By now, you are au courant with the state of the universe pertaining to UC. With that meta-perspective in mind, I’m going to give you my vertical spin on the smart grid market. This may not yet be a prime vertical market for UC applications, but as it becomes more mainstream and consumer-centric, this will absolutely change.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2015-03-30
Carriers may represent better growth partners for UC than selling via channels to businesses. UC vendors generally don’t sell this way, but carriers have a lot of market power, and have their own motives for offering UC to retain their base and find new revenues to offset the decline of legacy services.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2015-03-03
There is little doubt that UC has great utility, but to be fair it is often overshadowed by more powerful trends – namely mobile broadband and the cloud – around which UC must adapt. While VoIP has only ever needed to worry about telephony, this is just one of many modes that UC seeks to integrate to create a new experience for driving productivity.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2015-01-29
We are coming to the end of a year where there are more questions than answers in the UC space. Why are any and ALL of these things happening now? What is UC becoming, and does it have a future? Whether you’re a business looking to invest in UC, or a channel partner looking to recommend/sell UC to your customer base, it’s really hard right now to know where you should place your bets.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-12-29
The lock note presentation from the Cisco Collaboration Summit was given by Steven Johnson, built around his book/TV series, "How We Got to Now." How does all this tremendous energy and investment that Cisco is throwing at collaboration exemplify the learning and best practices that Steven Johnson shared with us about innovation? Steven honed in on six factors that characterize what it takes to drive innovation, and much of this applies to the process of collaboration itself.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-11-25
I attended last week’s Unify event for analysts and consultants, we were given an in-depth preview of Circuit. The event provided many answers but raised lots of questions as well, and is indicative about how challenging it is for communications vendors get things right these days. I’ve got six takeaways to share here – three hits and three misses – and hopefully this gets some dialog going.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-10-30
Earlier this month, Cisco had their Collaboration Business Update briefing for analysts, and there were some interesting takeaways I think are worth sharing with our readers; not just for what Cisco has in mind for UC&C, but also where they are focusing for growth.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-09-29
While Millennials are quickly becoming the primary consumers of UC&C applications, the creators of these platforms are from another generation. Pre-Internet thinking is still prevalent, and a generational gap remains that needs to be closed. In that context, I’m going to briefly outline five things the UC space can learn from Millennials when it comes to collaboration.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-08-27
With UC touching all ends of the communications spectrum, this is very much about what is best for IT and decisions about network infrastructure. The broader the discussion becomes about what UC could do for your business, the bigger the questions become about your network and the deployment model for UC.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-07-24
Interactive Intelligence recently published the 2014 edition of their Customer Experience Survey. This edition is Wave 2, with the benchmark study being done last year. Being a market researcher by trade, I’m a big proponent of longitudinal studies, and I hope they keep doing this next year and beyond. The study actually addresses two audiences – consumers and professionals (IT and contact center leaders). With a global sample of 1,462 consumers, the findings are solid, and the data is fresh.
Posted by Jon Arnold, on 2014-06-24