Coverage

Enterprise Connect 2019 emphasised the level of competition in the UC market; providers are rapidly expanding their feature sets and leaving little potential for differentiation.

The event came back this year with a revamped agenda, including topics such as interoperability and SaaS collaboration fragmentation, the role of AI in customer engagement and workforce productivity, and the growing relevance of programmable communications.

Patrick asks Mike about West’s approach to collaboration. Mike explains that with their history and experience within the industry they are well placed to help customers around the globe maximise the impact of these new technology platforms. Mike tells Patrick that focusing on adoption and usage is their ultimate focus to ensure that customers receive value for money.

Interoperability is another area that RingCentral is monitoring keenly. It wants to ensure that, even if customers aren’t using its particular products in certain areas, they are still able to consolidate their work processes to provide a seamless user experience across platforms. Amritesh tells Patrick that at its booth during Enterprise Connect it has been showcasing solutions that can enhance and improve consolidated workflows.

By all accounts, contact center was more prominent at Enterprise Connect 2019 than expected, and you couldn’t walk down a hallway without there being at least one session going on this topic. All the big players had a presence, along with many lesser-known competitors, and it’s clear that everyone got the message about this being open season now for cloud-based contact center.

In Aprils UC Today Microsoft Teams Monthly podcast we cover Media Bypass in Direct Routing, which is now been made available, and all the feature news from Enterprise Connect. In particular, I think the whiteboard story is really impressive.

Patrick and Tom then move onto to discuss the raft of new Microsoft Teams updates that were unveiled at Enterprise Connect. There were 8 new updates in total including the release of customisable backgrounds for meetings, a physical whiteboard optimisation feature and the introduction of private channels.

For a show that started many years ago focused on PBXs and enterprise telephony, things sure have changed at Enterprise Connect.

Amy Chang, senior vice president of Cisco’s collaboration technology group, told an Enterprise Connect audience that her company is working to put more AI into its collaboration and voice platforms. Webex Assistant and Facial Recognition will come out this summer.

Firstly Curtis explains to Patrick what RingCentral Persist is, as it is one of their latest innovations. The solution enables RingCentral’s enterprise customers to maintain communications services in the event of an internet failure and Curtis explains how. RingCentral Persist will enable customers to maintain communications services including emergency calling, extension-to-extension dialling, and inbound and outbound calling using a cloud controlled appliance.