Transcript for UCStrategies Experts Discuss New UC Innovations
Dave Michels: Hello, this is Dave Michels. Welcome to the CStrategies weekly podcast. Today’s topic is hard phones, softphones, and everything in between. That “everything in between” category, which didn’t really exist, I don’t think, more than a year ago, seems to be getting crowded. Last summer, we saw Mitel launch their UC360, which is a speakerphone that shares documents. Most recently, we’ve seen Logitech jump into the game with their Webcam speaker device, known as the BCC950, and their Logitech UC keyboards, which are getting some interest. Joining us today is the general manager of Logitech for Business division, Eric Kintz. Welcome, Eric.
Eric Kintz: Thanks, Dave. I’m happy to be here.
Dave Michels: Why don’t you start off and share a little bit about this new category? Do you think this is something we are going to see a lot more of – a lot more types of these devices that aren’t quite hard or soft – but complementary? Or do you think we have invented everything already?
Eric Kintz: No, I think we will see many more categories emerge. I think many people underestimate the change management for end users moving from hardware-based communication to software-based communications. As you go through that transition, the need for easy controls, the need for high quality in audio and video, still remains. So I expect a lot of innovation in that space.
Dave Michels: I take it you have some products in the hangars that might be coming out similar to these keyboard types of devices?
Eric Kintz: Well, we have deep partnerships with both Microsoft and Cisco, and continue to explore what will drive adoption of UC, and as to developing new capabilities in their platforms, we want to drive innovation in providing the right end user experience.
Dave Michels: Because this is so new, I just want to be sure everyone understands what this keyboard device does. Could you give us a quick elevator description of what it is exactly?
Eric Kintz: Sure, it is at its core, a regular USB keyboard, that you would use as a USB keyboard. You just plug it in, in a thin client, or in a desktop, or in a docked laptop. The difference between this and a traditional keyboard is that you have nine call control keys that fully integrate into Cisco Jabber, that allow you simple hardware one-touch experiences that are possible in a deskphone, and that are more convoluted in a softphone environment. Examples include: putting somebody on mute, switching audio inputs between a headset and speaker phone, pressing on a button to get your voicemail, pressing on a button to answer a call, and so forth. It’s really around bringing the simplicity of the desk phone experience into the softphone world.
Dave Michels: It’s a full-sized QWERTY keyboard designed to replace the standard keyboard, with integrated controls that work in harmony with the softphone, and in this case, Jabber. Is it also a Macintosh version, or is it strictly PC?
Eric Kintz: This is strictly PC.
Dave Michels: Ok, very good. I’ve had the pleasure of playing around with the BCC950 Webcam. I know Jim has, too. Jim, what do you think of that BCC950? Is it your primary device now for your video sessions and your desktop?
Jim Burton: It is. What is interesting about that is, if I go back into the history of devices that I have used, I started off with a communications device from Polycom, the little USB-driven device called the Communicator. I upgraded that to the Jabra SPEAK 410, a year or so ago. I was really delighted with those. Then when the 950 showed up, I looked at it and thought boy, this is a big device compared to those other two. But then I realized, wait a second – this is a conference phone that has a camera on it. So I have been using it exclusively for those types of operations since I got it.
I was on a call the other day which I thought was really interesting because I made the comment about how it’s not a portable device. But I was talking with a major UC vendor who had a meeting with a major service provider, and they were in a conference and they had to set up a call. This individual from the service provider pulled out a BCC950 and plugged it in. They had a video call spontaneously, just pulling it out of his briefcase. I think it’s a really interesting evolution. It was Polycom starting with something, but it was audio only; Jabra adding a little better quality to that program. Now we have Logitech coming up with a really good quality combination solution. I have enjoyed it. I like it – so good work. I think this is a good example of the type of devices that we are going to continue to see.
Eric Kintz: Thank you.
Dave Michels: I was talking to a major video conferencing company recently. They were pretty excited about the BCC950, because they saw it as a way of lowering the cost of a conference room video system for at least a small room. But I haven’t heard a lot of excitement, Eric, from your own subsidiary, LifeSize. I know you guys are totally separate and you really can’t speak for them, but are you seeing any synergy or excitement coming from LifeSize regarding the BCC950?
Eric Kintz: Yes. We work very closely with LifeSize on joint roadmaps, and stay tuned for more announcements on that front. Specifically on the BCC950, what we have been driving is more integration at the channel. So that when the LifeSize channel sells ClearSea, the desktop client, or sells LifeSize Connection, the cloud-based service, there is an opportunity to bundle the service with conference cam. That’s where the integration happens most of the time. We have signed joint distributors and joint channels like Jenne, who is one of LifeSize’s main distributors, and is also one of our key distributors. That’s where the integration happens, at the point of sale, between the soft clients from LifeSize and the BCC.
Dave Michels: Excellent. Blair, let me get your thoughts on these new devices.
Blair Pleasant: I have the BCC, the conference cam, and it’s very cool looking. It’s really impressive. As for the keyboard – I like the concept, but I am a Mac user. I just use my Mac laptop, so I’m obviously not the target market. Eric, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what some of the use cases are, and who you are targeting with the keyboard.
Eric Kintz: What we are looking at for the keyboard are use cases around areas where you don't have necessarily a highly technical workforce, where the familiarity of the desk phone plays a key role, the simplicity of the desk phone plays a key role, and at the same time where, for example, space becomes an issue.
Think about use cases such as call centers. But also, think about hot-desking environments where the same employee, or a number of employees, share the same desk. Think about deskless stations, for example, in retail, or nursing stations, or other environments in hospitals. We see a number of use cases with very significant deployments where you have an application for these types of devices. In terms of verticals it would be financial services, it would be healthcare, it would be retail and so forth.
Blair Pleasant: So it would be situations where people aren’t at their desk all the time, and they might be sharing a desk, and it would make more sense. So someone who just uses a laptop all of the time, it would make sense for them. It would be people using something like the Cisco Virtualized Environment, let’s say.
Eric Kintz: Yes – we announced it at the same time as Cisco announced their virtualized environment for Jabber. It works very well in virtualized environments. It would be for employees either that are more at a desk, with a desk-based experience. As I said, call centers and so forth; but also these hot-desking environments are perfect for sales teams, where they are on the go and mobile most of the time. But you want to provide them an environment for the few days and months they are in the office.
Then you have, as I said, a broad array of use cases. Those were the use cases that drove the design center. But since the announcement, we have had companies call us and seeing it as a way for some part of the employees to go softphone only, and deploy these keyboards for their hardware familiarity.
Dave Michels: The desktop is changing so much. It’s always been just so simple. Now you’re describing these multi-users to one desktop. We’re also seeing the hard phone/softphone debate. More recently, we have been seeing this concept of the virtualized softphone. Marty, you’ve seen some of that, haven’t you?
Marty Parker: Absolutely. In fact, with our large enterprise consulting clients there is hardly no one that does not want to know that whatever they are doing with unified communication will work in a virtualized environment. Some are further along than others. We had a client five years ago – they are still a client – but a client even five years ago who was entirely virtual desktop. What they would do is just totally pare back the type of PC that the person would get.
They were getting laptops in those days down in the five, six hundred dollar range as sufficient. They didn’t have large storage on them. They didn’t have high-end capacities on them. And they didn’t have high compute capacity because they were all using the computing and storage of the virtual machines back in the data center.
In addition, we are seeing clients whose mobile people, especially, are moving to tablets and mobile devices. When they think about a hot desk or an office environment for those people, they want to put them in a virtual environment. They don’t want to give them a laptop and a tablet; a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet. They want to bring that cost down, and bring that footprint of support down. Because not only does the device cost money, but the support costs money. The virtual desktop environment gives them that functionality.
I will just emphasize that’s what really caught my attention with the new keyboard, which is integrated with the Cisco Jabber environment. The controls automatically work with the Cisco Unified Communication Manager environment. Cisco, of course, has a backpack on the Cisco phones, if you still want to do that. But if you don’t even want to do that, just pure virtual desktop, then this is going to be an ideal device, because it’s going to bring the person into control of the softphone, which will be on their screen, running out of the data centers. I think the energy around virtual use cases, the virtual machine use case, virtual desktop use case, is probably going to be a good driver for these customized devices.
Eric Kintz: Yes. To build on what you are saying, Marty, there is a reason why we announced this at the same time as Cisco Jabber for virtual deployments. It is clearly one of the key use cases. What Cisco brought to the table in their announcement last week was, one of the challenges of bringing together UC and virtualization is the tax that it brings on the data center of the data traffic back and forth. Especially if you start handling video, you don’t want to have these video streams going back and forth from the clients to the business center and back. Cisco has worked a lot on handling video and voice traffic so that it does not tax your data center. It really enables UC on a virtual deployment, which is today difficult. What Cisco announced is that this will be enabled both on thin clients, starting with Cisco-branded thin clients, but progressively supporting third-party branded thin clients. But also on regular PCs, because we see more and more companies using their old PCs as thin clients. We wanted to make sure to participate in that trend. To your point, the Logitech keyboard fits both in a traditional PC environment, but also very well in a virtualized environment.
Marty Parker: Yes, that’s right. When you think like a larger enterprise, you start multiplying everything that you say by a thousand, or five thousand, or 10 thousand. If you can displace a $600 mini laptop or desktop with $200 worth of keyboard let’s say, that's $400. It doesn’t sound like much. Multiply that by a thousand. Multiply it by 10 thousand. Now it sounds like a lot. Then put a 50 percent load on that over five-year cost of ownership, and it’s even bigger. We get into big numbers pretty fast with large enterprises. Once they establish that pattern, then everyone else will build on what they have learned.
Eric Kintz: Yes, absolutely.
Dave Michels: The first time I saw these USB devices was in a Microsoft environment. I think Plantronics was making them for Microsoft Lync environments. I had never seen that before. I didn’t understand it at first. It’s not really an IP phone. It’s really more of an accessory to make the soft client more attractive and more usable. But that concept really hasn’t taken hold in a generic perspective. I think there are a few from Plantronics that might work with a generic SIP softphone. But I am not even sure of that to be honest. Do you see, Eric, a way of making these – just a SIP compatible keyboard with some basic functionality – that would work with any vendor? Or is each keyboard really going to require a firmware load from the individual vendors?
Eric Kintz: It’s a really good question, and unfortunately in UC today, very few standards exist in terms of human machine interfaces. Lync, for example, has answer/hang-up functions that you can communicate with. But that’s just Lync. Most vendors have proprietary protocols. As a company we will be pushing to drive more standards around core functionalities, and we have experience doing that. That’s basically how we built 30 years of business, by working – in the ‘80s – with Apple and Microsoft on building the standards that now you don’t think about on your PC. The things just work. USB obviously, being one of the key drivers. You just plug in peripherals today, and it just works. It’s going to be a long journey to drive that in the UC space. But we are absolutely committed, as platforms evolve, to drive a number of standards around human machine interface.
Now to replicate the experience of the Logitech UC keyboard that was designed for Cisco, you need the level of integration with the UC platform that won’t happen anytime soon around standards. We are talking about nine dedicated controls. We are talking about feeding information to an LCD screen on the keyboard. Those controls are simple like answer/hangup; or very complex like voicemail. The voicemail lighting up red when you get a voicemail, and you can click on it and retrieve the voicemail. It’s a very high level of complexity and integration that unfortunately will require us to do custom work for each UC platform in the short-term.
Dave Michels: Well, Eric, you said the secret phrase, which was the LCD display. So now as your prize, I have to turn it over to Phil Edholm, who I know has an opinion on that.
Phil Edholm: Yes I do. Very interesting concepts. I wonder about some of the application use cases to how you’ve actually implemented this. The first thing that I looked at was the two-line display. It struck me that the two-line display would have minimal value. I mean, you could potentially show a caller name using traditional telephony type caller ID on that line. But, for example, if I am in a full-screen video conference and I want to use that display for my in-meeting messages, versus having them occupy the video screen, it strikes me that two lines was not enough. I was just curious, did you go through an analysis of use cases and the size of the display that you had put on this device versus those use cases?
Eric Kintz: Yes. This device took us 18 months to develop with Cisco. We went through deep, deep, user interactions and testing with real people, that is to say in real companies. There was deep work in terms of understanding the user interaction. One key point to note is that we didn’t try to replicate the desk phone. Or we didn’t try to replicate the softphone. We tried to bridge the gap between the two; on the one-touch hardware experiences that are complex in a softphone environment and dead simple in a hardware environment. It is not a full desk phone, and it’s not a full softphone.
You have a number of functionalities in both of those platforms that don’t exist on the keyboard. We wanted to nail down the dead simple experiences. To give you an example, this is a very common experience in a voice call: “let me put you on speakerphone.” This is something you would say in a desk phone environment.
Well, in softphone environment you have to say, “let me open my Jabber window.” Or, I will find it, first of all. Remove the screensaver that I had on my screen because I haven’t used my PC for a while; let me find where the settings are; let me go to audio settings; let me select the audio input; shift it to speakerphone; click Save; and close my window. Then I am on speakerphone.
On the desk phone you just say, “let me put you on speakerphone.” Then you press the speakerphone button. So it is those dead simple experiences that we wanted to replicate; not everything.
So now to your point on the LCD screen. There was both, obviously a cost consideration. LCD screens are high cost items, if you want to put in a larger LCD screen, you have a significant cost increase, plus a significant footprint increase on the keyboard.
Again, one of the design considerations was to save space. But also, the primary design center was dead simplicity. We wanted to exclude anything that distracted from these dead simple one-touch experiences.
Phil Edholm: What would a good application then be of the value of the display, other than caller ID?
Eric Kintz: Well, it is caller ID.
Phil Edholm: Ok, that is exclusively caller ID, then?
Eric Kintz: Yes. It is.
Dave Michels: I think what you are missing Phil is that the softphone is still there. The Jabber client is still there.
Phil Edholm: No, I understand it’s still there. I was looking at the use case where I am in a full-screen video conference on my monitor, and I want to do IM’ing to someone else in the meeting and versus having that be a popup, or have to be integrated in the video full screen. I could have it on. Just trying to understand that.
The final question – this was one that just seemed to me when I looked at it, almost seemed egregious by its omission, which is a button to pull the soft client to the top. I was curious if you had that, if that was embedded somewhere? The single biggest function that I find that people want when they have a soft client running is, give me a button or a place I can push that pulls the soft client immediately to the top so I see it if it is buried under a bunch of windows. Is that enabled in the device? Or, is it something that is not there?
Eric Kintz: No, it is not enabled in the device. It’s a good point. In our user studies and in testing this keyboard, it hasn’t come up as one of the top use cases. But it’s something that we may enable down the line.
Phil Edholm: Ok, thank you much.
Eric Kintz: Thank you.
Dave Michels: Regarding use cases and applications, I think the one thing we have not touched on yet is the contact center. Art, that is an area you like to focus on. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Art Rosenberg: Yeah. It kind of reminds me, back in the Delphi days, we were training operators to answer calls that were handled through a computer, with the first call center technology. The functions for controlling the phone we actually put into the computer, and we replaced the keyboard key tops, not all of them, but using control and a particular one for all these functions that you now have put on your board. This was back in 1978. I was there with this concept a long time ago. Anyway, it’s obviously very useful for people who are doing repetitive call handling functions, particularly on inbound.
The other comment that I would make is that this is not only for inside the call centers, but consumers, who for whatever reason do a lot of things online, business with other companies, not just the one company, but they do a lot of calling, or they do lot of communicating. They could benefit from this as well. Have you looked at that?
Eric Kintz: Yes. We think the primary use case will be enterprise. But since we announced we have had a number of consumers contact us and say are you doing a similar keyboard for Skype? There is definitely a demand. The question is how big and real that demand is. We are developing the first one with Cisco. They brought a deep experience in desk phone interaction. We will see. I believe that these types of devices will take off. Then, more innovation will be enabled.
Dave Michels: I want to stick with contact centers a little longer. I am actually kind of surprised you didn’t put an ashtray and a cup holder on this keyboard. But, Don, can you share your insights on the contact center, with this device?
Don Van Doren: Sure. I think this is really interesting for contact center applications. One of the questions I’ve got is, you mentioned the nine keys that you have available. Maybe you went through this and I just missed it, but are those programmable in any sense so that the center could get itself set up and have some specific functions that are focused on each one of those?
Eric Kintz: It’s a really good question. We actually debated whether we do would do programmable or not. We decided to go hard-coded, again with the design center simplicity, we didn’t want any IT managers or end users for that matter to have to mess with programmable keys. Those are programmable keys that are hard coded, if that makes sense.
Don Van Doren: Yeah. I guess the only observation I would make is that while I understand the objection of keys that could be changeable from user to user within an environment. But on the other hand I can easily envision circumstances in contact centers, for instance, where you would want to have certain functions that are available. It is a one-time set up deal. Then all of the keyboards in the entire operation work the same way.
Eric Kintz: Yes. It could go in that direction if these types of experiences take off, for sure. There is a just a deep custom integration work required both on the software side and the hardware side to enable these type of experiences. We wanted to start with the dead simple experiences. If really these take off, then we can think about more programmable experiences.
Don Van Doren: 2.0—
Eric Kintz: Yeah, exactly.
Art Rosenberg: One of the applications areas that I thought would be interesting is what is happening with tablets. People are adding keyboards to their tablets, and this would be a very interesting thing to add.
Eric Kintz: Yeah. That is a really good point. The softphone experience on a mobile platform is also somewhat painful. If most of you have gone through it, the same way that you click on the screen, or clicking on the PC is not intuitive in some instances, the same for touch or multi-touch. That could be an evolution. As you guys know we are the leader in iPad keyboards. So it’s not a stretch of the imagination. But we wanted to start with the broadest application or use case, which is a PC and social client.
Don Van Doren: This is Don again. Let me ask a little bit different question, if I could. What about the business model issues for companies that previously sold really expensive desksets? While this may not be your problem exactly, I am just curious as to whether you are doing anything to assist the channels in moving toward this brave new world that we are entering?
Eric Kintz: It’s a great question because obviously many of the channels in telephony or in video conferencing are used to selling hardware and maintenance contracts on the back of those hardware sales. It is definitely a shift in channels or in channel business models. It’s a shift that to some extent Cisco has driven its channels through by focusing more, or enabling networking channels to sell UC.
Increasingly, those companies or those channels will sell software. The usage of the software will be enabled by these new class of devices. That will enable more sales on the back end and more sales around services, i.e., how to deploy these applications. The channel is changing as UC or as communication is shifting from hardware-based communication to software-based communication. Many channels need to think about their model and see how to enable a business model that drives an initial sale of software and lower cost hardware; and drive revenue on the back end through services and upgrade on the network.
Dave Michels: Well, that actually brings up an interesting point, Don. Eric, is this keyboard available through normal Logitech open distribution, or only to Cisco resellers?
Eric Kintz: It won’t be through our retail channels, obviously. But it will be predominately through Cisco channels.
Dave Michels: Well, predominately...I mean, is it available? Can any reseller purchase this through their standard distributors? Or, is it restricted like some Cisco products are to Cisco authorized or Cisco certified?
Eric Kintz: Well, the reason I am saying predominately is we share joint channels with Cisco. For example, one of the channels that we mentioned when we announced the keyboard last week was CDW. CDW is a general IT channel that sells most of the Logitech products to businesses. They are also a Cisco channel. They will be one of the partners carrying these devices.
Dave Michels: Very good. We haven’t heard from Mr. Steven Leaden.
Steve Leaden: Hi, Eric, this is Steve. Thanks for joining us today. I was wondering if you could give us your vision over the next 24 months as to where the possibilities for this product could be? Obviously, it is with Cisco at the moment. Do you see integration with Microsoft Lync? How does it play into a virtual cloud strategy? How does it potentially replace the desktop? I’m throwing a lot of questions at you, but I was wondering how your vision is playing here as this unveils, if you will.
Eric Kintz: We see our role as being the last inch to UC deployments. We look a lot at end users, and that’s obviously our strong area as a company – really understanding the pain points, the new pain points that UC creates for end users as they shift from hardware to software. And as I said at the beginning, the need for simple controls; the need for high quality audio. The need for high quality video doesn’t disappear simply because you move to a software platform. The challenge is that you move to software-commoditized hardware, like a PC, like a tablet, like a smartphone, and those are great from a CPU perspective, but they are absolutely lousy from an audio quality or a video quality perspective. That’s where we see our role moving forward. That’s where we see a lot of innovation coming beyond our own company. A lot of innovation in the UC space is providing that simplicity and quality of hardware experiences to these software platforms as they move forward.
Specifically to your question, I think we have covered a number of areas where this experience could go in terms of enabling virtual desktop, in terms of shifting to other UC platforms, in terms of shifting to mobile clients. There are a lot of directions that you can think of once you anchor this first use case.
A lot of people told me, “I didn’t think of integrating in the keyboard, but now that I see it, it makes sense.” Because it becomes your productivity and communication single platform as UC integrates increasingly with productivity platforms. Think about Lync integrating with Office. Or Jabber integrating increasingly with Office, too. The more you have the platforms integrating, the more you have this set of devices integrating that supports this platform.
Steve Leaden: I think really the sky’s the limit here, and it really could transform the market. Even providing some kind of shift over the next couple of years, leveraging the keyboard right here in a smart way. The only other question was, who do you see as competition right now? Or, who do you see that is your competition in the near-term?
Eric Kintz: Do you mean specifically in keyboards, or in general?
Steve Leaden: Specific to this particular keyboard.
Eric Kintz: It is interesting because there are actually very few players that can do these types of devices. I mean, it sounds simple because...it’s a keyboard. There are obviously many players in the keyboard space. First, it’s very difficult to do good keyboards. There is a reason why we have a market leadership in traditional keyboards. But more importantly, the level of custom software and firmware required to do this deep level of integration is something that’s not obvious and not easy to replicate.
Just as an anecdote, we built strong expertise in programmable and customizable keyboards through our gaming experience. We are the leader in gaming keyboards. We have an LCD screen that displays information from the game, like your ammunition or whatever in a first-person shooter game. And we are very well-known for what is called the G-keys on our G-keyboards that are programmable for the game so that you can customize your weapons or whatever else you need for that game. We leveraged that co-expertise and actually the same teams developed this keyboard. There are only a few players that can do that. I’m sure there will be competition at some point, but there is not an obviously player that can replicate that experience.
Steve Leaden: I find it very interesting, your comment just now about a lot of the outcome for this particular product came out of your gaming group, because there is just a lot of sophistication behind the scenes in the gaming community to develop these apps. It’s fascinating. Thank you.
Eric Kintz: It’s the true consumerization of IT – a gaming team that developed a UC keyboard. But yes, we have developed strong expertise in terms of secondary screen experience on the software, on a large-screen software display. How do you display, to the point that was made earlier, secondary information to another screen? How do you program keys on the keyboard to enable specific functions? If there were standards, or hopefully at some point there will be standards, we will go more towards the generic programmable keyboards. But I think we are ways away from that.
Steve Leaden: Thank you, Eric. Thanks, Dave.
Dave Michels: With that we will wrap up this podcast. Thank you very much, Eric for joining us. There are interesting developments in the sector. We will be back next week with yet another exciting topic.