here, and I hope to be back on a future episode soon!
January ended up being more about video and podcasting than writing, so I only have one public article to share. I did, however, write four other articles last month, two of which are ghost-written, and two will run sometime this month.
Weighing the Pros and Cons of Asynchronous Collaboration, TechTarget, Jan. 4
Another update for my upcoming Future of Work Expo, taking place in Ft. Lauderdale in just a few short weeks. FOW Expo is one of the sub-events with TMCnet’s long-running ITExpo. This is my fifth go-round as Chair, and the speaking roster is just about done.
Still a handful of open panel spots, so if that’s of interest, you can review the full agenda here, and get back to me if you see a particular topic - thanks.
Since my last update, we’ve done some tweaking to the program, and there are two new topics we’ll be exploring:
ChatGPT - FOW implications - is there anything hotter right now?
Contact Center Evolution - is this a model for FOW?
If you haven’t attended before, here are some highlights from the 2022 event, and here’s the latest e-blast from TMCnet to help promote the show.
Got another webinar to share here. This one is with NICE, and it draws on a recent white paper I did for them. As the title in the visual below shows, we’ll be exploring the bigger picture for AI in the contact center, and why it’s much more than chatbots.
I’ll be joined by Lauren Maschio from their Product Marketing Team, and the early response has been really great, so it should be well-attended. It’s happening next Thursday, January 26 at 11 ET, and here’s the link to register.
Another shout-out for my upcoming Future of Work Expo, one of the sub-events with TMCnet’s long-running ITExpo. This is my fifth go-round as Chair, and the speaking roster is rounding out nicely. Still room on some sessions, though, so if that’s of interest, you can review the full agenda here, and get back to me if you see a particular topic - thanks.
I’ll have more updates soon, including previews for some of the panel sessions, and hope you can join us. If you haven’t attended before, here are some highlights from the 2022 event, and here’s a recent e-blast from TMCnet to help promote the show.
That’s the next webinar on my schedule - running next Thursday, Jan. 12 at 11am ET. I’m one of three analysts talking about the big trends we see happening this year around collaboration, along with IR’s CEO, John Ruthven. That would be fellow BCStrategies colleagues, Blair Pleasant and Kevin Kieller.
I hope you can join us, and the registration details are here.
Happy 2023, all! As busy as 2022 was, this year is already looking like more of the same. Lots to write about and lots to talk about, and the latest from my end can be found in the current editions of JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review and my Watch This Space podcast.
If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - the signup page is here. For my podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or just pick up the current episode here.
Also, if you’re not familiar with my website, there are archives now for both the newsletter and the podcast, so it’s easy to find earlier editions of each there. The current edition of WTS marks Season 6 of our podcast, so there’s a lot on offer in the archive if you want to check out earlier episodes.
With 2022 coming to a close, I just have one public writing piece for December, and it starts an exploration of a new topic for me - more to come in future writeups.
Telemarketing Fraud Presents an Unacceptable Risk to Businesses, No Jitter, Dec. 20
This week was my turn to contribute an article to No Jitter from the BC Strategies team, and it’s a big topic - telemarketing fraud. As consumers, we all know what that looks like, but since we’d rather not think about it, the rest of the story tends to live in dark corners where there’s a constant struggle to stamp out or mitigate the damage done by bad actors.
There are a lot of moving parts here, and many have a direct impact on the telecom ecosystem. I’ve been researching this space recently, and the challenges are more daunting than you might think. This is my first analysis of telemarketing fraud, and there’s lot more to explore, and I hope you give this a read here on No Jitter.
Last week, I was a guest analyst on UK-based Big CX News, hosted by Charlie Mitchell. He had a full panel of thought leaders, and it was fun sharing all of our perspectives on some recent big news items. Hope to do it again soon, and hope you check it out - here’s the link.
Longer-form writing takes, well, longer to do, longer to be reviewed, and longer to be published. I do a lot of writing for all lengths, and here’s a current example of what I call an Insight Report. This would be longer than an article, shorter than a white paper, but substantive enough to be gated content.
I’ve been working with Upstream Works Software for a few years now, and when the stars line up, we do a couple of these annually. The latest one has been posted to their website, and here’s the registration page to get it.
The title is pretty self-explanatory, and speaks to a key trend driving just about everything in the contact center space these days: The AI Opportunity - Enhance the Agent and Customer Experience with AI Application Integrations. I hope you like it, and if any questions, just drop me a line.
We all know how that song goes, and it’s the theme song for this week’s SCTC Fireside Chat. I’ll be in conversation with the host, Steve Leaden - and fellow SIPtoner - where I’ll share highlights from my recent run of travel to various industry events. This should be fun, and after the chat, you should check out the SCTC for yourself.
Here’s the 5 second trailer on Youtube, and details are here to sign up. Our Fireside Chats are from 12-1 ET most Wednesdays, and hope you can join us then!
The December issue of JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review is out now, along with the latest Watch This Space podcast. As the thumb below shows, Chris and I did a roundup of the November events I attended, along with our 2022 takeaways. Hope you like it!
If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - the signup page is here. For my podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or just pick up the current episode here.
If you’re not familiar with my website, there are archives for both the newsletter and the podcast. The refresh for the podcast archive is almost complete, so it’s very easy to find and listen to earlier episodes there. For the newsletter archive, the updates are mostly done, but haven’t gone live yet - coming soon!
Another busy month with travel to events, but three public things I’d been working on were published last month, so here they are if you haven’t seen them yet.
AI for the Contact Center - It’s So Much More than Chatbots, NICE, Nov. 30
Vendors Use AI to Boost Customer Experience in the Contact Center, No Jitter, Nov. 15
The AI Opportunity: Enhance the Agent and Customer Experience with AI Application Integrations, Upstream Works, Nov. 4
With the sub-title being “It’s so much more than chatbots”, you should get the gist pretty quickly. AI has become a must-have for contact centers, and while chatbots are often the entry point for getting on this path, the use cases are much richer.
My analysis examines the drivers for embracing AI, but also for taking a practical approach that gets beyond the hype. The white paper has been featured now on NICE’s website, and here’s the registration page to download a copy.
UK-based EM360 enlists me to host podcasts with their sponsors from time to time, and for this episode, I was in conversation with Mark Sher from Intermedia. There’s a lot of ground to cover with cloud migration, and in the case of UCaaS - as well as CCaaS - the challenge is educating the end buyer about the rationale.
This is very much a you-can’t-get-there-from-here story, and for anyone still on the fence about cloud for business communications, you’ll want to check our podcast out. I’ve long had a nice rapport with Mark, and I hope you’ll enjoy the discussion. Here’s the link, and if you like what’s on tap, I’m sure Mark and his team would love to tell you more.
On Thursday, Dec. 1, Five9 is running the 2022 edition of their CX Summit Canada, and I’ve been brought back again to provide an overview of the contact center market. I’m part of a larger program running through the day - all of it virtual - and later, I’ll be joining an in-person reception in downtown Toronto. The Five9 folks will determine who can attend, and to find out more, here’s the registration link.
New things come up for me pretty regularly, and this time around, I was a guest on CX Pulse, which NICE’s regular podcast. Hosted by Amelia Earhart, we covered some ground around the need to take a digital approach to improving the agent experience. With so much focus on customer experience, it’s easy to overlook the needs of agents, and how important that is for providing great customer experience.
This is my first time being on Amelia’s podcast, and I hope you like it - here’s link to give it a listen.
Trust the Future - that’s Mavenir’s current tag line, and I really like it. This isn’t just any future they’re talking about - it’s mainly about 5G, but also Open RAN. 5G has yet to live up to the hype, especially in North America, but both carriers and wireless vendors seem all-in, including Mavenir.
While most see the future of wireless networks being 5G, Open RAN is an open question. Mavenir looks to be out in front with cloud-native Open RAN, and while the rationale is clear to them - and now to me - their competitors seem to like things the way they are, and mobile operators don’t seem ready for it - yet. Mavenir believes it’s just a matter of time, and if they’re right, they could own this space.
The mobile infrastructure space isn’t a core focus for me, but it’s adjacent to a lot of what I follow, and when thinking of VoIP, and possibly UCaaS and CCaaS, I’ve seen this movie before. Mavenir is a pretty healthy company, and a bit of an anomaly compared to the giants who dominate this market - namely Ericsson and Nokia.
This actually puts them in a great position to push the envelope and be disruptive, and that’s exactly the persona they’re projecting. Sure rings familiar to me, at least with the early days of VoIP, when the first wave of startups brought disruption, and posed a real threat to a well-entrenched status quo - that for the most part have come around to VoIP.
Given Mavenir’s global customer base, they have found plenty of mobile operators willing to adopt more open, more flexible and less costly infrastructure. Without naming names, they have 19 Open RAN deployments across 17 countries, and 4 trials going with Tier 1 carriers, one of which gave a full presentation as to what they’re doing with Open RAN.
Carriers have taken on a lot of debt to finance their 5G buildouts, and to counter that, they need innovation and new services to monetize these networks. Mavenir isn’t in the business of building applications, but with Open RAN - along with the rest of their extensive wireless network portfolio - they provide carriers with a nextgen platform to support programmability so they can develop their own apps instead of relying on third parties.
Just as important, BSS is another key piece of their cloud-based portfolio, as legacy BSS cannot really support these new services, and without a proper billing platform, carriers won’t be able to monetize these new 5G networks. Speaking of 5G, Mavenir did a great job outlining all kinds of use cases, and they have a pretty good handle on what carriers are missing to be successful with 5G.
I tend to view things through the lens of communications and collaboration technologies, and there wasn’t much talk about UCaaS or CCaaS. Instead, the use cases were framed around Industry 4.0 and Enterprise 2.0. These terms may sound generic, but Mavenir provided pretty good use cases and monetization scenarios for each. I’d need a separate post to illustrate all this, but in short, these use cases are in line with my Future of Work research, and I think they’re on the right track here, for sure.
That’s my high-level take for now, and to close out, here are some of my photos.
CEO/Pres. Pardeep Kohli, EVP Stefan Canteralli, Q&A session
Test equipment, anechoic chamber (very cool), OpenBeam radio demo
Event was held at the HALL Arts Hotel, in the center of Dallas’s arts district - my kinda place - high end for sure, but very artsy vibe, and after the sessions - when in Texas, you gotta look the part (hat tip, Carlos Aragon, no pun intended!)…
J Arnold & Associates is an Independent Technology Research and Analyst, helping businesses understand the strategic value of communications technology as they adapt to the digital transformation of work
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