Reflections on BroadSoft ConnectionsReflections on BroadSoft Connections

Cisco's intent to acquire BroadSoft had been on everyone's tongue this week at BroadSoft's annual partner conference in Phoenix (and much covered on No Jitter). But, that's not the only news of the week. BroadSoft also has made major product enhancements, some of which I'll discuss in this article (I'm steering clear of its CC-One enhancements, leaving that discussion to my contact center industry colleagues).

Like Microsoft and Cisco, BroadSoft offers a UC client -- UC-One -- and a team collaboration client --Team-One. Also like the messaging from its competitors, BroadSoft's marketing message is that some users will prefer the UC client and some will need and want the team collaboration client. Personally, I'm not convinced the dual-client solution is in the user's best interest for any of these offers. What I really like about BroadSoft's approach, however, is the focus on integrating components of these two products together. For example, a UC-One user invited to a Team-One workspace as a guest can be a fully functional member of the team. The workspace shows up in the UC-One interface and looks like it would if the person were using the Team-One interface.

Similarly, Team-One users can see presence status of UC-One users, and vice versa, and they can call others in their organization or dial out to the PSTN from within the Team-One client experience.

Both solutions allow third parties to participate in meetings, and Team-One enables third-party team workspace participation without requiring a login or the need to sign up for a free or paid account.

UC-One also offers a number of interesting built-in features. For example, it includes a compelling SMS capability that allows users to send SMS messages that show up on the other end as being from their work numbers. Likewise, inbound SMS messages to the work phone number show up in the UC-One interface.

In addition, BroadSoft demoed a capability that automatically puts a mobile device on Do Not Disturb mode when a service worker places the device face down. The idea being, of course, that messages and calls do not disturb a worker while on task.

BroadSoft Business experience strategy

New Meetings Capability
A common "Meet" capability underlies both UC-One and Team-One, allowing users of either tool to participate in HD video, wideband audio, and screen sharing sessions regardless of which client a person happens to use. I like this level of interoperability between a traditional UC interface and a team collaboration interface. Furthermore, external participants can easily connect via WebRTC.

Hub Integration and Hub AI
BroadSoft Hub is a mechanism for integrating third-party information or services into UC-One and Team-One. Examples include Outlook email and calendar, Google email and calendar, Salesforce, Twitter, and other external solutions. Demos I saw featured two types of integration. One type of integration provided the ability to view information within the UC-One or Team-One interfaces. For example, you can see your emails and/or your calendar from within these apps so you don't need to context shift to an email client or webpage if you just need to read or view these items.

Even more powerful is that Hub surfaces information related to a team or a conversation. For example, when you're viewing a team workspace, Hub will surface all the documents, email messages, and relevant content associated with the participants in this workspace. (By the way, Team-One market messaging doesn't disparage email, it embraces it as a useful teaming capability.) Users can fine-tune what they see by focusing in on the communications they have had with the entire team or with a subset of team members. For example, a team lead may have interactions with smaller groups within a team, or even with individuals, and the interface allows surfacing information sorted at this level of granularity. BroadSoft claims this search capability is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and is context sensitive, so we'll be looking to understand how this really works.

BroadSoft unveiled a new Hub capability, branded Hub AI. Hub AI is an intelligent assistant trained with a communications-related lexicon that understands natural language (spoken speech). If you're speaking to your Hub AI assistant on a mobile device, you'd be able to schedule team meetings, resolve schedule conflicts, and place calls via UC-One. Hub AI currently supports 25 other capabilities but BroadSoft hasn't yet published a list of these. The product is in use within BroadSoft Labs, and will soon roll out for BroadSoft's own internal use before going external to friendly alpha testers.

As an aside, the level of in-house developed AI technology in the Hub assistant is substantial. For the "easy stuff" -- speech to text and text to speech -- the company relies on Google and Amazon functionality via APIs. However, for understanding the "intent" of the words spoken, BroadSoft Labs has developed an extensible representation model that customers will be able to use themselves. I believe the ability for enterprises or partners to add additional "intents" specific to their own business processes and data integrations will prove to be an extremely valuable capability.

Click to continue to Page 2: Powered by BroadSoft, and more

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Powered by BroadSoft
At Connections, BroadSoft provided an update on the "Powered by BroadSoft" program it launched at last year's event. One of the issues BroadSoft has had is that it's well-known in the service provider community, but beyond that, hardly any enterprises have heard the company's name -- even though BroadSoft is one of the pioneers in hosted communications solutions. Through the Powered by BroadSoft program, BroadSoft has aimed to raise brand awareness among enterprises while generating more partner sales. To date, 116 partners are taking advantage of this program.

As part of the program, partners receive collateral customized with their logos and colors and done in the local language (English, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, so far). They also have access to digital assets such as "how to" videos describing BroadSoft's products, product sheets and other tools for organizations to learn about that particular partner's services. These digital assets are housed in BroadSoft-built microsites, which are Web portals that receive automatic updates from BroadSoft. Once the digital marketing program and the partner are ready, the partner will launch a campaign and send out links to the microsite via email, SMS, social media, and other outreach methods. Alternatively, BroadSoft can launch and run the campaign on the partner's behalf.

In 2018, Powered by BroadSoft will expand to include onboarding and adoption initiatives.

Powered by BroadSoft is an excellent idea and a good move that helps enterprises looking for a robust and reliable solution find one in a BroadSoft partner. When the program becomes "Powered by Cisco BroadSoft," perhaps it will be an even more powerful attractant.

BroadCloud: Unlocking Capabilities for Multinational Customers
One of the difficulties facing any hosted communications offering is its geographical footprint. This is particularly true for BroadSoft partners, most of whom host the BroadSoft software themselves. Once an enterprise customer crosses a national border, this model breaks down quickly.

Some BroadSoft partners have addressed this issue by standing up BroadSoft software servers in multiple geographies. Examples include Verizon's Enterprise business, Orange, Vodafone, and Masergy.

BroadSoft is opening up the multinational market by creating data centers in multiple geographies and deploying its own software. As mentioned earlier, this BroadSoft-hosted service is called BroadCloud. Any BroadSoft partner can take advantage of BroadCloud. Thus, BroadSoft partners are able to serve multinational customers through BroadCloud data centers and provide a seamless experience, including a consistent dialing plan across the entire organization. BroadCloud data centers are available in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Australia. BroadSoft intends to launch eight more BroadCloud sites in 2018.

Acquisition Reaction
While pondering the implications of the pending acquisition by Cisco, I've been curious as to what BroadSoft partners think of the news. One regional Bell operating company (RBOC) I spoke with greeted the news with some enthusiasm, stating that the acquisition would be great, and likely very positive for BroadSoft and for this partner. This RBOC also sells Cisco HCS, so Cisco owning the BroadSoft offering would have little impact on the company.

Another partner I spoke with -- a business with about $680 million in revenue -- only sells BroadSoft, plus a variety of ancillary products and services. It has no Cisco offering; for switching, it sells Juniper gear. Like the RBOC, this regional BroadSoft partner is comfortable with the acquisition news. The acquisition won't really affect its business much, and the acquisition may allow expansion or partnership with Cisco CUCM on-premises resellers that need a cloud-based communications offer in their portfolios.

My overall sense is that the BroadSoft partner community is not overly concerned with the acquisition. From a purely speculative perspective, I do suspect Cisco may cull some small BroadSoft partners that can't or won't meet Cisco certification requirements, which will certainly come. These partners may become more like agents/master agents, reselling Cisco BroadSoft's BroadCloud hosted service instead of hosting the BroadSoft software themselves.

In a Connections session I spoke at, I asked the BroadSoft partners in attendance that also sold Cisco HCS about selling HCS into the small business market. They generally agreed that HCS just doesn't scale well to the sub-100 user market, so BroadSoft's offering is far more cost competitive in serving smaller customers. However, as one goes upmarket, Cisco's offering becomes more price competitive. In addition, Cisco's routing and switching pervasiveness within midsized and large companies brings about the perception that a Cisco-branded hosted communications solution is a better offering than one from BroadSoft.

A Sense of Farewell
Michael Tessler, BroadSoft CEO, closed BroadSoft Connections 2017 with an air of nostalgia and a sense of a nearing a journey's end -- at least for himself. He thanked the BroadSoft partners and invited all BroadSoft employees in the audience to join him on stage for a sort of group hug and round of applause.

No one knows if there will be a Connections 2018 given the pending acquisition. Michael and his founding partner and company CTO, Scott Hoffpauir, have made tremendous contributions to our industry over the 19 years BroadSoft has been in existence. I salute them and wish them well in any new ventures or adventures!

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