April Writing Roundup

Due to unusual circumstances and calendar timing, I need to post this roundup today. Normally I post it at the beginning of each month, but this time around, it’s on the early side - happy Friday! Definitely an active month on the writing front, and here’s what I was up to for public-facing, bylined writing.

AI Drives New Speech Technology Trends and Use Cases, TechTarget, April 17

US Contact Center Market Review and the Qtivity Opportunity, Aizan, April 4

The EU AI Act - the Shape of Things to Come, Aizan Blog, April 1

AI Communications Features Key When Assessing UC Vendors, TechTarget, April 1

UC Awards 2024 - Back Again, Bigger and Better

UK-based UC Today has been running an annual awards program for seven years now, and the 2024 edition has just been launched. I’m returning as a judge, and the judging panel has now expanded to 16 members. We need a bigger panel, because there are 15 NEW categories, so this awards program is really growing.

If you’re looking to enter, there are lots of categories to choose from, that should be your starting point. The first date to note is April 29, when the application process opens - and closes on June 7. There’s lots to explore here, and more updates are coming, but UC Awards is back, and you check out the whole program here.

Enterprise Connect Redux - Roundup of Latest Takeaways

I’ve been doing a steady stream of post mortems this week since returning from Enterprise Connect, and being Friday, I’ll do the expedient thing and tally them here in one convenient spot. Others are still to come, and I’ve already shared these segments below individually on LinkedIn.

You may not have seen these, or haven’t checked them out yet - either way, the main reviews are here in this post. Whatever you care to check out - thank you - and would love to hear your take as well. Here goes…

First up - Telecom Reseller podcast, hosted by Doug Green. We covered a lot of ground, both about the event and bigger picture issues around AI. You can watch either here on LinkedIn, or on Doug’s YouTube channel.

Next one - LinkedIn Live segment with Jeff Pulver. We were both at Enterprise Connect, but our paths didn’t cross, so we compared notes. Also, we looked at the bigger picture as to where AI is going, and parallels to what we both see now between this revolution and with VoIP 20 years ago, where Jeff played a central role in making Internet communications real.

Last, but not least - our BCStrategies roundup. As always, a great mix of analysts and consultants from our circle, so it’s a different dynamic from the 1:1 format of my interviews with Doug and Jeff. This was also done on LinkedIn Live, and as with all of these, I hope you check it out.

Not April Fool's - Time for New Newsletter and Podcast

Am way behind sharing new content, including more perspectives on last week’s Enterprise Connect. For the latter, you’ll get a taste from the April editions of both my newsletter and podcast - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review, and my Watch This Space podcast, now in its 7th season.

If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review - the signup page is here.

For my Watch This Space podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or listen to any episode directly here on my website, or here on the dedicated WTS website. The title in the thumb below tells you what we have on tap for this episode , and here’s the link if you want jump in right now. Hope you do, and would love to hear your thoughts!

UPDATE - changes are coming to both the website and podcast, not just for a refresh, but also to make the podcast more engaging and discoverable.

Enterprise Connect 2024 - Photos and News Items

The buzz from last week’s Enterprise Connect is still going strong, and there’s lots to share. Time is short, however, and I can only manage recaps as time allows.

In terms of what’s already been done, I posted several photos and updates on LinkedIn during the event, and included some photos in my April newsletter, which subscribers will get today.

Speaking of what’s coming this week, the April edition of my Watch This Space podcast is coming, and the entire episode is about Enterprise Connect. I really hope you check that out, and if you’re not familiar with my podcast, we’re in Season 7 now, and you can check out the episodes here.

During the event, I also recorded some audio and video segments with various folks, but so far only one has surfaced, and it was also shared in my April newsletter.

This week, I’ll be contributing to two different video recaps of the show along with other analysts, and those should publish by end of the week. I’m also writing up my own recap for a publisher, and that should run early next week. As these various updates are published, I’ll share them on my website and LinkedIn, and will include a link to this post as well.

With all of this commentary about Enterprise Connect either out there or soon coming, I don’t have any analysis to add here. Instead, I’ll share two things you may not have seen elsewhere - a summary of notable announcements and press releases from the show, and a photo gallery - mostly mine - but from a few others as well.

Notable announcements and press releases (alpha order by vendor name):

Avaya announces strategic partnership with Zoom - integrating Zoom Workplace with Aura and Avaya Enterprise Cloud

Cisco launches new devices for hybrid work - a collaboration board and a line of IP phones

Five9 announces GenAI Studio - allows contact centers to customize their own Generative AI applications

Intermedia launches Intermedia Healthcare Solutions - AI-driven collaboration platform specifically for that vertical

NICE announces Enlighten XM and next iteration of Enlighten Copilot

RingCentral announces RingEX - replacing MVP

Talkdesk announces Ascend Connect - AI-based solution for premises-based contact centers

Vonage enhances conversational commerce capabilities - using Generative AI to make customer interactions more personalized and customizable

Zoom launches Workplace - an AI-centric collaboration platform

Now let’s shift from text to images - here are some takeaway photos from Enterprise Connect:

Very photogenic blocky logo, Cisco’s Javed Khan, RingCentral’s Kira Makagon

Dave Michels and his annual Innovation Showcase, my annual state of speech tech and AI in the enterprise session, with speakers from Cognigy, Sprinklr and RingCentral

Amir Hameed at the RingCentral booth, Zeus Kerravala and his networking session, Kevin Kieller (wearing his BCStrategies hat) with a deep dive on MSFT Copilot

Wearing my SCTC hat along with Fran Blackburn at the SCTC booth, at the Cisco booth doing a cool demo for automating my double espresso order using CPaaS - thanks Courtenay Godshall and Darryl Da Silva (and Zack Taylor facing away!), with David Danto and friends

With Liam Dunne at the Klearcom booth (thanks for the Irish cap!), with Gidi Adlersberg at AudioCodes, and with Fred Hussey from Aizan and Niklas Heuveldop - Vonage CEO

The dynamic duo from NICE - Chris Irwin-Dudek and Schevone Johnson, with Zeus Kerravala, and Dan Miller by the EC sign at the atrium

And, just for fun - S’mores martini, 30 year-old Highland Park scotch, enjoying the scotch looking out at the Gaylord atrium - all in a day’s work!

March Writing Roundup

Only three posts ran publicly last month - with my byline - but I also completed a few others that won’t publish until April.

Key to CX Success: Maintain a Personal Touch, Aizan blog, March 25

February Conferences Roundup - 8x8, RingCentral and Cognigy, BCStrategies, March 20

Enterprise Connect Preview: the State of Enterprise Speech Tech, No Jitter, March 11

Next Stop - Enterprise Connect, Orlando, FL

It’s that time again - Enterprise Connect - the biggest industry event in the communications tech space, and I’ll be flying to Orlando on Sunday. As usual, it will be constant motion, but time well-spent. My calendar is plenty full, but if you’d like to connect, please drop me a line - if not at the show, after for sure.

I’ll be most visible on Thursday, where I’m leading my annual speech tech update session at 9am, and then as a panelist on a 10am session. For more detail on each, links are here and here from earlier posts on my blog.

February Conferences Review - 8x8, RingCentral and Cognigy

Time is zooming by ahead of Enterprise Connect next week, and expediency is the operative word for getting things done. Normally, I would write standalone reviews for each event I attend, but there were too many last month, so I’ve consolidated the last few into into one writeup. I’d much rather give each vendor its due with longer, separate writeups, but the time crunch is just too great with the biggest event of the year on the horizon. Ugh.

On the brighter side, well, I did manage to get a writeup done for the most recent events, and that catches me - and you - up on my latest run of event travel. That’s the preamble, and I’ll now steer you to BCStrategies, where the review has been posted. Starting with the most recent event last month, my writeup starts with the 8x8 analyst summit, followed by RingCentral’s analyst summit, and then Cognigy’s Experience Summit, which marked my first visit to Germany.

February sure was a busy time, and prior to these three, I had two other events that month - including one of my own - and if you missed those, you can read about them here and here.

Preview for my Enterprise Connect Session - on No Jitter

Enterprise Connect is just two weeks away, and it’s always a crush to get everything in while there. So many people to meet, so many sessions to see, but always so little time. The main activity for me is my annual session on the state of speech tech in the enterprise, and I hope you can carve out a bit of time to see it - Thursday at 9am, Room Sun C.

To help support the session, I wrote a preview article about what we’ll be talking about, and it’s running now on No Jitter. I’ll be joined by speakers from RingCentral, Cognigy and Sprinklr; for more detail, here’s the article, and here’s an earlier blog post with some backstory, along with a discount code to save $400 on your registration.

New Month - Time for New Newsletter and Watch This Space Episode

Last month, I had ongoing travel to industry events every week, so I have lots to write and talk about. During February, I got to wear quite a few hats, and if you want to know what that looks like, you should check out the latest editions of JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review, and my Watch This Space podcast, now in its 7th season.

If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review - the signup page is here.

For my Watch This Space podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or listen to any episode directly here on my website, or here on the dedicated WTS website. The title in the thumb below tells you what we had on tap for March, and here’s the link if you want jump in right now.

Enterprise Connect Update - New Speaking Spot Added

I recently posted about my Enterprise Connect session on enterprise speech tech, and since then, I’ve now been added to another panel session, which happens to follow right after mine.

The new session is titled Where is Technology Taking the Employee Experience?, and I’ll be joining panelists Beth Schultz from Metrigy, and Robert Harris from Communications Advantage. No Jitter’s Lisa Schmeiser will be moderating, and I hope you can join us. Full details are here, and we’ll be going at 10am on Thursday, March 28.

Writing Roundup for February

Following a quiet month on the writing front, February made up for it, with four public posts, plus two that ran late last month, but not in time to be included in the January roundup.

Zoho Analyst Day - More Than Meets the Eye, BCStrategies, Feb. 26

How AI is Transforming Unified Communications, TechTarget, Feb. 7

Voice Communications Tools in the Modern Customer Experience, Aizan Blog, Feb. 2

The Future of Work is Here Now - Are You Ready for It?, No Jitter, Feb. 1

Willing and Able? Modernizing the Contact Center to Drive CX, Aizan Blog, Jan. 26

Three Big Ideas for 2024, Aizan Blog, Jan. 25

Future of Work Expo - Photo Recap and Links

It’s been a full month, with travel to five different industry events over four weeks. On a business level, the Future of Work Expo was closest to home, as this is my sixth year as conference Chair, and the event is coming into its own nicely.

If you’ve never attended, it’s part of TMCnet’s flagship ITExpo, which has been running as long as I’ve been an analyst - 20+ years - and is usually during the second week of February in Ft. Lauderdale. I’ve finally exhaled from the rush of getting the programming and speaker roster in place, after which, the event largely runs itself.

There’s plenty of time to plan for next year’s edition, and you can reach out any time if interested in speaking or sponsoring. For a sense of what you missed, this blog post is a photo recap - mostly mine, but some are from others. Aside from details on the speakers, I won’t be adding any commentary. For that, you can peruse my LinkedIn posts during the event - highlights below - as well as check out the March edition of my Watch This Space podcast, which is scheduled to run on March 5.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jarnoldassociates_itexpo-activity-7166093120353382401-913S?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jarnoldassociates_what-is-the-key-to-making-hybrid-work-work-activity-7163941411606704128-0CLH?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jarnoldassociates_snomattheshow-newsreel-activity-7163936981603872768-sAr7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jarnoldassociates_futureofwork-activity-7163925259056873473-UIGD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jarnoldassociates_ftlauderdale-it-futureofwork-activity-7163288318560944128-NByV?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Below - day 1 agenda, Todd Knapp from Envision, Arturo Guzman from HCLTech

Future of Workspace session, with Chris Fine moderating - Alex Lopez from Cisco, Gentry Long from Industrious, Tomi Teikko from Haltian, and Blima Ehrenetrau from The Designers Group; Cybersec panel with Ryan Worobel from LogicMonitor, Richard Luna from Protected Harbor, Brett Shockley from Journey AI; Collaboration from Anywhere panel - Todd Knapp from Envision, Tonny Siemons from Enreach, Luiz Domingos from Mitel and Steve Forcum from SIPPIO

Role of Endpoints panel - moderated by David Danto, with Jeff Kubick from Poly/HP, Gideon Adler from CDW, Vern Fernandez from Jabra, and Brian Bradbrook from Snom; Role of IT panel - moderated by Glenn Goldberg, with Richard Luna from Protected Harbor, David Jodoin from Stackyon, and Gary Coben from Evolve IP; AI Evolution - LLMs panel - with Hardy Myers from Cognigy, Frank Fawzi from IntelePeer, Kevin Lee from NICE, and Alex Diedrich from Sprinklr

AI and Employee Engagement panel, moderated by Tomi Teikko, with Hardy Myers from Cognigy, John Chmoj from Verint, Jay Patel from Avaya, and Joe Markwith from CDW; Contact Center and FOW panel - with Rob McDougall from Upstream Works, Tod Chisholm from IFT, Khurum Shafi from Twilio, and Michael Roche from Five9; post-panel photo with Mitel - Luiz Domingos and Dave Clardy

Long-time colleague and fellow podcaster Doug Green, Apple “booth” on the show floor, and an even longer-time colleague who does it all, Carl Ford

Finale session on Evolving Role of Organizations - with Juan Betancourt from Humantelligence, Chris Fine, Dave Fox from Focus GTS and Jeff Pulver; a trio of SCTC members - Carmelo Cappuzzello, myself, and Vern Fernandez; with Bill Radford from Cisco

From the show floor - Julie Smith from Snom with Andy Abramson; with Mr. TMC, Rich Tehrani

More familiar faces - with Justin Robbins and Alan Percy - go Bills!

Next Stops - San Jose and San Diego for RingCentral and 8x8

Three down, two to go. Been in constant motion all month with travel to five events over four weeks. So far, I’ve been to Zoho and Cognigy, along with running my Future of Work Expo in Florida. All were good, and I'm writing/posting about them as time allows.

Now, we’re on to California, where I have back-to-back analyst events, starting with RingCentral on Monday in San Jose, and then to San Diego for 8x8’s event through Friday. That’s plenty of excitement for February, but very much looking forward to both of these events. Will have some home-based time for a bit once back, and then before you know it, Enterprise Connect will be on deck for last week in March. The road continues…

Enterprise Connect Time - State of Enterprise Speech Tech

Time flies, but we’re now about a month away from Enterprise Connect 2024, at the usual spot in Orlando. I’m back again doing my annual session on the state of enterprise speech tech, and I’ll be joined by Alan Ranger from Cognigy, Abhishek Priyam from Sprinklr, and Ram Rajagopalan from RingCentral.

Speech tech and AI go hand-in-hand these days, and while the use cases are well-known in the contact center - and of course the consumer world - lots is happening in the enterprise, and not just for collaboration. I’ve been exploring this space for six years now at the show, and while much of the innovation is incremental improvements on existing AI apps, there are certainly new frontiers being opened up.

If that piques your interest, you’ll have to stick around to the last day, Thursday - our session is at 9am, and you can get more detail here. I hope you can join us, and if you haven’t registered yet, feel free to use the discount below to save $400.

New Month - Time for Next Newsletter and Podcast

It’s the first full week of the month, and my new editions are out now. Both the newsletter and podcast published yesterday, so just a friendly FYI here.

If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review - the signup page is here.

For my Watch This Space podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or click to listen to the current episode here. With my Future of Work Expo running next week, this was a good time to provide a preview of what to expect. We also stepped back to provide our analog perspective on what “work” is going to mean in the world of digital, AI and immersive technologies. I hope you give it a listen, and perhaps explore earlier episodes.

Writing Updates - My Latest for No Jitter and TechTarget

If you follow my blog, I explained that some of my recent writing was later in January, but not published til now, so am posting about two of them.

First is my latest for No Jitter, which I do as part of a rotating group of BC Experts from BCStrategies, and I’ve been doing that for many years now. This article is titled “The Future of Work is Here Now - Are You Ready for It?”, and has been posted now. Here’s the link, and I hope you like it.

The second writeup is shorter, and is my latest contribution to TechTarget, where I have also been contributing for several years. This one is titled “10 Essential Benefits of UC”, and here’s the link (log-in required, fyi).

I’ll keep updates coming as new writing get published, but another way to track most of my public writing is the Current Writing section of my website - click here for that.

January Writing Roundup - Sort Of

Well, this doesn’t happen often, but I have no public writing to share from last month. I did write several pieces, mostly later in the month, but they haven’t been published anywhere yet, so those will carry over into February’s roundup post.

I may not have been writing that much, but kept plenty busy on the video front, so here’s a digest of that from January. Most of the clips are posted on my website, so they’re not hard to find - plus, I’ll have a tally for them in the February newsletter, which runs next Tuesday.

Big UC News - latest episode on current news with UC Today, Jan. 31

Cognigy - was interviewed as part of their CX Disruptors series, Jan. 26

BCStrategies - LinkedIn Live segment - What to Expect from AI for UC and CC in 2024, Jan. 25

Evan Kirstel - LinkedIn Live/Facebook segment - Future of Work Expo preview, Jan. 12

Winning on Wednesday podcast - in conversation with Juan Vides, Jan. 4

SCTC Fireside Chat, episode 176 - was Steve Leaden’s guest - Major Trends for 2024, Jan. 3

New Month, New Year, New Newsletter and Podcast

Hitting the ground running for 2024, and the January editions of my newsletter and podcast are both out now. For the podcast, btw, this marks the start of Season 7, so Chris and I have been at this for a while now.

If you’re not a subscriber, signing up to my newsletter is easy - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review - the signup page is here.

For my Watch This Space podcast, you can subscribe on all the major platforms, or click to listen to the current episode here. Whereas my newsletter included a 2023 year in review for my activity, the January episode is a look ahead to how IT leaders need to be thinking about adopting AI in 2024. There’s a lot to like, but a lot to be cautious about. I hope you give it a listen, and perhaps explore earlier episodes.

New Video Segment - About Me, With Juan Vides

This is my first blog post of 2024, and I’ve got a new segment to share that’s a bit out of the norm.

Juan Vides is an entrepreneur I’ve known for a long time, and he has a great interview series called Winning on Wednesday, focused mainly on small businesses and entrepreneurs. The focus is for each of us to tell our back story, and from there, network among others in this circle for business opportunities.

So, instead of hearing me talk about my 2024 predictions in tech, this interview is a chance to hear my story for how I got to where I am today. Hope you’ll find it interesting, especially for helping the next generation of entrepreneurs find their way. Here’s the link to our interview, and if you like it, maybe you’ll check out the others, and explore more about what WOW is about.