#EVSLDN17: Who will run the Communications Platform of the future? January 31, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: applications, AudioCodes, belgium, Broadsoft, business telecoms, Cloud Communications, Collaboration, Communication Platform, Communications Platform as a Service, Consulting, Developers, dubber, European VoIP, European VoIP Summit, events, EVS London, france, germany, global telecoms, Hosted VoIP, IBM, Innovation, ipcortex, ISDN, IT, Launch, London, lumeon, market research, market update, metaswitch, mobile, mondago, netherlands, network, Networking, Platform, portugal, Providers, regulation, reports, Research, Service Provider, service provider pass, Service Providers, spain, System Integrators, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Cloud, Telecoms Market, UK, UK Telecoms, UK telecoms market, Unified Communications, Vendors, Voice, voice over IP, voip, voip events, VoIP Market, VoIP Providers, VoIP Summit, Voxygen, yealink
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The future is about providing a VoIP platform that people can integrate and develop on, to solve both specific and generic customer problems.
With an ever increasing number of Service Providers considering whether to buy or build their own platforms, there is a huge question of who will be running the Communications platform in the future. Service Providers, Vendors, System Integrators and Developers are all trying to work out what their role is going to be in this new world of communications and they may as well have to fight for their very future and relevance.
Find out more from the experts at the European VoIP Summit 2017
at the QEII Centre in London on 9th March:
- Dean Elwood – CEO, Voxygen
- Rob Pickering – MD, IPCortex
- James Slaney – Co-founder, Dubber
- Rob Cox – Commercial Director, Mondago
- Prof. Matthew Wilson – CEO, Telecoms Cloud
- Mike Wilkinson – VP Marketing & Product Management, Lumeon
These are just some of the experts who will be discussing the dynamics, providing input from all parts of the ecosystem and sharing their views on market opportunities for Service Providers.
With the Service Provider Pass you can bring your colleagues along to discover ideas on how to prepare for your future. It includes 3 tickets for £300+VAT offering you 20% off each ticket when bought together.
If you have any questions, please get in touch. We look forward to seeing you on the 9th of March!
Join us for the 4th edition of the European VoIP Summit November 18, 2016
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: Acquisition, applications, AudioCodes, Broadsoft, Cavell, Cavell Group, Cloud Communications, Communication Solutions, Communications Platform as a Service, conference, Developers, digital tranformation, edgewater networks, European VoIP, European VoIP Summit, events, EVS London, Gamma, global telecoms, Hosted VoIP, Kcom, Launch, London, market opportunities, market research, marketing Cloud services, Matt townend, Microsoft, mobile, Networking, nfon, Partners, Platform, Presence, Productivity, Providers, Q Advisors, QAdvisors, QEII Centre, QEII Conference Centre, regulation, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, SIP, Siphon, siphon networks, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Cloud, Telecoms Market, UK, Vendors, Voice, voip, VoIP Acquisitions, Voxygen, Voztelecom, yealink
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We are pleased to announce that the 4th edition of the European VoIP Summit will be held on the 9th of March 2017 at the QEII Centre in London.
The European VoIP Summit has become the leading industry event where Service Providers meet to discuss the key issues in the market, so this time we have expanded to accommodate 300 delegates for a series of insightful panel discussions and presentations as well as Industry Keynotes from Cavell’s analysts Matt Townend & Dominic Black.
Knowledgeable, experienced thought-leaders will share their experiences and practices, and enlighten us with their controversial views. Key industry players such as Gamma, Kcom, Broadsoft, AudioCodes, Voxygen, NFON, Voztelecom, Telecoms Cloud, and QAdvisors, as well as the experienced CMO Lisa Hutt, and Mike Wilkinson, one of the most respected senior marketing figures in the Technology market, have already been confirmed as speakers. Click here to see the complete Agenda.
The day also includes ample time for you to connect with your peers, and lunch and networking drinks are all included in the ticket price.
Also, we are proud to announce that Audiocodes, Broadsoft and Yealink have committed as our Gold Sponsors for the event, with Edgewater Networks and SIPHON joining as exhibition sponsors.
We have sold out all of our previous events, with over 220 attendees registered from 60 different Service Providers in London in March 2016 and we expect to do the same next year, so sign up now to secure your seat and avoid disappointment.
Also, this year we have introduced the Service Provider Pass, offering 3 tickets for £300+VAT which provides 20% off each ticket when bought together, so don’t miss out on this opportunity and bring your colleagues along.
If you have any questions, please get in touch.
We look forward to seeing you on the 9th of March!
Genband Perspectives 2016: Contextual Communications, Disruptors, the Future of Service Providers, CPaaS and Kandy May 13, 2016
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: applications, Business Verticals, CAPEX, Cavell, Cavell Group, Collaboration, Communication Solutions, Communications Platform as a Service, Contact Center, Contextual Communications, CPaaS, Developers, Disruptors, Enterprises, Future of Voice, Genband, Genband Perspectives, IBM, illume, Innovation, Integrators, Kandy, Matt townend, Press Conference, Productivity, Providers, Service Providers, SIP trunking, telecoms, UC, UC Solution, Unified Communications, Vendors, voice over IP, voip, VoIP Market, VoIP Providers, Webrtc
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David Walsh saw the rise of Contextual Communications being one of the drivers of increased communication. His belief that by enabling people to communicate with whatever device and through any application that they want will increase the level of communications between parties which will in turn facilitate collaboration and increased productivity.
XO, the largest SIP Trunking provider in the USA, gave a good example of this with their Contact Center solution which use the Kandy platform with WebRTC integrations to allow customers to contact them using any medium that they want, be it voice, email, IM or video. By giving customers the choice of communication, they are able to improve the customer experience and address the customers’ needs – a key priority for contact centres.
Disruptors are driving innovation as companies look for ways to stay relevant in their industry
Katrina Troughton says that IBM are seeing that business leaders are facing more challenges then ever before. With the lifespan of Fortune 500 companies dropping under 15 years due to disruption, CEOs are looking at ways that they can keep their employees engaged and stay relevant in today’s market. There is a big push for companies to innovate to survive but many find it difficult to do so as they don’t have the skills.
This is relevant to VoIP providers as an increasing homogenisation of products, where differentiation is around pricing and features, is becoming ubiquitous across the board. As the Service Providers have a great understanding of their customers, as they work with them on a daily basis and understand their challenges, they are in an unique position to be able to give them the tools to communicate and enable greater collaboration.
What will a Service Provider look like in the future?
The issue for Service Providers is that they have generally been poor at creating their own applications as they do not have the development skills to create solutions for their customers, as their focus is around providing a voice service, not enabling collaboration. Roy Timor-Russo of Genband thinks that Genband will be able to fill that role of adding value with their apps and knowledge of what has worked for other Service Providers in other markets and alongside the Service Providers core voice competency.
Genband see their position in the market is providing the platform for application developers to integrate their features into. As one of the first movers into the CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service), the Kandy platform was built to allow developers to build applications for Service Providers, Enterprises and Vendors to quicken the time to market. David Walsh highlighted in the press conference at the end of the first day the need for all members of the telecoms ecosystem to be able to ‘Fail Quick’ with new features and that long development times do not always translate into successful stories. 90% of applications built will not be a success but there needs to be an acceptance and understanding that failure will yield results.
It is still unclear what role Service Providers will play in the future, whether they will simply be running dumb ‘pipes’ or their customer will be facing background, meaning that they are well positioned to understand their customers needs and build the solutions to fit certain business verticals. What will be interesting is whether there will be a demand for a basic VoIP/UC solution in the future and how Service Providers will be able to cope with an increasingly development driven approach.
Is Kandy going to be future?
We have seen a number of CPaaS providers appear over the last few years and it is still not clear who will emerge as a success. What is interesting and will be a challenge for Genband going down the route of Kandy and CPaaS is how they will maintain revenues in the future as customers adopt a ‘Click to Consume’ model, choosing only the applications that are relevant to themselves. From a company that is used to selling large CAPEX solutions, making a move to tight margins on applications over a base price of $2/user/month may prove difficult in the short term. Genband have created a good story with the Kandy platform and it will be interesting to see how the CPaaS ecosystem progresses in the future.
Lord Digby Jones and the problem with Unified Communications May 2, 2014
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: Consulting, Professional Services, Providers, telecoms, UC, voip
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I found myself watching the UK TV program ‘The Troubleshooter’ with Lord Digby Jones, where he was advising a Freezer and Cooler manufacturer on setting up a new production line, he was showing how a small improvement in the way they worked on the line could offer huge benefits in terms of productivity and cost to the company. In my youth, I had spent 1 happy year working for Black & Decker and learning all about the Japanese principles of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and JIT (just in time) stock management. At Black & Decker we were looking all the time at how we could improve productivity, whilst encouraging all our employees to see how this could be achieved.
It strikes me that this is the same issue that communication providers are facing, as they look to engage into conversations with enterprises todays. Traditionally they have sold fixed & mobile lines & minutes often based on price or specific product feature differentiation.
As we see the emergence of new Hosted VoIP/ Unified Communications & Collaboration services, our approach and conversation with the enterprise may have to fundamentally change. We effectively now become a partner in helping them address how they can use communications & collaboration services to continuously improve their businesses. Often some of the more advance UC services can be more expensive if you just compare them say on the ability to make a call and not look at the broader UC benefit.
So the challenge for providers who want to address this UC market, is how do I change my business to enter into what are very different conversations and approaches. Also the people I will be competing against will be changing as I will start to bump into some of the traditional System Integrators like Accenture, Fujitsu, who have augmented their consulting capabilities with technology.
Well, what we are seeing so far is providers starting to offer their own Professional Services and Consulting service at the front of the sales process to help bridge that gap, also we see the emergence of centralized team resources that either provide technical and bid support or take over the whole sales process for these sales. In my past, I was Senior Director at UUNET/Worldcom and we purchased the Digex business (a managed hosting business) I decided that it would be impossible to fully integrate that business as the sales process was complex and very different to what our sales teams were used to at that time, so we established it as an overlay on top of the Sales Team which was very successful. The last I heard, it still has an overlay capability over 10 years later.
This is obviously an important issue when talking to some of the very largest enterprises, but we are seeing more and more businesses looking at how they can improve their business. I am seeing providers offer consulting packages where they will come into medium size business for 2 days for less than £2000 and provide that business with a view of how Comms & Collaboration can improve their performance.
So our sales forces and organisations maybe forced to go through a fundamental change over the next few years if we are going to help our customers, take advantage of the new opportunities that UC and VoIP are bringing us.
The Cavell Group have been advising providers worldwide on how this issue needs to be addressed for the last 10 years and have experienced the changing needs of a huge number of providers in that time. If you want to find out more about what the Cavell Group has achieved please visit www.cavellgroup.com and get in touch.
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