Wow! Reflections on Enterprise Connect 2019Wow! Reflections on Enterprise Connect 2019

This year’s Enterprise Connect Orlando was the greatest in so many ways!

First, the Expo floor was the largest and richest collection of communications technology exhibitors that I’ve seen in 25 years. It was an amazing mix of the leading unified communications and collaboration providers and contact center vendors. Beside these major groups, there were exhibitors in all aspects of video conferencing; many with communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) offerings; so many innovative devices; loads of ways to manage these great products and solutions; and plenty of system integrators to help make it all happen. Take a quick look at the Exhibitor list. And, this show seemed to cover the most physical space of recent events, as well. It was quite an experience to “do the Expo.”

Second, the general sessions were really great, and were playing to the largest audience ever at an Enterprise Connect Orlando event. Keynoters from Microsoft and Cisco advanced the scope of UC&C, while Google Cloud’s keynoter shared the company’s distinct approach to enterprise communications, Amazon Web Services (AWS) shared the company’s disruptive approach for contact centers, and -- wait for it -- Walmart’s keynoter, Joe Park, chief digital architect and VP for associate digital experience, provided some impressive examples of how to put communications innovations to work. You can watch all the keynotes on demand, and it’ll be worth your time, IMHO.

In addition, the mainstage included several panel discussions with enterprise communications and IT leaders and three fireside chats -- short 15-minute interviews with top execs from UCaaS, CPaaS, and VCaaS challengers RingCentral, Twilio, and Zoom Video Communications, respectively.

Third, Eric Krapf and Beth Schultz, the Enterprise Connect program co-chairs, did a great job of organizing the program to maximize value for the attendees. Most breakouts and panels were short, sweet 45-minute sessions, and the schedule deliberately allowed attendees plenty of time to focus on the Expo floor. For convenience, the EC team brought the conference program to the Expo floor too, with 20-minute breakout and sponsored sessions occurring in two presentation rooms, one at each end of the floor. And, the breakouts all week were organized around nine topical themes, plus a one-day conference within a conference focusing on enterprise communications and collaboration in 2022, making it for attendees to prioritize based on their interests.

And, of course, there were plenty of social opportunities, with food and beverages in the Expo at the end of each day along with a welcome reception party on Monday evening and an appreciation party on Wednesday evening. Overall, EC19 was a great time.

Themes of the Week

Now, here are 10 observations about the themes that I found most evident at EC19.

1. Collaboration is the new marketing tag for employee communications packaged into various forms of online team work environments that include varying media types and styles of communications. Each vendor’s vision is that employees will certainly want to have these wonderful tools so they can communicate at work like they do on Facebook at home, and so that they can always have video for real-time interaction. Vendors are applying words like “intelligent” and “cognitive” to these workspaces, though it’s not entirely clear whether the software or the employee will be more intelligent or cognitive. It does seem clear that, just as with Facebook, various forms of back-end data capture and analysis will occur in these workspaces to drive the emerging use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in software products. These ideas produce great visionary presentations but may be quite a way from reality for most enterprises.

Microsoft may earn a few extra points with its recognition that not all workers (perhaps barely half of all workers based on U.S. workforce data) actually work in that type of environment. Microsoft is addressing this with frontline worker tools, such as an app built in Teams for the benefit of shift-based workers, as presented in its keynote.

2. Conferencing had a buzz of its own. Dozens of vendors showed mature and impressive cloud-based conferencing services (including conferencing in the collaboration tools noted above) or sophisticated conference room technologies. The visions and value propositions are continual improvement or even transformation of ever-present and time-consuming meetings.

Click below to continue for themes three to 10

3. Contact centers were a big, big deal at EC19, with the highest count of exhibitors associated with this category. The top points of emphasis were 1) moving to the cloud for flexibility, 2) expanding to multichannel capabilities, which would then 3) expand the ability to provide optimal customer experiences (CX). Clearly, the existing vendors and the many disruptive entrants, such as AWS with Amazon Connect and Twilio with Twilio Flex, believe there’s a lot of money to be made in this area now and in the near future.

4. CPaaS was a very present, yet sub-surface trend. The leading CPaaS providers, such as Twilio and Vonage Nexmo, are growing amazingly quickly and have hundreds of successful customer cases. Yet much of this success is embedded in business applications or workflows rather than marketed as product. Vendors collectively claim to have millions of developers signed up with the their platforms, so the future of enterprise communications may be much more customized and differentiated and economical than may be imagined. CPaaS is not to be underestimated.

5. Rock-solid, competitive traditional telephony still has a presence. For sure, Mitel and Avaya were quite present on the Expo floor and on panels. There are plenty of customers that still value their incumbent vendors or that want the control and security of on-premises communications platforms.

6. Discussion of user acceptance and technology adoption were threaded throughout EC19, both in specific sessions such as Blair Pleasant’s “User Adoption Success Stories and Best Practices” session and in no-charge offerings introduced by some vendors. An example of the latter is Microsoft’s Teams migration programs, to assist the enterprise in supporting both IT and the users in all phases of a rollout.

At the same time, the show raised many questions about the future for communications in the enterprise.

7. AI and ML are definitely in a hype cycle. Vendors are making fantastic claims, yet offer little yet to show as proof of the value. It may even be that AI/ML will be delivered into enterprise communications by the companies that have already mastered big-data analytics. Almost all of the contact center companies have linkages to AI and ML engines operated as cloud services by the big data or advertising or cloud platform companies such as IBM Watson, Google AI, AWS, or Microsoft Azure.

8. CX and even “employee experience” were big buzz phrases at the event. The challenge, however, is that most enterprises are already driving their CX through their marketing departments using sophisticated data analysis based on CRM and ERP systems and primarily using Web, mobile app, email, and chat interactions. Uncertain is whether the contact center vendors or even the UC&C vendors will be able to develop large and rich enough data sets to enable them to be CX drivers rather than simply valuable channels in the overall enterprise CX strategy.

9. Digital transformation was also thrown around, with the conversion to digital media such as VoIP, video, and IP endpoints continuing to define this major trend. However, digital transformation is much more than that, with transformations as radical as Amazon shopping, Uber transportation, Airbnb lodging, Apple Pay, and so much more being the types of digital transformations that keep CEOs awake at night.

10. Mobile communications is top of mind for many attendees, with Michael Finneran’s Thursday morning session “What You’ll Wish You Knew About 5G” standing room only. But otherwise, real mobile solutions were most notable by their absence from the Enterprise Connect conversations. Sure, the UC&C vendors continue to make software clients or apps to run on mobile devices, but there was very little attention to the ability of the native mobile device infrastructure to do all that’s needed by a huge percentage of the workforce without any UC&C software. Will iPhone users prefer to start up their Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams apps or simply jump into FaceTime calls? Do users still care if a customer sees their mobile numbers when texting them, or is the enterprise direct-inward-dial number and the UC&C system that manages that number just a thing of the past for mobile workers?

In summary, Enterprise Connect 2019 was the best-ever in my 35 years’ experience in the industry. The pace of innovation seems never to have been greater, the number of participating vendors was at a record level, and the customer interest was maxing out the space. The visions and the future potential are very exciting, producing a great “wow” factor. Yet, the scope of change knows few boundaries, so all who participated will need be careful not to drink too much of the hype-cycle Kool Aid and rather to make their investments skillfully with lots of attention to the disruptive factors from adjacent market spaces.

It should be be totally exciting to come to Enterprise Connect 2020 -- the week of March 30, 2020, in Orlando -- to see how these amazing journeys have unfolded over the year.

BCStrategies is an industry resource for enterprises, vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing business communications arena. A supplier of objective information on business communications, BCStrategies is supported by an alliance of leading communication industry advisors, analysts, and consultants who have worked in the various segments of the dynamic business communications market.