November 9, 2022 • 30 mins
Most TalkingHeadz episodes are interviews, but in this episode we Dave and Evan cover current events.
TalkingPointz Insider Reports publish the first week of every month and cover the enterprise news that mattered the prior month. In this podcast, Dave and Evan discuss the most recent Insider Report covering the news of October 2022.
The October 2022 Insider Report was published on Nov 2.
Most Insider Reports are about 10 pages long, but designed for easy skimming. This podcasts only covers a condensed selection of topics.
Subscriptions to Insider Reports can be purchased here. A personal subscription is $588/year.
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Episode Transcript
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Evan Kirstel (00:12):
Hey everyone, it's Evan cursed out. And Dave
Michaels on this special weekendedition.
Dave Michels (00:18):
Hey everyone, it's Evan and Michaels. And so do you
mean hey everyone and let
Evan Kirstel (00:22):
you know I can move you to the green room here
and just do this myself. So nowyou see you're moved out to the
green room. I may or may notdecide to bring you back up. All
right, let's bring it back up.
We have a very special editionof talking heads talking points,
because it's been a super busymonth, hasn't it?
Dave Michels (00:39):
October is always the busiest month because for
some reason everyone wants tohave an event in October.
Evan Kirstel (00:44):
I don't know we're in November. I'm not sure if you
check your daylight savings timeyet, but we're gonna be talking
October. We're talking aboutOctober and talk about October
in October because it
Dave Michels (00:55):
was too busy.
god (00:58):
Talking it is a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration. Your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or attalking points.com. That's
(01:20):
points with a Z and Devonkruskal.com. That's que ir S T E
L.
Evan Kirstel (01:27):
So for those of you looking retroactively
through life like us, let's talkabout October 1, what is this
talking points thing this thisnewsletter thing that you do?
Dave Michels (01:39):
So that's reasonable that you wouldn't
understand that because you'renot inside of course. And of
course, you're a subscriber. Theincident report is a report I
put together as part of my asenhance services behind a
paywall. It has a monthlynewsletter, it has research
notes, and this is the monthlynewsletter of October, which
publishes the first week ofNovember. All right,
Evan Kirstel (01:58):
clear as mud just like Twitter, the strategy is
completely transparent andcollaborative
Dave Michels (02:02):
fire everybody. I laid off half the staff of
talking points through a tweet.
Evan Kirstel (02:07):
It's very sad.
It's very sad. Luckily, Isurvived. So let's dive into it.
What's your first talking pointof the session?
Dave Michels (02:16):
Well, first thing actually, it was because it was
such a busy travel month is thatI could not help. But notice
that I don't think it's fair forme to say the pandemic is over.
But I think out there for me tosay that the fear of COVID is
over. People seem to be out andabout and breathing on me
everywhere I go.
Evan Kirstel (02:37):
Well, I still have some uncertainty about groups.
But you're right, the airportsare full of the flights are
full, the events are full. I wasjust at a cardiology event of
all things covering it onTwitter as I do.
Dave Michels (02:49):
I don't see cardiology event. That's a
really bad two.
Evan Kirstel (02:52):
Yes, that was a cardiology conference. And none
of the cardiologists werewearing masks. So what does that
tell you? I don't
Dave Michels (03:00):
know. But no, it's surprising, because I don't know
I guess President Biden said thepandemic is over. But I'm not
sure everybody in the healthprofessional do. But certainly
the fear of it is over. And it'sjust surprising. You know, it's
like a switch on and off. Weturned it off, or we turned it
on and everything emptied outairports emptied out everything,
always famous pictures ofcrowded cities completely empty.
(03:22):
And then it's back on again. Andyou know, going through PSA is,
it's back to 1999.
Evan Kirstel (03:28):
Living like it's 9099. Again, why
Dave Michels (03:31):
are you? Are you in the bridge of the enterprise?
Evan Kirstel (03:33):
I am yeah, I have one rebuilt in my basement. But
we'll talk about thatafterwards. Speaking of which,
of COVID, being quote, unquote,over we're going to a zoom
event, but not on Zoom, we'reactually going in person, which
is the ultimate irony, is itnot?
Dave Michels (03:47):
You know, I've been thinking about this,
because I've been telling peoplethat I'm going to my second zoom
event into zoom, topia is comingup in the second week of
November. And we had a zoomanalysts event, I think it was
in possibly August. And so it'slike two in person zoom events.
And this is the company thatwas, you know, famous for home.
But you know, Zoom doesn't wantto be associated with staying at
(04:08):
home anymore. I think they'repurposely rotating. Let's get
back to live events, of course,is a virtual element. Of course,
people can watch the keynotes onZoom within one. And zoom events
is of course is a softwarepackage that they sell. So I
think it's gonna be it's goingto be good. And the difference
between these events, the eventI went to a few months ago, was
all about zoom. And zoom topiapeople think is all about zoom.
(04:30):
And it is, but it's also allabout the community. They have a
pretty good expo hall, a lot ofvendors are there. It's a great
place to be seen. Great place tosee people. And so I'm really
I'm really looking forward tothis and topia. Me too.
Evan Kirstel (04:43):
I'm flying out 7am tomorrow so we have to get over
with this thing quick. Yes, I'llsee you there tomorrow. We got
subjects to the airport bedearly. I'm
Dave Michels (04:51):
sure I go to bed I'm
Evan Kirstel (04:53):
going to bed about an hour. Speaking of zoom, and
by extension five nine andindustry insiders will
understand the connection Thecompany that almost was the
company that almost was the CEOthat is no more.
Dave Michels (05:05):
It surprised a lot of people that Rowan was leaving
five, nine. It didn't surpriseme honestly. And I can I can
defend that. Because last time Isaw Ro And I said, Why are you
still here? Isn't it time foryou to go? I said that
respectfully. He's done a greatjob. Five nicer isn't.
Evan Kirstel (05:20):
They say that to you all the time. But that's a
separate, but I always tell
Dave Michels (05:23):
myself that he wasn't going to be there long
term. And I kind of felt likehe'd done the heavy lifting that
he got, you know, and it was,and he was probably getting
ready to go. I thought he wouldgo to a crypto startup. He
assures me he's not going to acrypto startup, but he hasn't
said where he's going. And Ithink that you know, the guy
coming in to replace him likeMike Brooklyn was the CEO. And
(05:45):
it'll be you. It'll beinteresting. This market
certainly didn't react well. mewrong, got a lot done while he
was there. But I also think thatRowan is doing what he needs to
do. And I think five nine willbe fine.
Evan Kirstel (05:56):
Well, who the hell wants to be the CEO of a public
company? At the moment? It's aYikes. What a job. Yeah, that's
Dave Michels (06:02):
funny, because they're going to a he says he's
going to a pre IPO company. Andyou know, he's trying to be
descriptive and not descriptiveat the same time. Everybody's a
pre IPO company. As far as Iknow. Right now, I'm pretty sure
your company is pre IPO. Mycompany's pre IPO. But he's not
coming to either one of ourcompanies. I guess he's not
coming to mind. I don't know ifhe's coming to your company. But
no, pre IPO is kind of a widegamut. A lot of companies, a lot
(06:22):
more companies are pre IPO thancompanies that are IPOs. So
Evan Kirstel (06:26):
So speaking of do most IPO companies, Google,
there was a big Google eventcalled next I was there in
person in New York City. Butwhat did you What was your
takeaway from Google Cloud Next?
Dave Michels (06:39):
You know, I get a lot of questions around Google
most questions. Are they reallyserious about this stuff,
because they're really aboutadvertising on one hand, and
then Google Cloud is reallyaround selling their cloud
compute services. And so they'rereally serious about this
enterprise comm stuff. And Ihave to say they are they did a
tremendous job during thepandemic, assuming that it
ended, of improving Google meat.
And Google meat became a realcontender for video
(07:03):
conferencing. And then at GoogleNext, they actually announced a
bunch of updates. So there's thenotification, they actually
announced a bunch of updates forGoogle Chat. That's significant
updates. And it used to be we'relimited this 400 people in the
chat, you know, and I, and nowyou're limited 8000. So that's
actually, you know, enterpriselevel chat services. And they've
also expanded their encryptionpoints and encryption to Google
(07:26):
Calendar. So they're definitelyturning up the volume to 11. On
these enterprise apps, I thinkwe're going to hear some news
next month about Google Voice.
Remember, Google Voice, nobodyelse always remember
Evan Kirstel (07:37):
that from the 90s.
Dave Michels (07:38):
Yeah, they discovered they still have it
there. But back to the clientside encryption stuff. You know,
that was something that theylaunched a little while ago
because uh, you know, he got ahe was a big and advertising
company and reading oninformation. But they've
extended that from Google meat,to drive Docs, Sheets, Slides,
and now calendar so you can haveyour privacy and eat it too. And
(07:58):
Google
Evan Kirstel (07:59):
Awesome. Well, moving from one tech giant to
the next Microsoft, what'shappening there? Because I'm
always befuddled by the latestMicrosoft bundles pricing
marketing. What's happening?
Dave Michels (08:11):
Well, you know, there isn't your funnel. So you
said the funnels? Yes. ButFunnels is because they don't
really like to talk to usinfluencers and analysts pre
news. So we get a lot of ournews, secondhand news, if you
remember that bit from Saturday,July. But anyway, they dropped
some interesting announcements.
So far, the biggest announcementis later in the report, because
we're kind of going through thisreport in the UC section. But
but in this part of the sectionwith chat and video.
(08:32):
Interestingly, the thing theydid was they came out with a
premium bundle for teams. Andthis is interesting, because one
of the most common reasonspeople say that they use teams
is because it's free. And it'sdone phenomenally well. It's got
some like 70% penetration inenterprise, all these free
users, all these free users areupgrading their PCs, because the
client uses up all the computingpower. But you know, free is
(08:53):
free. And the problem is if youhave a product that is getting
70% penetration, and it's free,you want to monetize it. So they
came up with this team's premiumbundle, which is pretty clever.
It's not really clear like likezoom has a premium bundle
associated with callingfeatures. So if you're heavy
calling, you might want thatpremium bundle resume. But
(09:14):
Microsoft's premium bundles kindof all over the place. It has
some features around callingsome features around webinars
and features around chat. It'sjust kind of all over the place,
but it's $10 a month. And I'msure a lot of enterprises will
buy it for all their employeeswithout even really questioning.
And so the free service is now$10 A month, unless you have
Evan Kirstel (09:35):
let's move on or though I might fall asleep
during this audio lights idea.
Well,
Dave Michels (09:41):
we'll get to an ESC section. All right, what do
you want to talk about?
Evan Kirstel (09:44):
I see something called telepresence read do read
American call it Now that'sinteresting to me because I
thought telepresence was dead asa doorknob.
Dave Michels (09:54):
No, no, no, no, no. Every decade there's a new
version of telepresence, rightand At one point, it was crystal
clear audio just like you'rebeing there, hear a pin drop,
then it became video and then itbecame better audio and then it
became wideband video and HDvideo. And so we keep on
improving telepresence, and, youknow, companies like WhatsApp,
Skywalker Ranch company,whatever that company, whatever,
(10:15):
they have life size videoconferencing, they really wanted
to be as if you were in the sameroom. And that's that was like
10 years ago. And so there'salways this new version of
telepresence, but this month inOctober, so actually last month,
but in October, we got threeglimpses of the future of high
definition telepresence, onefrom Google, one from Mehta, and
one from Cisco. And they wereall various versions of 3d video
(10:39):
conferencing. And I would saythe Google the mental one, of
course, is animated, butexpensive. You can look around
and move around and whatever.
And they made a big announcementMicrosoft, which is interested
in Microsoft's bringing teams tometa horizon office setting, so
I think it was a brilliantMaxell
Evan Kirstel (10:56):
in the metaverse, I can't wait to this is
exciting, because I've
Dave Michels (11:00):
got nothing to lose on this one. They're
bringing in teams, which is whatmetal wanted. And they get full
access to all of metals,investments, and including
hardware. So that was a goodmove for Microsoft. So that's
meta, Google came up with afancy booth, he always make fun
of me and my phone booths. Butwho came up with a telepresence
booth, it's like a half a room,and the other person gets half
the room, and then the videotogether, and they make you
(11:21):
know, it's as if they're in thesame room, and they can move
around, they can see differentangles, very high quality stuff,
way too expensive to ever sellthis, they're experimenting for
the future, they're putting itinto customer sites, it's good
stuff, they're buildingsomething, it's
Evan Kirstel (11:34):
gonna be ready for six g, it's going to be really
60,
Dave Michels (11:37):
I think 99 G, it's going to be a ways out there
because they can't put a priceon it yet. Now, Cisco has a
thing called hologramtechnology. It's part of WebEx,
they actually introduced it lastyear, but they've improved it.
Now they're using the Magic Leapgoggles. And I got to actually
play with this one at the WebExopen house they had, it's pretty
interesting systems more aboutprototypes, or models that can
(11:59):
either be the model that you areshowing, remote person. And then
if I'm showing you a model ofsomething, say a prototype of a
product, then I have this panelthat has all these different
cameras and sensors. And thenyou on the remote end have these
Magic Leap goggles, and you cankind of you know, look around,
look at the bottom, stuff likethat. It also works with
projected stuff. So I can havean animation of a model like a
(12:21):
screenshare. And then you'reable to actually move it around
and look at different sides ofit, shaken upside down until it
falls out. So that one is alsoin kind of pre shipping mode,
the panels are still reallyexpensive to putting it out to
customers. They share with mesome customers and how they're
using it. And they have productsthat are related to that
customer. But this is the nextgeneration. And it's not quite
available for you and me yet.
Evan Kirstel (12:42):
All right. Well, I see some surgeons wanting to
like examine 3d images andthings through that you so I
imagine that's going to be funuse case. You also talk a little
bit about poly and Lodgy, somecertifications, what's going on
there.
Dave Michels (12:56):
So that is this is kind of the you know, find this
hard to believe. But you know,Polly and Lodgy have moved to an
Android based actually Cisco hasto an Android based system for
their video room controls. Andthese are now certified, you
know, Cisco uses them and theirsystems. Microsoft has them and
their ecosystem. And zoom has anAmerica system. But they'll
(13:17):
surprise you is that Google hasalways been Android. No, no, no
Android around here. We'reGoogle. We don't use Android.
Google has always been usingChrome OS powered devices, which
are very powerful devices. Butthey're very proprietary. It's a
couple of St Pauli alloggi,government whitewash to deal
with that. And so somehow, Hollyand Lodgy were able to convince
Google to put in their existingAndroid based systems into
(13:41):
Google meat rooms. And Googlesomehow said yes. And so that
opens up a whole new world ofvideo conferencing systems. And
it actually makes it a littlecheaper and a little more
competitive. So finally, Googlehas discovered that Android
actually has a purpose besidessmartphones.
Evan Kirstel (13:55):
Awesome next up cars. So we'll see that next you
were at the WebEx one the bigevent when he
Dave Michels (14:03):
mentioned that earlier but I want to mention
some things you know, when thisis we're pushing down the sweet
play, you buy a WebEx suite nowthey're really trying to sell
this week on like the Microsoftplay. One of companies are
actually doing this now. And
Evan Kirstel (14:15):
but once you get your apple bundle and apple one
comes with everything, what do Iget as part of my talking heads
talking points bundle? Do I getanything besides,
Dave Michels (14:24):
you get livestream guests? You gotta live Okay.
Evan Kirstel (14:27):
Can you can you add a phone booth can maybe add
a phone booth or, you know,
Dave Michels (14:31):
I thought my phonebook was antiquated
technology is not going to work.
But I want to mention one thingthat's not in the WebEx week
that they had on display at theCisco open at WebEx open house,
a product called Cisco spaces.
There's only so many words andwork in our space and so, so
enterprise I don't know how manycompanies have spaces product
value. I'm not even sure whereto put Cisco SpaceX is actually
(14:54):
about physical space, thatvirtual space and the idea of it
is to help you manage Your youroffices. And what the big news
that the web is open house was,is that the WebEx products now
talk to Cisco spaces. So whenyou have Cisco spaces that are
representing your office, youcan see all the desks and you
can see where all the equipmentis you can see the air quality.
(15:15):
And you can see which hot deskyou might want to reserve or
rent. But now you can actuallysee how many people are logged
in. And the Cisco WebEx suite isactually talking to it. I think
Microsoft just announcedsomething similar if they didn't
call it spaces, they call itplaces. But Microsoft has
something coming next year,something along this line. But
this hybrid office thing has theIT company is trying to figure
out how to manage physicalspaces or places or whatever
(15:37):
better now, which is somethingnew for us to be influencing.
Evan Kirstel (15:41):
Awesome. So let's shift gears to customer
engagement and CX world. What'sup with that?
Dave Michels (15:48):
What's up with that is exactly my reaction. The
business news there was Genesisdecided to kill it's multi cloud
products. And I have to say, ifthey would have announced this a
year ago, I would have said Iget it I understand the future
is cloud. If they would haveannounced this a year from now,
I probably would have said I getit the future is cloud. Let's
(16:08):
double down let's go focus oncloud. But they announced it
now, which I find perplexing tobe honest because of the state
of Avaya. Avaya, as you know, iskind of in the turmoil state,
they haven't announced theirlast quarter, which is you know,
they're very late on And Gartnerhas been very cautious about
about, you know, advice to theircustomers saying, you know, you
(16:29):
might want to close your wallet,as far as the buyer is
concerned, they put out aadvisory. And so it seems to me
that that Avaya base which ishuge, and not particularly
customers that want seek asreally want a multicloud type of
solution. That's what they'regetting from Avaya. So it seems
to me when that base, which isyou know, bigger than your
company is up for grabs, itseems like a strange time to be
(16:52):
discontinuing that product. Andso, so it's good news for Cisco,
it's good news reminds us goodnews for a handful of other
companies. But very strangetiming from Genesis,
Evan Kirstel (17:00):
interesting, anything else, you had quite a
boondoggle over to Morocco, orWhere were you,
Dave Michels (17:06):
you know, nice put on their event in Morocco, and a
nice event in Morocco. That'sexactly the sentence they were
looking for. And it was a greatevent, you know, me, I'm all
business, I don't really thingslike that mean nothing to me, I
just wanted to shoot and youknow, drink and you know, one of
the things is the same whetherit's in Morocco or somewhere
else. So the point is, is thatit was a great event, because
(17:28):
what I really liked, but wetalked about this with our
recent podcasts with a dot, theCMO there is that they do so
much unscheduled time with theirevents. And I find that
particularly productive Iactually, you know, you might
find this hard to believe, butactually, you're kind of tired
in 10 hours of taking notes andpresentations all day in a room
with no windows. And so they'dkind of limited to half a day.
(17:51):
And then they have theseactivities and events. And they
bring out their whole executiveteam. And you end up having
really good conversations, notonly with the nice executives,
but also with my peers andcolleagues as we're talking
about the things that we heard.
And I find that I actually learna lot more at a nice event
because of their unstructuredstructure. Does that make sense?
(18:11):
As opposed to some other eventsthat jam pack the agenda?
Evan Kirstel (18:16):
I went to an event once if you ever been to an
event where there is no agenda?
No.
Dave Michels (18:22):
That's a little too unstructured. The guy the
guy in the kilt is what you'retalking to pink socks?
Evan Kirstel (18:27):
Yes, Nick. Yes.
Shout out to Nick. So how manyevents did you attend? In
October? I'm up to like four orfive? What's going on? I
Dave Michels (18:35):
think it was 511 100. All right. So
obviously, we had the nice eventin Morocco we had I went to UC
Expo in London. Actually severalof us did do both of those
events, which meant that we hadto leave Bravo right away and go
right to London, and then fouror five of us to the same
program. And then the followingweek I went to Chicago for the
cloud Communications Alliance.
CCA I think at CCA they put onthis the old broadsoft group is
(19:00):
bigger than broadsoft. But theyput it's a bunch of independent
service providers. Some of themare on broadsoft or Cisco now.
Some of them are metal switch.
Some of them are 2600. Andcrescendo is there. We've had
Christina on the podcast, theyget together on a regular basis.
They still put on great content.
The next one, by the way is inJanuary in Fort Lauderdale, and
I definitely plan to be there.
(19:23):
Maybe I'll see you there. We'vebeen to events in Fort
Lauderdale. So I associated thatwith you. Oh Then after that
came to Chicago and write towhether it's one and say, and
then the following week was theRingCentral event up in Napa. So
five events in October.
Evan Kirstel (19:37):
That's exhausting.
I don't envy you too much. It'stoo much but you're doing a
great keep it up keep it up.
Dave Michels (19:43):
There's one thing we did we did this on the
podcast actually we brieflytalked about whether or not we
talked about sweet form and Isaid we're gonna get back to it
and we never got back to I wantto just touch on sweet form a
little bit because I think it's
Evan Kirstel (19:55):
is it a kind of men's underwear what what is
week one,
Dave Michels (19:58):
you're thinking of sweet SW e two That isn't so
sweet. But what I find sointeresting about this is you
have a same conversationoccurring from two opposite
extremes working toward eachother. So on one side, you've
got nice, who's a traditionalaverage contact center vendor.
And they're also a workforceengagement vendor. And so
they've got, and they've built asuite. But they have these
(20:19):
traditional applications. Andthey want them to be more
extensible. And they want themto work better together and be
easier for their customers tointegrate all these different
modules that they have. And sothey call that a suite form,
because it's part platform partsuite. And they're bringing this
together. And if you listen tothem, they want to tear down the
silos, they want to reduce thebarriers to using more products,
(20:40):
they want to make it easier forcustomers to get to the next
level, blah, blah, blah. So it'svery interesting conversation,
because you're going to go onthe other end, let's say to
Twilio, we just had their event,last week single conference,
they're coming from pure API isno sweet whatsoever. And then
Onyx has been, I should say, no,no application whatsoever. But
they're building a suite ofAPI's that go toward contact
(21:02):
center and go toward customerengagement. And they're saying
the exact same things, you haveto tear down the silos, you have
to make it easier for yourcustomers to go deeper and
better. And so they're bothcoming from very opposite
directions, kind of toward thecenter, which is a sweet form,
creditor, united, nice for acombination of a highly
(21:24):
extensible set of applications.
And it's phenomenal the waythese are coming together. I
think nice, has a fantasticsleep, and a fantastic suite
form. Twilio has a fantastic setof API's, they're going to have
a little bit of work to do tomake that really come together
for a lot of enterprisecustomers. But I love their
vision, and they're makingincredible progress.
Evan Kirstel (21:43):
Okay, well, I was taking a shot every time you
said sweet form. So now I'mreally biased. But we'll
continue on the journey. Throughthe talking heads newsletter.
There's something about Chromenow, why should I care about
Google Chrome? Enterprisecommunications,
Dave Michels (21:59):
it's in the contact center section. And I
love it when a vendor justfinally you know, puts down the
cards face up and admits thetruth. And so you've heard it
before, a lot of vendors saythis, we heard the term over and
over a single pane of glass. Andeverybody, every vendor seems to
have some sort of solution witha single pane of sound.
Evan Kirstel (22:19):
So cool, it just sounds beautiful. And I'm glad
Yeah, like, literally like last
Dave Michels (22:23):
week, like last, and you want to lots of pains.
But this goal is often veryelusive, which is why so many
vendors keep promising it,because nobody can really give
it. So what Google did was theyfinally admitted it, maybe the
single pane of glass isn'tworking out for you. And so we
got the Chrome does connectorfor the first thing they've made
just for the contact center. Andwhat they're doing here is that
(22:44):
you get a new engagement, thenew call, or some sort of some
sort of new engagement comes in.
And when that happens, thecontact center vendor can open a
whole bunch of tabs for you inone second. So you have a clean
starting point. And you've gotyour CRM, possibly your contact
center, desktop, maybe someother database, you need to
access a nice clean set ofWindows. And then when the call
(23:04):
or interaction is over, they allgo away. And the next time you
start over again. So they'relike always different Chrome
tabs, and they don't have to goaway. You can make them so they
stay and you can close themlater with one click. But I
think it's the slice admissionsdo two important takeaways. So
nice admission, that single paneof glass is not for everybody.
And then the second one is thisis the first extension to Chrome
(23:26):
that Google has madespecifically for the contact
center. And so if you'rewondering if Google's kind of
serious about their contactcenter interests,
Evan Kirstel (23:37):
they are well I remember their presence at
Enterprise Connect earlier thisyear, it was kind of stunning to
see Google on display their showthey traditionally have not
attended. So moving on to theUnified Communication section.
This is your meat and potatoes.
I'd say the report, you talkedabout teams phone mobile, and
are they bringing back theMicrosoft phones smartphone?
(23:58):
What's what's good?
Dave Michels (24:01):
That would be a good one. That's a good guess.
So actually, back at EnterpriseConnect back in March, they
announced on the keynote stageoperator Connect Mobile. And it
was actually pretty interesting.
And they said, We don't knowwhen it's coming. They wouldn't
give us a date. And so I justkind of filed that away, as
it'll probably be talked aboutat the next Enterprise Connect
(24:23):
next year. I thought that waskind of reasonable. I actually
wrote a research note kind ofalong these lines. I call it
UCaaS mobility three, becausethere were three keynotes at
Enterprise Connect in March thatcovered what I call UCAS
mobility, three, one was fromCisco and one was from
RingCentral. And one was fromMicrosoft. Cisco announced their
product WebEx go at EnterpriseConnect RingCentral already had
(24:43):
a product and they showed itwith at&t Office at hand. And
Microsoft had announced aproduct coming sometime in the
in the future. Well, that futureis now about seven months later,
they launched they renamed itteams phone, mobile and the law
Launched in Sweden on Telia andthen Washington Canada on
Rogers, supposedly Verizon willbe launching it in the US later
(25:06):
this year, early next year. Andwhat this is, is what I call
UCAS mobility, three, theconvergence of cellular and
UCaaS in one service. And so nowyour IT administrator can
literally move phone numbersbetween smartphones and desktops
and soft phones. And moreimportantly, the team's number
(25:26):
in this case becomes the nativenumber of the smartphone. It's
not a add on top. It's actuallythe native number has full, you
know, PBX features on the smartmobile device. And so Microsoft
launches obviously in Swedenfirst because the Scandinavians
are crazy about their mobiledevices. But it's going to be
pretty big when Verizon launchesit here in the US. And
(25:48):
meanwhile, RingCentral still hasthis available from at&t office
at hand. And we're gonna gethere the next I think it's the
next story. They announced attheir event that they're
expanding with Vodafone, andlaunching in UK, and I think it
was Germany have to see when weget to the page. But so there's
a UK as mobility three optionfrom RingCentral. And it's the
(26:10):
same thing, native experience onthe smartphone. And then Cisco
WebEx go is available globally.
And they do a differentapproach. They actually do it
through an NBN Oh, and so yourphone actually says Cisco WebEx
versus WebEx as your carrierprovider. But as a result of
that, it works globally and youjust roam to wherever you happen
to be. So big news on the UCASmobility front. Yeah,
Evan Kirstel (26:33):
that's kind of a big deal. People have been
talking about this for what,five years, 810 years, but it
looks like it's always
Dave Michels (26:39):
been the right it's always been the goal. And
it's arrived. That research noteI wrote, but I can't really
think it went out in May talkedabout some other possibilities
that we might be seeing fromother vendors. I'm kind of
waiting for Dialpad and T Mobileto do something that would make
sense to me. I'm kind of waitingfor a few other shoes to drop we
had Crescenzo on and I think Icould see them doing something
(27:00):
on Avenue. But and then ofcourse Ericsson bought Vonage.
So these worlds are definitelycolliding and offers a number of
benefits to the it actually isvery potentially disruptive. If
you think of think about it thisway, let's say Evan, let your
company have, you know, 1000employees, we're on a via cloud
office, which is powered byRingCentral. And let's say you
(27:21):
really liked this, you're reallyhappy. And so VI is happy
because they're getting acommission on this, you're happy
RingCentral is happy, everyone'shappy. But then you get wind of
this feature from office andpowered by RingCentral. And you
want that you're going to haveto switch from your Avaya cloud
office to a 20 office at hand.
For you. It's the same service.
(27:44):
So basically the same features,same everything but now your
mobile phones will work for avia they're not going to be so
happy. So this is going to bevery channel disruptive as
companies move from this thesame thing with pretty
Evan Kirstel (27:55):
good pretty much I like disruption, as we've seen
with Twitter, you know,disruption is good. Well, maybe
not too much disruption. Butyeah, definitely mobile is it's
been too long coming. So it'sgood to see these things being
rolled out in real life. And I'msure it's going to be a big
topic at Mobile World Congressin Barcelona
Dave Michels (28:15):
relative and bring it up there too busy talking
about antennas and
Evan Kirstel (28:19):
5g. Yeah, five.
Yeah, you should you should headover there your you'll be in
Portugal. It's only a shortflight to Barcelona. I'm there
every year. Um, so I'm at MWCevery year so we should grab
some dinner at 1230 extra room
Dave Michels (28:37):
for me or
Evan Kirstel (28:39):
I will just for you. You'll have the basement so
it's fine. Okay, so we gotthrough a lot of news. Anything
else? Top of Mind and nextmonth? Well, I've
Dave Michels (28:49):
already started next month's report. Obviously,
there's already big stories inthere. And, of course, we've got
some topia coming up. And I'mexpecting a lot of news from
zoom topia, I wrote after mylast visit I mentioned earlier I
think it was back in August. Isaid zoom had no big ideas of
this event. And I hope they havesome big ideas and zoomtopia.
I'm feeling more confident thatI will not be disappointed. So
Evan Kirstel (29:13):
about a b2b metaverse. That's what we need.
Can we get that or as meta ruinthe metaverse for everyone else?
Dave Michels (29:19):
Meta has both Bruna and imaginary so
Evan Kirstel (29:24):
whatever. Just want to play video games all
day. Can I just do that? Andthey called the metaverse. I
mean, yeah, that's my goal.
Well, look, I will see you atzoomtopia in person. And I think
that's it, folks.
Dave Michels (29:36):
I think that's it.
Evan Kirstel (29:37):
I think that's it.
So
Dave Michels (29:39):
thanks for watching. Have you watched the
live stream and thanks forlistening if you listen to it on
Talking Heads, yeah, awesome.
Very good.
Evan Kirstel (29:44):
Thank you see everyone. Bye. You
Dave Michels (29:50):
getting a conversation with them So I
gotta get out of the phone don'tworry if your phone no man knows
(30:12):
me
Hey everyone, it's Evan cursed out. And Dave
Michaels on this special weekendedition.
Dave Michels (00:18):
Hey everyone, it's Evan and Michaels. And so do you
mean hey everyone and let
Evan Kirstel (00:22):
you know I can move you to the green room here
and just do this myself. So nowyou see you're moved out to the
green room. I may or may notdecide to bring you back up. All
right, let's bring it back up.
We have a very special editionof talking heads talking points,
because it's been a super busymonth, hasn't it?
Dave Michels (00:39):
October is always the busiest month because for
some reason everyone wants tohave an event in October.
Evan Kirstel (00:44):
I don't know we're in November. I'm not sure if you
check your daylight savings timeyet, but we're gonna be talking
October. We're talking aboutOctober and talk about October
in October because it
Dave Michels (00:55):
was too busy.
god (00:58):
Talking it is a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration. Your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or attalking points.com. That's
(01:20):
points with a Z and Devonkruskal.com. That's que ir S T E
L.
Evan Kirstel (01:27):
So for those of you looking retroactively
through life like us, let's talkabout October 1, what is this
talking points thing this thisnewsletter thing that you do?
Dave Michels (01:39):
So that's reasonable that you wouldn't
understand that because you'renot inside of course. And of
course, you're a subscriber. Theincident report is a report I
put together as part of my asenhance services behind a
paywall. It has a monthlynewsletter, it has research
notes, and this is the monthlynewsletter of October, which
publishes the first week ofNovember. All right,
Evan Kirstel (01:58):
clear as mud just like Twitter, the strategy is
completely transparent andcollaborative
Dave Michels (02:02):
fire everybody. I laid off half the staff of
talking points through a tweet.
Evan Kirstel (02:07):
It's very sad.
It's very sad. Luckily, Isurvived. So let's dive into it.
What's your first talking pointof the session?
Dave Michels (02:16):
Well, first thing actually, it was because it was
such a busy travel month is thatI could not help. But notice
that I don't think it's fair forme to say the pandemic is over.
But I think out there for me tosay that the fear of COVID is
over. People seem to be out andabout and breathing on me
everywhere I go.
Evan Kirstel (02:37):
Well, I still have some uncertainty about groups.
But you're right, the airportsare full of the flights are
full, the events are full. I wasjust at a cardiology event of
all things covering it onTwitter as I do.
Dave Michels (02:49):
I don't see cardiology event. That's a
really bad two.
Evan Kirstel (02:52):
Yes, that was a cardiology conference. And none
of the cardiologists werewearing masks. So what does that
tell you? I don't
Dave Michels (03:00):
know. But no, it's surprising, because I don't know
I guess President Biden said thepandemic is over. But I'm not
sure everybody in the healthprofessional do. But certainly
the fear of it is over. And it'sjust surprising. You know, it's
like a switch on and off. Weturned it off, or we turned it
on and everything emptied outairports emptied out everything,
always famous pictures ofcrowded cities completely empty.
(03:22):
And then it's back on again. Andyou know, going through PSA is,
it's back to 1999.
Evan Kirstel (03:28):
Living like it's 9099. Again, why
Dave Michels (03:31):
are you? Are you in the bridge of the enterprise?
Evan Kirstel (03:33):
I am yeah, I have one rebuilt in my basement. But
we'll talk about thatafterwards. Speaking of which,
of COVID, being quote, unquote,over we're going to a zoom
event, but not on Zoom, we'reactually going in person, which
is the ultimate irony, is itnot?
Dave Michels (03:47):
You know, I've been thinking about this,
because I've been telling peoplethat I'm going to my second zoom
event into zoom, topia is comingup in the second week of
November. And we had a zoomanalysts event, I think it was
in possibly August. And so it'slike two in person zoom events.
And this is the company thatwas, you know, famous for home.
But you know, Zoom doesn't wantto be associated with staying at
(04:08):
home anymore. I think they'repurposely rotating. Let's get
back to live events, of course,is a virtual element. Of course,
people can watch the keynotes onZoom within one. And zoom events
is of course is a softwarepackage that they sell. So I
think it's gonna be it's goingto be good. And the difference
between these events, the eventI went to a few months ago, was
all about zoom. And zoom topiapeople think is all about zoom.
(04:30):
And it is, but it's also allabout the community. They have a
pretty good expo hall, a lot ofvendors are there. It's a great
place to be seen. Great place tosee people. And so I'm really
I'm really looking forward tothis and topia. Me too.
Evan Kirstel (04:43):
I'm flying out 7am tomorrow so we have to get over
with this thing quick. Yes, I'llsee you there tomorrow. We got
subjects to the airport bedearly. I'm
Dave Michels (04:51):
sure I go to bed I'm
Evan Kirstel (04:53):
going to bed about an hour. Speaking of zoom, and
by extension five nine andindustry insiders will
understand the connection Thecompany that almost was the
company that almost was the CEOthat is no more.
Dave Michels (05:05):
It surprised a lot of people that Rowan was leaving
five, nine. It didn't surpriseme honestly. And I can I can
defend that. Because last time Isaw Ro And I said, Why are you
still here? Isn't it time foryou to go? I said that
respectfully. He's done a greatjob. Five nicer isn't.
Evan Kirstel (05:20):
They say that to you all the time. But that's a
separate, but I always tell
Dave Michels (05:23):
myself that he wasn't going to be there long
term. And I kind of felt likehe'd done the heavy lifting that
he got, you know, and it was,and he was probably getting
ready to go. I thought he wouldgo to a crypto startup. He
assures me he's not going to acrypto startup, but he hasn't
said where he's going. And Ithink that you know, the guy
coming in to replace him likeMike Brooklyn was the CEO. And
(05:45):
it'll be you. It'll beinteresting. This market
certainly didn't react well. mewrong, got a lot done while he
was there. But I also think thatRowan is doing what he needs to
do. And I think five nine willbe fine.
Evan Kirstel (05:56):
Well, who the hell wants to be the CEO of a public
company? At the moment? It's aYikes. What a job. Yeah, that's
Dave Michels (06:02):
funny, because they're going to a he says he's
going to a pre IPO company. Andyou know, he's trying to be
descriptive and not descriptiveat the same time. Everybody's a
pre IPO company. As far as Iknow. Right now, I'm pretty sure
your company is pre IPO. Mycompany's pre IPO. But he's not
coming to either one of ourcompanies. I guess he's not
coming to mind. I don't know ifhe's coming to your company. But
no, pre IPO is kind of a widegamut. A lot of companies, a lot
(06:22):
more companies are pre IPO thancompanies that are IPOs. So
Evan Kirstel (06:26):
So speaking of do most IPO companies, Google,
there was a big Google eventcalled next I was there in
person in New York City. Butwhat did you What was your
takeaway from Google Cloud Next?
Dave Michels (06:39):
You know, I get a lot of questions around Google
most questions. Are they reallyserious about this stuff,
because they're really aboutadvertising on one hand, and
then Google Cloud is reallyaround selling their cloud
compute services. And so they'rereally serious about this
enterprise comm stuff. And Ihave to say they are they did a
tremendous job during thepandemic, assuming that it
ended, of improving Google meat.
And Google meat became a realcontender for video
(07:03):
conferencing. And then at GoogleNext, they actually announced a
bunch of updates. So there's thenotification, they actually
announced a bunch of updates forGoogle Chat. That's significant
updates. And it used to be we'relimited this 400 people in the
chat, you know, and I, and nowyou're limited 8000. So that's
actually, you know, enterpriselevel chat services. And they've
also expanded their encryptionpoints and encryption to Google
(07:26):
Calendar. So they're definitelyturning up the volume to 11. On
these enterprise apps, I thinkwe're going to hear some news
next month about Google Voice.
Remember, Google Voice, nobodyelse always remember
Evan Kirstel (07:37):
that from the 90s.
Dave Michels (07:38):
Yeah, they discovered they still have it
there. But back to the clientside encryption stuff. You know,
that was something that theylaunched a little while ago
because uh, you know, he got ahe was a big and advertising
company and reading oninformation. But they've
extended that from Google meat,to drive Docs, Sheets, Slides,
and now calendar so you can haveyour privacy and eat it too. And
(07:58):
Evan Kirstel (07:59):
Awesome. Well, moving from one tech giant to
the next Microsoft, what'shappening there? Because I'm
always befuddled by the latestMicrosoft bundles pricing
marketing. What's happening?
Dave Michels (08:11):
Well, you know, there isn't your funnel. So you
said the funnels? Yes. ButFunnels is because they don't
really like to talk to usinfluencers and analysts pre
news. So we get a lot of ournews, secondhand news, if you
remember that bit from Saturday,July. But anyway, they dropped
some interesting announcements.
So far, the biggest announcementis later in the report, because
we're kind of going through thisreport in the UC section. But
but in this part of the sectionwith chat and video.
(08:32):
Interestingly, the thing theydid was they came out with a
premium bundle for teams. Andthis is interesting, because one
of the most common reasonspeople say that they use teams
is because it's free. And it'sdone phenomenally well. It's got
some like 70% penetration inenterprise, all these free
users, all these free users areupgrading their PCs, because the
client uses up all the computingpower. But you know, free is
(08:53):
free. And the problem is if youhave a product that is getting
70% penetration, and it's free,you want to monetize it. So they
came up with this team's premiumbundle, which is pretty clever.
It's not really clear like likezoom has a premium bundle
associated with callingfeatures. So if you're heavy
calling, you might want thatpremium bundle resume. But
(09:14):
Microsoft's premium bundles kindof all over the place. It has
some features around callingsome features around webinars
and features around chat. It'sjust kind of all over the place,
but it's $10 a month. And I'msure a lot of enterprises will
buy it for all their employeeswithout even really questioning.
And so the free service is now$10 A month, unless you have
Evan Kirstel (09:35):
let's move on or though I might fall asleep
during this audio lights idea.
Well,
Dave Michels (09:41):
we'll get to an ESC section. All right, what do
you want to talk about?
Evan Kirstel (09:44):
I see something called telepresence read do read
American call it Now that'sinteresting to me because I
thought telepresence was dead asa doorknob.
Dave Michels (09:54):
No, no, no, no, no. Every decade there's a new
version of telepresence, rightand At one point, it was crystal
clear audio just like you'rebeing there, hear a pin drop,
then it became video and then itbecame better audio and then it
became wideband video and HDvideo. And so we keep on
improving telepresence, and, youknow, companies like WhatsApp,
Skywalker Ranch company,whatever that company, whatever,
(10:15):
they have life size videoconferencing, they really wanted
to be as if you were in the sameroom. And that's that was like
10 years ago. And so there'salways this new version of
telepresence, but this month inOctober, so actually last month,
but in October, we got threeglimpses of the future of high
definition telepresence, onefrom Google, one from Mehta, and
one from Cisco. And they wereall various versions of 3d video
(10:39):
conferencing. And I would saythe Google the mental one, of
course, is animated, butexpensive. You can look around
and move around and whatever.
And they made a big announcementMicrosoft, which is interested
in Microsoft's bringing teams tometa horizon office setting, so
I think it was a brilliantMaxell
Evan Kirstel (10:56):
in the metaverse, I can't wait to this is
exciting, because I've
Dave Michels (11:00):
got nothing to lose on this one. They're
bringing in teams, which is whatmetal wanted. And they get full
access to all of metals,investments, and including
hardware. So that was a goodmove for Microsoft. So that's
meta, Google came up with afancy booth, he always make fun
of me and my phone booths. Butwho came up with a telepresence
booth, it's like a half a room,and the other person gets half
the room, and then the videotogether, and they make you
(11:21):
know, it's as if they're in thesame room, and they can move
around, they can see differentangles, very high quality stuff,
way too expensive to ever sellthis, they're experimenting for
the future, they're putting itinto customer sites, it's good
stuff, they're buildingsomething, it's
Evan Kirstel (11:34):
gonna be ready for six g, it's going to be really
60,
Dave Michels (11:37):
I think 99 G, it's going to be a ways out there
because they can't put a priceon it yet. Now, Cisco has a
thing called hologramtechnology. It's part of WebEx,
they actually introduced it lastyear, but they've improved it.
Now they're using the Magic Leapgoggles. And I got to actually
play with this one at the WebExopen house they had, it's pretty
interesting systems more aboutprototypes, or models that can
(11:59):
either be the model that you areshowing, remote person. And then
if I'm showing you a model ofsomething, say a prototype of a
product, then I have this panelthat has all these different
cameras and sensors. And thenyou on the remote end have these
Magic Leap goggles, and you cankind of you know, look around,
look at the bottom, stuff likethat. It also works with
projected stuff. So I can havean animation of a model like a
(12:21):
screenshare. And then you'reable to actually move it around
and look at different sides ofit, shaken upside down until it
falls out. So that one is alsoin kind of pre shipping mode,
the panels are still reallyexpensive to putting it out to
customers. They share with mesome customers and how they're
using it. And they have productsthat are related to that
customer. But this is the nextgeneration. And it's not quite
available for you and me yet.
Evan Kirstel (12:42):
All right. Well, I see some surgeons wanting to
like examine 3d images andthings through that you so I
imagine that's going to be funuse case. You also talk a little
bit about poly and Lodgy, somecertifications, what's going on
there.
Dave Michels (12:56):
So that is this is kind of the you know, find this
hard to believe. But you know,Polly and Lodgy have moved to an
Android based actually Cisco hasto an Android based system for
their video room controls. Andthese are now certified, you
know, Cisco uses them and theirsystems. Microsoft has them and
their ecosystem. And zoom has anAmerica system. But they'll
(13:17):
surprise you is that Google hasalways been Android. No, no, no
Android around here. We'reGoogle. We don't use Android.
Google has always been usingChrome OS powered devices, which
are very powerful devices. Butthey're very proprietary. It's a
couple of St Pauli alloggi,government whitewash to deal
with that. And so somehow, Hollyand Lodgy were able to convince
Google to put in their existingAndroid based systems into
(13:41):
Google meat rooms. And Googlesomehow said yes. And so that
opens up a whole new world ofvideo conferencing systems. And
it actually makes it a littlecheaper and a little more
competitive. So finally, Googlehas discovered that Android
actually has a purpose besidessmartphones.
Evan Kirstel (13:55):
Awesome next up cars. So we'll see that next you
were at the WebEx one the bigevent when he
Dave Michels (14:03):
mentioned that earlier but I want to mention
some things you know, when thisis we're pushing down the sweet
play, you buy a WebEx suite nowthey're really trying to sell
this week on like the Microsoftplay. One of companies are
actually doing this now. And
Evan Kirstel (14:15):
but once you get your apple bundle and apple one
comes with everything, what do Iget as part of my talking heads
talking points bundle? Do I getanything besides,
Dave Michels (14:24):
you get livestream guests? You gotta live Okay.
Evan Kirstel (14:27):
Can you can you add a phone booth can maybe add
a phone booth or, you know,
Dave Michels (14:31):
I thought my phonebook was antiquated
technology is not going to work.
But I want to mention one thingthat's not in the WebEx week
that they had on display at theCisco open at WebEx open house,
a product called Cisco spaces.
There's only so many words andwork in our space and so, so
enterprise I don't know how manycompanies have spaces product
value. I'm not even sure whereto put Cisco SpaceX is actually
(14:54):
about physical space, thatvirtual space and the idea of it
is to help you manage Your youroffices. And what the big news
that the web is open house was,is that the WebEx products now
talk to Cisco spaces. So whenyou have Cisco spaces that are
representing your office, youcan see all the desks and you
can see where all the equipmentis you can see the air quality.
(15:15):
And you can see which hot deskyou might want to reserve or
rent. But now you can actuallysee how many people are logged
in. And the Cisco WebEx suite isactually talking to it. I think
Microsoft just announcedsomething similar if they didn't
call it spaces, they call itplaces. But Microsoft has
something coming next year,something along this line. But
this hybrid office thing has theIT company is trying to figure
out how to manage physicalspaces or places or whatever
(15:37):
better now, which is somethingnew for us to be influencing.
Evan Kirstel (15:41):
Awesome. So let's shift gears to customer
engagement and CX world. What'sup with that?
Dave Michels (15:48):
What's up with that is exactly my reaction. The
business news there was Genesisdecided to kill it's multi cloud
products. And I have to say, ifthey would have announced this a
year ago, I would have said Iget it I understand the future
is cloud. If they would haveannounced this a year from now,
I probably would have said I getit the future is cloud. Let's
(16:08):
double down let's go focus oncloud. But they announced it
now, which I find perplexing tobe honest because of the state
of Avaya. Avaya, as you know, iskind of in the turmoil state,
they haven't announced theirlast quarter, which is you know,
they're very late on And Gartnerhas been very cautious about
about, you know, advice to theircustomers saying, you know, you
(16:29):
might want to close your wallet,as far as the buyer is
concerned, they put out aadvisory. And so it seems to me
that that Avaya base which ishuge, and not particularly
customers that want seek asreally want a multicloud type of
solution. That's what they'regetting from Avaya. So it seems
to me when that base, which isyou know, bigger than your
company is up for grabs, itseems like a strange time to be
(16:52):
discontinuing that product. Andso, so it's good news for Cisco,
it's good news reminds us goodnews for a handful of other
companies. But very strangetiming from Genesis,
Evan Kirstel (17:00):
interesting, anything else, you had quite a
boondoggle over to Morocco, orWhere were you,
Dave Michels (17:06):
you know, nice put on their event in Morocco, and a
nice event in Morocco. That'sexactly the sentence they were
looking for. And it was a greatevent, you know, me, I'm all
business, I don't really thingslike that mean nothing to me, I
just wanted to shoot and youknow, drink and you know, one of
the things is the same whetherit's in Morocco or somewhere
else. So the point is, is thatit was a great event, because
(17:28):
what I really liked, but wetalked about this with our
recent podcasts with a dot, theCMO there is that they do so
much unscheduled time with theirevents. And I find that
particularly productive Iactually, you know, you might
find this hard to believe, butactually, you're kind of tired
in 10 hours of taking notes andpresentations all day in a room
with no windows. And so they'dkind of limited to half a day.
(17:51):
And then they have theseactivities and events. And they
bring out their whole executiveteam. And you end up having
really good conversations, notonly with the nice executives,
but also with my peers andcolleagues as we're talking
about the things that we heard.
And I find that I actually learna lot more at a nice event
because of their unstructuredstructure. Does that make sense?
(18:11):
As opposed to some other eventsthat jam pack the agenda?
Evan Kirstel (18:16):
I went to an event once if you ever been to an
event where there is no agenda?
No.
Dave Michels (18:22):
That's a little too unstructured. The guy the
guy in the kilt is what you'retalking to pink socks?
Evan Kirstel (18:27):
Yes, Nick. Yes.
Shout out to Nick. So how manyevents did you attend? In
October? I'm up to like four orfive? What's going on? I
Dave Michels (18:35):
think it was 511 100. All right. So
obviously, we had the nice eventin Morocco we had I went to UC
Expo in London. Actually severalof us did do both of those
events, which meant that we hadto leave Bravo right away and go
right to London, and then fouror five of us to the same
program. And then the followingweek I went to Chicago for the
cloud Communications Alliance.
CCA I think at CCA they put onthis the old broadsoft group is
(19:00):
bigger than broadsoft. But theyput it's a bunch of independent
service providers. Some of themare on broadsoft or Cisco now.
Some of them are metal switch.
Some of them are 2600. Andcrescendo is there. We've had
Christina on the podcast, theyget together on a regular basis.
They still put on great content.
The next one, by the way is inJanuary in Fort Lauderdale, and
I definitely plan to be there.
(19:23):
Maybe I'll see you there. We'vebeen to events in Fort
Lauderdale. So I associated thatwith you. Oh Then after that
came to Chicago and write towhether it's one and say, and
then the following week was theRingCentral event up in Napa. So
five events in October.
Evan Kirstel (19:37):
That's exhausting.
I don't envy you too much. It'stoo much but you're doing a
great keep it up keep it up.
Dave Michels (19:43):
There's one thing we did we did this on the
podcast actually we brieflytalked about whether or not we
talked about sweet form and Isaid we're gonna get back to it
and we never got back to I wantto just touch on sweet form a
little bit because I think it's
Evan Kirstel (19:55):
is it a kind of men's underwear what what is
week one,
Dave Michels (19:58):
you're thinking of sweet SW e two That isn't so
sweet. But what I find sointeresting about this is you
have a same conversationoccurring from two opposite
extremes working toward eachother. So on one side, you've
got nice, who's a traditionalaverage contact center vendor.
And they're also a workforceengagement vendor. And so
they've got, and they've built asuite. But they have these
(20:19):
traditional applications. Andthey want them to be more
extensible. And they want themto work better together and be
easier for their customers tointegrate all these different
modules that they have. And sothey call that a suite form,
because it's part platform partsuite. And they're bringing this
together. And if you listen tothem, they want to tear down the
silos, they want to reduce thebarriers to using more products,
(20:40):
they want to make it easier forcustomers to get to the next
level, blah, blah, blah. So it'svery interesting conversation,
because you're going to go onthe other end, let's say to
Twilio, we just had their event,last week single conference,
they're coming from pure API isno sweet whatsoever. And then
Onyx has been, I should say, no,no application whatsoever. But
they're building a suite ofAPI's that go toward contact
(21:02):
center and go toward customerengagement. And they're saying
the exact same things, you haveto tear down the silos, you have
to make it easier for yourcustomers to go deeper and
better. And so they're bothcoming from very opposite
directions, kind of toward thecenter, which is a sweet form,
creditor, united, nice for acombination of a highly
(21:24):
extensible set of applications.
And it's phenomenal the waythese are coming together. I
think nice, has a fantasticsleep, and a fantastic suite
form. Twilio has a fantastic setof API's, they're going to have
a little bit of work to do tomake that really come together
for a lot of enterprisecustomers. But I love their
vision, and they're makingincredible progress.
Evan Kirstel (21:43):
Okay, well, I was taking a shot every time you
said sweet form. So now I'mreally biased. But we'll
continue on the journey. Throughthe talking heads newsletter.
There's something about Chromenow, why should I care about
Google Chrome? Enterprisecommunications,
Dave Michels (21:59):
it's in the contact center section. And I
love it when a vendor justfinally you know, puts down the
cards face up and admits thetruth. And so you've heard it
before, a lot of vendors saythis, we heard the term over and
over a single pane of glass. Andeverybody, every vendor seems to
have some sort of solution witha single pane of sound.
Evan Kirstel (22:19):
So cool, it just sounds beautiful. And I'm glad
Yeah, like, literally like last
Dave Michels (22:23):
week, like last, and you want to lots of pains.
But this goal is often veryelusive, which is why so many
vendors keep promising it,because nobody can really give
it. So what Google did was theyfinally admitted it, maybe the
single pane of glass isn'tworking out for you. And so we
got the Chrome does connectorfor the first thing they've made
just for the contact center. Andwhat they're doing here is that
(22:44):
you get a new engagement, thenew call, or some sort of some
sort of new engagement comes in.
And when that happens, thecontact center vendor can open a
whole bunch of tabs for you inone second. So you have a clean
starting point. And you've gotyour CRM, possibly your contact
center, desktop, maybe someother database, you need to
access a nice clean set ofWindows. And then when the call
(23:04):
or interaction is over, they allgo away. And the next time you
start over again. So they'relike always different Chrome
tabs, and they don't have to goaway. You can make them so they
stay and you can close themlater with one click. But I
think it's the slice admissionsdo two important takeaways. So
nice admission, that single paneof glass is not for everybody.
And then the second one is thisis the first extension to Chrome
(23:26):
that Google has madespecifically for the contact
center. And so if you'rewondering if Google's kind of
serious about their contactcenter interests,
Evan Kirstel (23:37):
they are well I remember their presence at
Enterprise Connect earlier thisyear, it was kind of stunning to
see Google on display their showthey traditionally have not
attended. So moving on to theUnified Communication section.
This is your meat and potatoes.
I'd say the report, you talkedabout teams phone mobile, and
are they bringing back theMicrosoft phones smartphone?
(23:58):
What's what's good?
Dave Michels (24:01):
That would be a good one. That's a good guess.
So actually, back at EnterpriseConnect back in March, they
announced on the keynote stageoperator Connect Mobile. And it
was actually pretty interesting.
And they said, We don't knowwhen it's coming. They wouldn't
give us a date. And so I justkind of filed that away, as
it'll probably be talked aboutat the next Enterprise Connect
(24:23):
next year. I thought that waskind of reasonable. I actually
wrote a research note kind ofalong these lines. I call it
UCaaS mobility three, becausethere were three keynotes at
Enterprise Connect in March thatcovered what I call UCAS
mobility, three, one was fromCisco and one was from
RingCentral. And one was fromMicrosoft. Cisco announced their
product WebEx go at EnterpriseConnect RingCentral already had
(24:43):
a product and they showed itwith at&t Office at hand. And
Microsoft had announced aproduct coming sometime in the
in the future. Well, that futureis now about seven months later,
they launched they renamed itteams phone, mobile and the law
Launched in Sweden on Telia andthen Washington Canada on
Rogers, supposedly Verizon willbe launching it in the US later
(25:06):
this year, early next year. Andwhat this is, is what I call
UCAS mobility, three, theconvergence of cellular and
UCaaS in one service. And so nowyour IT administrator can
literally move phone numbersbetween smartphones and desktops
and soft phones. And moreimportantly, the team's number
(25:26):
in this case becomes the nativenumber of the smartphone. It's
not a add on top. It's actuallythe native number has full, you
know, PBX features on the smartmobile device. And so Microsoft
launches obviously in Swedenfirst because the Scandinavians
are crazy about their mobiledevices. But it's going to be
pretty big when Verizon launchesit here in the US. And
(25:48):
meanwhile, RingCentral still hasthis available from at&t office
at hand. And we're gonna gethere the next I think it's the
next story. They announced attheir event that they're
expanding with Vodafone, andlaunching in UK, and I think it
was Germany have to see when weget to the page. But so there's
a UK as mobility three optionfrom RingCentral. And it's the
(26:10):
same thing, native experience onthe smartphone. And then Cisco
WebEx go is available globally.
And they do a differentapproach. They actually do it
through an NBN Oh, and so yourphone actually says Cisco WebEx
versus WebEx as your carrierprovider. But as a result of
that, it works globally and youjust roam to wherever you happen
to be. So big news on the UCASmobility front. Yeah,
Evan Kirstel (26:33):
that's kind of a big deal. People have been
talking about this for what,five years, 810 years, but it
looks like it's always
Dave Michels (26:39):
been the right it's always been the goal. And
it's arrived. That research noteI wrote, but I can't really
think it went out in May talkedabout some other possibilities
that we might be seeing fromother vendors. I'm kind of
waiting for Dialpad and T Mobileto do something that would make
sense to me. I'm kind of waitingfor a few other shoes to drop we
had Crescenzo on and I think Icould see them doing something
(27:00):
on Avenue. But and then ofcourse Ericsson bought Vonage.
So these worlds are definitelycolliding and offers a number of
benefits to the it actually isvery potentially disruptive. If
you think of think about it thisway, let's say Evan, let your
company have, you know, 1000employees, we're on a via cloud
office, which is powered byRingCentral. And let's say you
(27:21):
really liked this, you're reallyhappy. And so VI is happy
because they're getting acommission on this, you're happy
RingCentral is happy, everyone'shappy. But then you get wind of
this feature from office andpowered by RingCentral. And you
want that you're going to haveto switch from your Avaya cloud
office to a 20 office at hand.
For you. It's the same service.
(27:44):
So basically the same features,same everything but now your
mobile phones will work for avia they're not going to be so
happy. So this is going to bevery channel disruptive as
companies move from this thesame thing with pretty
Evan Kirstel (27:55):
good pretty much I like disruption, as we've seen
with Twitter, you know,disruption is good. Well, maybe
not too much disruption. Butyeah, definitely mobile is it's
been too long coming. So it'sgood to see these things being
rolled out in real life. And I'msure it's going to be a big
topic at Mobile World Congressin Barcelona
Dave Michels (28:15):
relative and bring it up there too busy talking
about antennas and
Evan Kirstel (28:19):
5g. Yeah, five.
Yeah, you should you should headover there your you'll be in
Portugal. It's only a shortflight to Barcelona. I'm there
every year. Um, so I'm at MWCevery year so we should grab
some dinner at 1230 extra room
Dave Michels (28:37):
for me or
Evan Kirstel (28:39):
I will just for you. You'll have the basement so
it's fine. Okay, so we gotthrough a lot of news. Anything
else? Top of Mind and nextmonth? Well, I've
Dave Michels (28:49):
already started next month's report. Obviously,
there's already big stories inthere. And, of course, we've got
some topia coming up. And I'mexpecting a lot of news from
zoom topia, I wrote after mylast visit I mentioned earlier I
think it was back in August. Isaid zoom had no big ideas of
this event. And I hope they havesome big ideas and zoomtopia.
I'm feeling more confident thatI will not be disappointed. So
Evan Kirstel (29:13):
about a b2b metaverse. That's what we need.
Can we get that or as meta ruinthe metaverse for everyone else?
Dave Michels (29:19):
Meta has both Bruna and imaginary so
Evan Kirstel (29:24):
whatever. Just want to play video games all
day. Can I just do that? Andthey called the metaverse. I
mean, yeah, that's my goal.
Well, look, I will see you atzoomtopia in person. And I think
that's it, folks.
Dave Michels (29:36):
I think that's it.
Evan Kirstel (29:37):
I think that's it.
So
Dave Michels (29:39):
thanks for watching. Have you watched the
live stream and thanks forlistening if you listen to it on
Talking Heads, yeah, awesome.
Very good.
Evan Kirstel (29:44):
Thank you see everyone. Bye. You
Dave Michels (29:50):
getting a conversation with them So I
gotta get out of the phone don'tworry if your phone no man knows
(30:12):
me
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