TalkingHeadz on Enterprise Communications: Recent Episodes
Dave Michels
Dave Michels and Evan Kirstel talk (kind of like text messaging but with spoken words) with various guests mostly related to enterprise communications.
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Jeff leads the product design, and engineering teams for Teams (and a few other areas too) with the aim of empowering people and organizations to collaborate. Though he's been at Microsoft for close to 30 years, he's still inspired by its core mission of connecting people everywhere with tools and technologies to create, build, and achieve more together.
There may not be any other enterprise communications app that is successful as Microsoft Teams. Last October Microsoft revealed Teams now has 115 million daily active users. That’s more than a 50 percent increase from the 75 million that Microsoft reported about six earlier.
Jeff joined the Teams team in Q120, and lived through a lot of that growth. We cover what Satya thinks of Teams, Metaswitch, why Outlook and Teams are separate clients, if Teams is a business or consumer app, pandemic impacts, and so much more. When not working, you might find Jeff preparing for a marathon, noshing a bagel, or enjoying The Beatles with his family. He earned a BS at NYU and an MBA from Harvard.
There was a lot of mixed reactions to the idea that Teams would eventually replace Skype for Business. There were those that had really embraced SfB, and didn’t see Teams at all ready. There were also those that just didn’t agree that a messaging-centric platform was the right home for real-time communications services. Simply stated, Microsoft’s vision with Teams didn’t appear to stem from customer demand. But then few disruptive products do. Teams was steadily growing, and then came a pandemic. Businesses were suddenly open to a disruptive way to accommodate an urgent, disruptive need for WFH.
It’s been fascinating to watch Teams. I saw it teased, launched, and then watched it blossom. Not only are the customers getting it, but Microsoft has been steadily prioritizing it. Few Microsoft apps, if any, receive so much attention and innovation. Satya Nadella has demonstrated Teams during keynotes and recently remarked that 2021 will be the year for Teams.
To me, Microsoft LCS/OCS/Lync/SfB were always dealing with self-inflicted limitations in terms of real-time communications. They provided an overly complex basic experience. That’s changed with Teams, especially in 2020. Teams is cloud-native, and offers robust communications and collaboration. Its real-time communications (especially video) have come a long way. Jeff suggests in this podcast that they are just getting started (and I believe him).
One of my criticisms of Teams (and SfB) in the past has been ongoing changes in leadership. It’s hard to keep up with product vision and nuance when the leaders keep changing. However, I’m feeling much better about Teams now. Though Jeff Teper has only been involved with Teams for about a year, he’s a heavy hitter. He’s been at Microsoft for almost 30 years, worked side by side with Satya Nadella, and brings proven credibility to Teams. In this podcast he doesn’t dodge anything, and provided detailed responses to our questions. I also give any Harvard MBA extra credit when they don’t mention they have an MBA from Harvard.
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Listen now | Evan and Davechat with Anand Janefalkar, CEO and Founder of UJET. UJET is a new kind of CCaaS company, cloud native, designed and built for modern communications. That means it natively integrates with other cloud apps, without duplicating data, and is built for modern, multi-modal communications.
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Javed Khan leads Cisco’s multi-billion-dollar Collaboration business which includes the Webex portfolio of Meetings, Teams, Rooms, Calling, and Contact Center. In this podcast we discuss the WebexOne conference that Cisco hosted earlier this month. Prior to this position, Javed was running Cisco’s Cloud Calling business. He and his team were responsible for the strategy and execution of product management, development and partner operations for the Cisco Cloud Calling Portfolio. This includes Webex Calling, Cisco BroadWorks-based solutions, Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) and Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) Cloud.
Javed came to Cisco from Symantec where he served as the VP of Enterprise and Consumer Security products. Javed holds an MS in Computer Science and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his family in the San Francisco bay area.
It’s impressive how much Cisco Collaboration changed in 2020. We can attribute some of this to the pandemic, but more of it goes to Javed Khan. He was promoted to unit SVP and GM mid year and immediately took action to reshape the division’s structure and priorities. The flow of announcements increased soon after, but the new Collaboration (also the new Webex) was unveiled at the December WebexOne conference.
Not long ago, Webex was associated with web conferencing, but the brand and portfolio has expanded. Webex is now Cisco Collaboration’s single brand for cloud-delivered, enterprise communications products and services. This includes applications, devices, and hints of emerging platforms services. For more information on WebexOne, See this TalkingPointz Research Note.
Cisco Webex has been around for a while, and competitive pressures have significantly increased. The option of retreating was presumably evaluated . . . and evidently rejected. At WebexOne, Cisco announced new features, a new unified app, an entirely new CCaaS platform, and new acquisitions. It certainly appears that Cisco intends to defend, grow, and cloudify its communications and collaboration business.
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Evan and Davechat with Craig Malloy, the founder and CEO of Lifesize.
There are few, if any, executives in enterprise video who have seen what Craig has seen. He founded Lifesize in 2003, and other than a brief break, he's been at the helm the whole time.
Lifesize started as a vendor of premises-based, proprietary video equipment. The company has gone through a few different industry transitions, pivots, and demand shifts, and today offers a standards-based, cloud-delivered services for meetings - oh, and customer engagement too.
In this interview we ask Craig about what he's seen, and what's learned. We talk about WebRTC, the move to AWS, 4K video, Tech in Austin, and more.
Currently, Lifesize is owned by Marlin Equity, a private equity firm. We ask Craig about that transition too, and he does mention EBITDA. More importantly we learned how PE caused the recent merger with Serenova. Suddenly, Craig found himself the CEO of what may be the only provider of video and contact center services.
Actually, there are lots of companies that do both video and CCaaS, but they tend to offer UCaaS too. Craig will either create a new model, build/acquire a UCaaS offer, or perhaps both.
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Evan and Davechat with the recently named CEO of Vonage, Rory Read.
In this podcast we get to know the new dude in charge at Vonage. Rory Read joined the Company as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors in July 2020. He was previously Chief Operating Executive for Dell Technologies, and also served as CEO and President of Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business. Rory also served as Executive Vice President of Dell Technologies Boomi, a SaaS integration platform provider. Rory played a lead role in the $67 billion merger of Dell and EMC. As President of Dell Worldwide Commercial Sales, he built and managed Dell’s best-in-class sales engine, and delivered the strategy for Dell’s global channel, partner and direct sales efforts.
Before joining Dell, he served as CEO, President and member of the Board of Directors of AMD. Prior to that he was COO and President at Lenovo. Earlier, Rory spent 23 years at IBM, serving in various leadership roles.
Listen now (58 min) | Evan and Davechat with the legendary tech activist and author Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- a contributor to Boing Boing and the author of young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.
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Listen now (53 min) | Evan and Dave chat with Javier Soltero, VP & GM of Google Workspace. Javier wants you to re-think G Suite. Actually, he wants you re-think suites and in general. He explains in this podcast the logic and intent of rebranding G Suite to Google Workspace. We also cover some of the changes at Google Cloud, and Javier explains why enterprises can trust Google with their data. Go ahead and download this episode, voice is a great way to meet and chat.
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Listen now (41 min) | Evan and Dave chat with Cameron Weeks (Twitter/LinkedIn), CEO and co-Founder of Edify. We strive to have guests that span the industry, and this episode has it it all. That's because Edify offers UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS. Actually, that's not even broad enough. Cameron and Team Edify are on a mission to redefine business communications, cloud, omnichannel, and customer engagement. He believes that the technologies today enable a totally new approach:
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Listen now (48 min) | Evan and Dave chat with Tony Bates (Twitter/LinkedIn), CEO of Genesys. Many factors are currently contributing to the interesting and uncharted territories in which businesses now find themselves. From the global pandemic, to the continued rise of AI and the cloud, as well as the ever-evolving understanding of customer experience. For our guest today, Tony Bates, the confluence of these forces, and a desire to constantly innovate and scale both propel and ground his work.
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Listen now (40 min) | Evan and Dave chat with Noreen Allen, CMO of Bandwidth Inc. Noreen has been the CMO of Bandwidth (NASDAQ: BAND) since 2012. She is responsible for driving revenue across all lines of its business. Her specialty is building powerful, category-leading brands and creating scalable revenue engines for tech companies. Over the past twenty years, she’s been part of multiple rounds of fund raising and M&A activity and helped three companies IPO.
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Evan and Davechat with Alan Duric (Twitter), the CTO/COO and Co-Founder of Wire.
Wire, based in Zug Switzerland, is a provider of secure collaborative communications, Wire offers messaging, voice and video calling, and file-sharing services all protected with end-to-end encryption.
The Wire app launched in 2014 with secure messaging. Over the years it has expanded into a full communications suite while retaining strong end-to-end encryption. In this podcast Alan shares some new features that are coming,
Prior to Wire, Duric has worked with several communications companies including Skype, Telio, Camino Networks, and Ericsson. He was also heavily involved in the development of WebRTC.
Listen now (53 min) | Evan and Dave chat with Stewart Bufferfield, the co-Founder of Slack. Slack is the leading channel-based messaging platform, used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems, and drive their businesses forward. In this podcast we cover a lot of ground, including Microsoft, recent acquisitions, Slack Connect, Amazon Chime, Enterprise Grid, and more.
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Evan and Davechat with Bruce McClelland, the recently named CEO and President of Ribbon Communications.
Ribbon Communications is a global communications and network solutions provider to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors. Bruce is a technical business leader with a proven history of developing and growing businesses. Previously, Bruce was CEO at ARRIS and led its sale to CommScope, where he served as COO. During his tenure at ARRIS, Bruce held multiple leadership positions and had a key role in the successful acquisition and integration of multiple companies including Ruckus, Pace and the Motorola Home Business.
This podcast is your chance to meet Bruce. He joined Ribbon just before the pandemic's shelter in place orders. That's probably made him more productive has he otherwise would have been traveling extensively. Ribbon's history of acquisitions has created a company that's extremely decentralized. We cover a broad swath of topics in this podcast including SBCs, 5G, wireless, IoT, and more.
Bruce began his career at Bell Northern Research and held several leadership roles at Nortel. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering (Great Distinction) from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
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Dave and Evanchat with Ryan Hollenbeck, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing and Customer Experience at Verint.
Ryan Hollenbeck is responsible for driving global corporate marketing, solutions marketing, marketing communications and operations, analyst and public relations, and sales enablement. Ryan also serves as executive sponsor of the Verint Customer Experience Program that focuses on gathering a deep understanding of the customer journey and translating that information into actionable insights.
We cover actionable intelligence, the difference between WFO and WEM, how the pandemic impacted Verint and its customers, and so much more.
Dave and Evanchat with Anthony Bartolo, the Chief Product Officer at Avaya.
Anthony Bartolo is responsible for product development, product management, emerging technologies and corporate strategy across Avaya’s premise and cloud-based solutions. He rejoined Avaya last November, and reports to CEO Jim Chirico.
Bartolo has over 30 years of functional and general management experience in transformational, high growth environments, ranging from start‑ups to large cap public companies. He returns to Avaya after having spent the last several years at Tata Communications where he served as its EVP and Chief Product Office. Prior to Tata, Bartolo was vice president at Avaya in both the UC and contact center business units responsible for product development and the SMB business segment.
Anthony’s previous roles include President and CEO of Skyrider Limited, a social networking start-up, and VP and GM of the Wireless Infrastructure and RFID Divisions for Symbol Technologies (acquired by Motorola). He has also held multiple senior leadership positions around the globe with Nortel Networks. A graduate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.
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Dave and Evanchat with Dmitry Netis of Q Advisors, a global investment firm focused on enterprise communications.
Netis heads Q Advisors' origination and business development efforts. He has over 24 years of experience that combines finance, venture investing, sell-side equity research, and operational industry experience across the telecom, media, and technology (TMT) sector. Most recently, he consulted for several public and private company clients under the practice he founded, Dmitry Netis & Company LLC, and was the CFO/COO of privately-held CafeX Communications. He was also a Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst with Stephens Inc. Prior to that, he spent over 10 years at William Blair & Company as a founding member of the TMT team, where he established cloud communications, data networking, and infrastructure software practices.
Dave and Evanchat with Antony Passemard, Applied Conversational AI and CCAI lead at Google Cloud.
This is a naturally intelligent conversation about how AI is changing the contact center. We cover terminology and then get into how Google is leveraging its vast AI capabilities to improve customer service - at other companies.
Antony has been in IT for over 20 years and spent the last 12 working on Enterprise products and partnerships at companies like Yahoo, Salesforce.com, AWS and now Google Cloud. Today Antony heads up product and strategy for Google Cloud's conversational AI solutions with a strong focus on Contact Center AI. Antony is originally from France and came to California to study for an MBA at the Haas School of Business from which he graduated in 2009, and stayed ever since with his wife and 2 children.
Dave and Evandiscuss recent enterprise communications news.
We discuss this Insider Report: https://talkingpointz.com/april-2020-insider-report/
Voicemails:
- Blue Jeans: 4:40
- Starfish: 11:15
- 2600Hz: 14:15
- Workplace by Facebook: 21:10
- Pexip: 25:30
Dave and Evanchat with Del Currie, Head of Solutions at Sneek.io.
Sneek.io provides what's known as persistent video. Though, it's not persistent video. It's really better described as a next generation of presence that involves frequent snapshots. Instead of a green or yellow icon, Sneek.io users see frequent snapshots of their colleagues, and presence can be seen if he or she is in the photo. A single click turns that snapshot into a live video chat.
Persistent video can be viewed as a new form of presence, a new form of chat, an Orwellian Big Brother, or potentially as a portal to another location. Whatever it is, it's a fascinating form of business communications. It's not a new concept, but perhaps its time has finally come. None of the persistent video apps that came before are still around. This doesn't bother Del, and he explains why in this podcast.
Dave and Evanchat with Sri Srinivasan (LinkedIn/Twitter), the new GM of Cisco Collaboration. In this discussion we talk about organizational changes, Sri's priorities, Webex in March, and what Sri learned from Microsoft. Prior to recent promotion, Sri was responsible for Webex including Meetings, Teams, Calling, and room hardware.
Sri has broad software experience across platforms and products. His career has spanned numerous roles including software development, development lead, architect, performance & scale engineering, program management and engineering general management. Sri has been a hands-on technical architect with deep domain understanding of business applications across ERP, CRM, and cloud communications.
He arrived at Cisco collaboration over two years ago. Prior to his arrival, he spent over 12 years at Microsoft developing (conceptualizing) ERP. Prior to Microsoft he worked at Claremont and Peoplesoft.
Dave and Evanchat with Mary T. McDowell, CEO of Mitel. In October 2019, Mary McDowell was named the CEO of Mitel. Many industry professionals first met McDowell during her term as CEO of Polycom. She exited Polycom when it was acquired by Plantronics (now known as Poly) in 2018.
Prior to Polycom, McDowell was an EVP at Nokia, where she was in charge of the company’s $15B global feature phone business and oversaw Nokia’s developer and app store organization. She also previously held senior positions at Compaq Computer and Hewlett Packard.
Mary is known to be a pragmatic and effective problem solver with extensive experience, in emerging markets, M&A, and operations, and turnarounds. In 2012 she was described as one of ten "disruptive individuals" reshaping the mobile phone industry. In 2018, she was recognized as one of the top 10 women in telecommunications. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Engineering.
@davemichels and @evankirstel discuss the TalkingPointz Insider Report for March News - our discussion features celebrity voicemails. Subscribe to TalkingPointz Insider Reports https://talkingpointz.com/pricing
Insider reports are accessible to non subscribers after 100 days.
https://talkingpointz.com/category/insider/
Dave and Evanchat with Murali Sitaram, GM of Microsoft Yammer and Office 365 Groups.
Yammer is an enterprise social networking service used for internal communications within organizations. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012, but hasn't done that much with it - until recently. Yammer got a whole new look. Although Yammer and Teams offer a lot of the same functionality, the two apps are positioned as complementary rather than competitive. Yammer and Teams are both included in all Office 365 and Microsoft 365 enterprise plans.
Sitaram is the GM of Yammer and O365 Groups, accountable for the product strategy and
development and service delivery for both these products as part of the O365 suite. Before joining Microsoft, Murali Sitaram was most recently the Managing Director of global Partnerships and Alliances with Google serving Google Cloud’s portfolio. Prior to Google, Murali was the VP/GM of WebEx at Cisco, where he helped grow WebEx to over a $1B business.
Prior to this, Murali lead the development of WebEx Social an Enterprise Social Platform after successfully helping to turn around Cisco's Call Center business
as GM. Earlier in his career, Murali has held various product leadership positions at companies such as Avaya and Aspect Communications.
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In this TalkingHeadz podcast, Dave and Evan discuss the news and events of February, with special guests via voicemail.
We discuss the February Insider Report, published the first week of March on TalkingPointz. Insider Reports summarize and analyze the major news and events from the prior month. You can subscribe to Insider Reports at https://talkingpointz.com/pricing/
Dave and Evanchat with Craig Walker, the CEO of Dialpad.
Craig Walker is the co-founder and CEO of Dialpad, a born-in-the-cloud UCaaS provider. Previously he led Dialpad Communications Inc., (acquired by Yahoo! for $50 million), a pioneer in VoIP services, and later co-founded GrandCentral (acquired by Google for $100 million). Dialpad has raised $120 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Felicis Ventures, SoftBank, and Iconiq Capital.
Craig was a technology venture investor at Sterling Payot Capital and TeleSoft Partners and was also a corporate attorney at top tier law firms in Silicon Valley, where he represented companies ranging from early stage start-ups to Cisco Systems. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley (BA), Georgetown University (MBA) and Boalt Hall School of Law (JD). Member of the Telecommunications and E-Commerce Committee for the US Chamber of Commerce.
In this podcast we discuss how Switch.co got Dialpad back as its name. How Craig can't escape Telecom, and why the restaurant business needs more disruption.
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Dave and Evanchat with John Hernandez, the CEO of Selligent.
John Hernandez is well known in the communications industry as a contact center pro. In August of 2017, he took those skills to Selligent, a marketing cloud. Selligent leverages automation and AI to improve the customer experience. Selligent's marketing platform provides a cohesive, flexible platform designed for agile, marketers. Seligent's services are complementary to both CRM and contact center initiatives.
While there are indeed other marketing clouds, and while some contact center solutions understand rudimentary marketing, Selligent offers a powerful integrated solution. Under Hernandez's leadership, Selligent has created alliances with Cisco, Genesys, Five9, and NICE.
Prior to Selligent, Hernandez was the COO and SVP, Service Cloud at Salesforce. He has the experience and vision to navigate Selligent thru its rapid growth. Before Salesforce, John served as VP and GM of IBM's collaboration business. Prior, Hernandez served as a VP and GM within Cisco's Collaboration business, where he created the Customer Collaboration Strategy.
You can follow John on Twitter.
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Dave and Evanchat with Jeff Lawson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Twilio.
Jeff Lawson realized that communications are essential to every business. He got the idea as a result of his experiences as an entrepreneur and developer during a time when the API model for technology services was emerging. Lawson and co-founder Evan Cooke created Twilio, and effectively created a new enterprise communications category: Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS).
Twilio has enabled small, medium, and large enterprises to create powerful communications enabled applications. It also spawned numerous other providers that leverage Twilio's services and Super Network under the covers. Twilio’s platform serves people in over 180 countries. The company’s revenue has grown from $88.8 million in 2014 to over a billion in 2019.
In this podcast we ask Jeff to explain why it makes sense to target budget developers, hwo live coding became a thing, and several other topics including why customers pay for services with their shoes.
Dave and Evanchat with Brian Day the newly named CEO of Fuze.
Last month, Fuze named Brian Day its new CEO. Actually, Brian announced it himself in a blog post that also reemphasized Fuze's commitment to enterprise customers.
Fuze was among the first UCaaS providers (under it's original brand Thinking Phones) to penetrate larger customers. While most providers started small and are working their way up, Fuze started big and has been (until recently) working its way to smaller accounts.
Brain explains the differences in targeting enterprises vs. small and medium businesses, and why Fuze is taking deliberate actions to primarily focus on large accounts.
Prior to being CEO, Brian was the CFO at Fuze. He has 25 years as a successful financial leader and operator at high-growth companies, most recently at Apperian where he also served first as CFO, and then CEO through its sale in 2016.
Brian has a B.A. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire, and also accidentally got a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School.
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Dave and Evanchat with Quentin Gallivan, CEO of BlueJeans Network.
Quentin was named the CEO of BlueJeans in August 2017. He brought to the company extensive experience in growth. As a founding executive at Verisign he grew the company to $1.5B in revenue (and took it through an IPO). He also grew cloud-based security market leader Postini to more than 35,000 customers (and over 10M users) before its acquisition by Google.
He's well regarded as a numbers man, but comes across fairly well-rounded in this interview. The takes Dave and Evan through some of the recent changes and announcements at BlueJeans.
BlueJeans provides a meetings platform for the modern workplace that connects desktops, mobile devices and room systems. Thousands of organizations from growing businesses to Fortune 500s use BlueJeans for video meetings and large interactive events.
Dave and Evanchat with Yaniv Masjedi, CMO at Nextiva.
Yaniv Masjedi started building the Nextiva marketing engine on day one (day one of Nextiva) about 12 years ago. That involved introducing to prospects this crazy concept of a cloud-PBX. Nextiva offers UCaaS, video, team chat, and CRM services. It is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ.
As CMO, Yaniv is responsible for Nextiva's marketing and branding efforts including demand generation, advertising, marketing communications, and thought leadership. Yaniv actively blogs about marketing on several industry and professional sites as well as Nextiva.com.
Follow Yaniv on Twitter.
Dave and Evanchat with Milton Chen, founder and CEO VSee.
Milton is a video pioneer that has built VSee into a powerful telemedicine platform.
Telemedicine is no longer a fringe idea, in fact, some insist on dropping the "tele" part because it's just medicine now. It can save lives, and improve healthcare, and reduce costs. VSee serves over 1000 companies including Walgreens, MDLIVE, Trinity, DaVita, HCA, Seton, McKesson-US Oncology, and others.
VSee was founded in 2008 by two Stanford PhD students, Milton and Erika Chuang. The original VSee platform was coded by Milton who did his PhD research on the psychology of video communications. Milton has deployed VSee for former President Obama’s Inauguration, for the Navy Seals, for Hillary Clinton, and Angelina Jolie in their refugee work. He is a genius at video, but needs to improve his skills around podcast audio.
Dave and Evanchat with Paul Jarman, CEO at NICE inContact.
Paul is a pioneer of the CCaaS, movement. Paul was instrumental in guiding inContact from its roots in telecommunications to its leadership position in the cloud-delivered contact center sector. He has been a part of every major enhancement the company has made since 1997.
Mr. Jarman has spent his career building a service-driven business focused around both customers and employees, resulting in a strong corporate culture with high retention rates of both groups. Prior to joining inContact, Paul was an executive with HealthRider, Inc. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Utah.
Dave and Evanchat with Julian Codorniou, Vice President of Workplace by Facebook.
Julien joined Facebook in 2011 to build the EMEA gaming team and then led the global Platform Partnerships team, helping Facebook partners to build, grow and monetize their apps with Platform. Prior to Facebook, Julien was director of business development at Microsoft Corp where he created and launched the BizSpark program.
Workplace is growing very fast, and it appears it's just getting started. This app has the potential (funding, engineering, innovation, capability, global reach, etc.) to radically transform enterprise communications . . . enterprise wide.
Under Julien's leadership, Workplace serves more than 3 million paying users at companies including Walmart, Starbucks, Nestle, Telefonica, Grab, Spotify, Chevron and many more globally.
In this podcast we get a better idea how Workplace is different from other enterprise social/messaging apps as well as from Facebook itself. Julien explains how Workplace started as an internal project and how Workplace balances familiarity with the unique requirements of business customers.
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Nidal Abou Ltaif is known for his desire to help his customers use technology to make a difference in people’s lives.
Nidal joined Avaya as the sales leader for the Middle East in 2003. In early 2014, was selected to lead the newly formed Global Growth Markets theater that includes MEA, Turkey, Russia, India, and China. In August 2015, he was named President of Avaya International with responsibilities for Europe, Middle East and Africa & Asia Pacific
Nidal has responsibilities for sales, services, engineering, and vertical solutions. He has been instrumental in Avaya’s transformation from niche voice/IP telephony player to its leadership position for UC and CC.
He is known for his ability to foster long lasting relationships with customers and employees. Many of the associates Nidal has mentored went on to have successful careers in technology across the Middle East and Africa. What sets him apart is sincere concern for others.
Devoted to the principles of customer-centricity, leaders without titles, and accountability at the workplace, Nidal has fostered an environment that makes innovation everyone’s business – whether they’re an Avaya employee or customer. Prior to Avaya, Nidal works at NCR and AT&T.
For more enterprise communications content, see TalkignPointz.com
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Dave and Evanchat with Mark Strassman, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unified Communications and Collaboration at LogMeIn.
Mark serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager for LogMeIn’s Unified Communications & Collaboration business unit overseeing market-leading UCC products GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, Jive, Grasshopper and more. Mark joins LogMeIn from BlueJeans Networks, where he served as the video collaboration company’s Chief Product Officer. Prior to BlueJeans, he was Senior Vice President of Products at Blackboard, Inc, a leading provider of video and collaboration technologies for the education industry. He’s also held various leadership positions at Autodesk, Inc., including managing Autodesk’s core products, AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and at Adobe and Macromedia where he built and led the Web publishing and Flash businesses.
Mark holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the Walter A. Haas School of Business- University of California, Berkeley.
Dave and Evanchat with Sagi Dudai, the CTO of Vonage.
As CTO he is responsible for leading Vonage’s technology vision, architecture and design, overseeing all aspects of technology development, including new products, their enabling technologies and R&D.
Prior to being named CTO, Mr. Dudai was Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Vonage, responsible for software development company-wide. Prior to joining Vonage in 2012, he held engineering leadership roles at various technology companies, including three startups – Mercury Interactive, TelMap & fring. Earlier, he also worked on a number of classified software and hardware engineering projects for Israeli intelligence.
He graduated from IDF computer science training program and earned his BA in Computer Science & Business Administration from Tel Aviv University. He also holds an Executive M.B.A from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Dave and Evanchat with Eric Yuan the founder and CEO of Zoom. In this conversation we learn that Eric credits something different than his product to Zoom's success and why it's so sweet that Walmart is a customer. Other topics include Eric's views on social media, freemium software, business travel, and contact centers.
Eric is a Chinese Internet Entrepreneur and was a founding engineer at Webex. He departed Webex about four years after its acquisition by Cisco in 2011 to start Zoom. Zoom had its IPO last may, a highly successful event that Eric considers just a milestone in his and his company's journey.
Yuan graduated from Shandong University of Science and Technology with a degree in Applied Math. He earned a Master's degree in engineering from China University of Mining and Technology.
Dave and Evanchat with Amy Barzdukas about her fascinating year of launches as the CMO of Poly. We learn that friends don't let friends conference with earbuds, her Spartan approach to glamping, and the world needed the Poly Studio.
Amy Barzdukas is an EVP and CMO at Poly. She is responsible for Poly’s global marketing strategy and execution. Barzdukas has more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry. She joined Polycom in 2015 as Vice President of Global Solutions Marketing and was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer in 2017. She retained the CMO role after Plantronics and Polycom merged into the new Poly.
Prior to joining Polycom, Barzdukas served as VP WW Marketing for HP’s Business Personal Systems group and had a successful 16-year career at Microsoft with multiple leadership and GM roles.
Dave and Evanmeet withRowan Trollope, the CEO of cloud contact center provider Five9.
Rowan has a billion things on his mind, yet found time to share some of the recent organizational changes at Five9, what comes next for the contact center after the cloud, how is background helps him at Five9, and he also confirmed he doesn't ski with OJ Simpson.
Rowan Mehail Trollope was named the CEO of Five9 in May 2018. Previously, he headed the Collaboration group at Cisco. Rowan also held several leadership positions over 20 years at Symantec, where he helped grow it to the global leader in consumer security.
Rowan has completed the Executive Institute at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and the Stanford Directors College at Stanford Law School.
Dave and Evan meet with Vasili Triantto better understand how and why contact center has become such a priority at Cisco. Vasili brings a tremendous amount of sector experience to Cisco. He shares what's changing in the industry, how collaborative Cisco is in terms of its R&D, and why all the execs left ShoreTel.
Vasili Triant serves as Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Contact Center Group. Vasili brings Vasili resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and family of eight kids. He volunteers with the Lake Travis Youth Sports Association where he is a Board Member and has coached football and baseball for the past six years. Vasili has a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of San Diego.
Dave and Evan meet with Praful Shah, the Chief Strategy Officer at RingCentral. We discuss recent acquisitions, life as a pediatrician, and stadium names. Praful is responsible for defining RingCentral’s business, product, and marketing strategy. He brings more than 20 years of experience with major technology companies in the software and cloud industries. Before joining RingCentral, he worked at WebEx from its founding days until its acquisition by Cisco in 2007.
Shah holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India and a master’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University.
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Dave and Evan meet with Ilya Bukshteyn, the Partner Director over Teams Devices at Microsoft. We discuss how Microsoft is changing, new types of devices, and of course Tesla cars.
Ilya was there when real-time communications started at Microsoft. Actually, he was there when most things started at Microsoft as he's been there for about 25 years. He made the transition from SfB to Teams and wants to make sure you can too, so works to make sure that you have an ecosystem of high quality, certified devices for desktops and rooms.
Dave and Evan meet with Bryan Martin to discuss the history of VoIP, UCaaS, video, the cloud, and 8x8.Bryan Martin is 8x8’s technological visionary, leading the company’s drive to patent a range of disruptive and innovative technologies. With an excellent sense of how cloud communications transform enterprise communications and customer service, Bryan led 8x8 as CEO from its early days as a VoIP pioneer. Before becoming CEO in 2002, he held the positions of Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President, Engineering Operations.
Martin holds 64 United States Patents in the fields of semiconductors, computer architecture, video processing algorithms, videophones, and communications. Internet Telephony magazine named Bryan one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications.” Bryan also served on the California Broadband Task Force for the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, and later became Chair of the task force’s Emerging Technologies and New Applications Working Group.
Bryan is a member of the IEEE and Tau Beta Pi and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
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Dave and Evan meet with Tsahi Levent-levi to discuss WebRTC, video, and IP-based communications.
Tsahi has over 15 years of experience in telecommunications, VoIP video, and networking technologies. He has collected numerous titles in his career including CTO, Entrepreneur, Analyst, Engineer, developer, and more. Titles aside, his main role is to align a communications strategy with business objectives.
Tsahi is one of the most well known thought leaders on the subject of WebRTC. He’s published numerous articles and training materials related to WebRTC and believes it’s one of the most significant recent communications developments.
Tsahi holds an MSc in Computer Science, and an MBA. He has been awarded three patents and advises clients on the patent processes.
In this podcast we get into WebRTC as well other communications technologies and applications such as healthcare and travel.
Tsahi stays close to industry standards and the standards making process. He has previously acted as chairman of various activity groups within the IMTC (regarding interoperability of multimedia) and now holds the position of W3C Evangelist for all things WebRTC.
Visit Tsahi's site: BlogGeek.me
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Dave and Evan meet with Alan Lepofsky of Salesforce to discuss the object of his evangelism, Quip.
With almost two decades of experience in the software industry, Alan helps companies understand how to develop and/or implement collaboration solutions that help employees get work done. He prefers to focus on how organizations can improve their existing business processes by providing access to the colleagues, content and communities that can help people get their work done more effectively.
After over seven years as a collaboration software analyst, Alan became the newest VP Evangelism for Business Productivity at Salesforce last February. Specifically, he is working with the Quip division to showcase the benefits of uniting content, collaboration and business objects. Quip is a digital canvas that empowers people to bring context to their conversations.
Learn more about Quip, collaboration, and how nothing has changed since Lotus Notes.
Dave and Evan meet with Michael Quinn of Q Advisors about mergers and acquisitions in enterprise communications.Michael Quinn is a founding partner of Q Advisors, and shares his insider views on industry M&A activities. With more than 25 years of international operations and investment banking experience in the telecommunications industry, Michael has originated, structured, and executed more than 100 deals totaling more than $4 billion in transaction value.
Michael has led transactions for Q Advisors' clients including: Arkadin, Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc., Broadcore, Grande Communications, Hudson Fiber, Masergy Communications, Neverblue, One Source Networks, NuVox, Inc., and WildBlue Communications.
Prior to forming Q Advisors, Michael was a founder of and Chief Corporate Development Officer for VeloCom Inc., a Latin American wireless services provider, where he was responsible for capital raising and acquisition activities. Michael began his career with the New York-based law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. He later became a partner in the Denver-based law firm Holland & Hart LLP, guiding their international corporate finance practice.
Michael received a B.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. He is currently on the Advisory Board of The George Washington University School of Business and on the Board of the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University.
Michael is currently on the Board of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), also serving as Secretary.
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Dave and Evan meet with Zoom CIO Harry Moseley.
Harry joined Zoom just about a year ago to be its CIO. Formerly the CIO of KPMG, Blackstone, Credit Suisse, and UBS, Harry brings considerable expertise in solutions development, infrastructure, security, strategic planning, and building technology teams to Zoom.
Harry is responsible for creating business value at Zoom through technology innovation, supporting business growth objectives, and ensuring its technology platforms and procedures give the business outcomes customers expect.
Before we get into video streaming, we talk about streaming video. Harry shares a few things he's learned in the past year, a few things about millennials, why video is the new voice, and what it is like in the fast lane.
From Zoom:
Harry brings to Zoom a blend of transformational leadership, disruptive innovation, and corporate growth strategies. As the former CIO & Managing Director for KPMG, Harry was responsible for technology and innovation to support the firm’s competitive growth. Over five years he identified and replaced legacy technology to dramatically improve productivity, security, and reliability. Before joining KPMG, Harry served as CIO & Senior Managing Director − Partner for Blackstone, where he led the company’s transformation to the world’s best digital alternative asset manager. Prior to Blackstone, Harry was a Managing Director for Credit Suisse, where he served as the CIO of Global Investment Banking, and Global Co-Head of Application Development / Co-CIO of the firm. Before Credit Suisse, Harry served as CTO & Managing Director for UBS Americas.
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In this TalkingHeadz, Dave and Evan hangout with Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management at Google. Among Scott's responsibilities are the communications and collaboration applications within G Suite which includes Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, and Google Voice.
We discuss all of those as well as other things G including new leadership, Chromebooks and the Jamboard.
2019 is expected to be a big year for Google with regards to enterprise communications and collaboration. The Hangouts Classic app will be replaced with two separate apps: Hangouts Meet (for conferencing) and Hangouts Chat (for messaging). Additionally, Google will be launching Google Voice as an integrated, optional UCaaS service.
Google has quietly become not only an enterprise vendor, but a comprehensive one. The anchors are Google Cloud services for workloads and G Suite for workflow or office productivity. G Suite communications includes Hangouts and Voice. Google also has a number of additional communications services including Google AI for Contact Centers, room systems for conferencing, Duplex chatbots, Google Fi wireless service, and an arsenal of endpoints (Chrome browser, ChromeOS, and Android).
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In this podcast, Dave Michels and Evan Kirstel chat with Colin Berkshire, a regular yet mysterious contributor to TalkingPoitnz.
Colin has an opinion on a lot of things - possibly everything, but especially Apple, Asia, 4G/5G, and Bell Labs. He's been a regular contributor for several years now, yet no one has met him. He guards his privacy and "Colin Berkshire" is a pen name. He does not use social media and doesn't directly respond to comments.
He does read them, and he's been known to indirectly respond with a separate, new post.
In this podcast we cover a lot of ground and air too. We get right into 5G and Colin explains that if you exclude cell phones, it's a great technology. We learn how to ascertain the proper amount to bribe, and why Tim Cook isn't a thief and doesn't want Colin's money.
Many people inquire if Colin is real. He finds that humorous and responded directly in a post titled: Do I Exist? He does. And now, for the first time, you can hear him in this podcast.
Here's a few of his greatest hits:
I Beat Apple
Betting on Magenta
The Best Money Government Can Buy
Reflecting on Bell Labs Era
AT&T and Verizon's Towers
Colin is technical, analytical, opinionated, historical and sometimes hysterical. He's mostly retired and enjoys rolling his eyes at just about everything, but does so with piercing accuracy. Colin is genuinely surprised that he enjoys writing posts, and even more surprised that anyone reads them.
One of the benefits of changing TalkingHeadz from a video to an audio format is that Colin agreed to participate.
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In this podcast, Dave Michels and Evan Kirstel chat with Mathilde Collin, CEO and co-founder of Front.
While there's a general consensus that we have evolved past email, there's little agreement what to do about it. Many vendors are looking to replace email with workstream collaboration apps. Mathilde and Front are taking a different approach, and are reimagining email to better accommodate group collaboration.
Front offers an email client for effective team collaboration. It can be used with Exchange or Gmail -- though Mathilde makes a few comments that suggest a bigger plan.
Momentum is on her side. Email is growing, not declining. It's a problem because the universal inbox wasn't designed for today's volume or workflow. Can Front fix email before email breaks us? The original app of collaboration is indeed due for a makeover.
Mathilde Collin moved her company of 17 people to Silicon Valley and now has thousands of enterprise customers including Tesla, Shopify, and Dropbox. Front can be used by departments, and in some cases gets deployed enterprise-wide.
Front is a graduate of Y Combinator. The company recently raised millions from Sequoia Capital and investors such as Alexis Ohanian of Reddit and Stewart Butterfield of Slack.
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In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave learn that Joe Manuele moved into video because he likes watching. We also learned discussed contact centers, and Teslas.
Joe was recently named as the first non-founder CEO of video conferencing provider Highfive.
About Joe Manuele
Prior to joining Highfive, Joe Manuele ran the global Collaboration and Customer Experience practice at Dimension Data. An Enterprise Sales and GTM veteran, Joe’s background includes leadership roles at Cisco, Adtran, Actelis Networks and Avaya. Joe has a Computer Science degree from Control Data Institute in Montreal.
Prior to Cisco he was Chief Technology Strategist for Skype.
Highfive is an innovative video conferencing provider. The solution uses open WebRTC technology and offers room system hardware as part of its subscription offer.
Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-highfive
In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave ask the legendary Jonathan Rosenberg if SIP was a mistake. We also manage to discuss WebRTC, robocalls, Facebook, and fine dining.
JR was joined Cisco in 2013 where he a chief architect of what Webex Teams.
About Jonathan RosenbergJonathan Rosenberg is the outgoing VP, CTO, and very fine Fellow of Cisco Collaboration. Having worked in IP communication and collaboration for 18 years he has some hang-ups on disconnects. He has authored many of the Internet standards that define modern telecoms, including SIP, SIMPLE (SIP for presence and IM), and ICE. He has held numerous leadership positions in the IETF, is the fourth most prolific author of Internet standards of all time (with 70 RFCs), holds 52 granted US patents, has served on advisory boards of numerous startups, given nearly a hundred industry talks, and has received several industry awards, including being named to the Technology Review TR100 in 2002 – the 100 most innovative young technologists in the world.
Prior to Cisco he was Chief Technology Strategist for Skype.
In 2002 JR was named one of the most innovative young technologists in the world by Technology Review magazine. He also was named a "Top Supergeek" by CRN and won a Pulver Von Pioneer award for contributions to the VoIP industry. In 2015 he was presented with the Ohio University Strowger Award for transformational innovation in the telecommunications industry.
Rosenberg holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from MIT and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Columbia University.
Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-jr
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In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave discuss the UC channel with SVP Todd Abbott at Mitel. Todd joined Mitel in April of 2017, and before that he worked everywhere else. He is in the complex role of encouraging UC channel partners to both sell and evolve as industry evolves toward cloud-delivered services. Todd takes us on a channel evolution safari.
About ToddA seasoned executive with more than 30 years of experience in the computing, networking, and business communications industries, Todd Abbott develops go-to-market strategies, sales models, and channel programs. He is currently Mitel’s Executive Vice President of Global Sales & Services, and oversees global sales operations, including cloud and enterprise sales, professional and support services, and channel programs.
Prior to joining Mitel, Todd has held senior executive positions at several business communications companies, including Symbol Technologies, Seagate Technology, Avaya, and Sonus Networks. Earlier in his career, Todd spent eight years at Cisco Systems. Todd began his career in 1982 at IBM Corporation.
Todd has a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in Finance and Marketing from Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts).
Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-todd-abbott
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Dave and Evan ask Jason What's Next? Jason is a very technical, UC/VoIP/CPaaS industry pioneer, and he's currently in a free agent mode, We took the opportunity to ask him what's on his mind - and the answers range from cameras to Twitter.
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Ooma is suddenly on the enterprise UCaaS stage. Like Vonage before it, Ooma has broken free of its consumer VoIP roots and expanded into enterprise UCaaS. Perhaps suddenly is the wrong word, it had Ooma Office, but last March expanded its footprint with the acquisition of Voxter:
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ooma, Inc. (NYSE:OOMA), a smart communications platform for businesses and consumers, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Voxter Communications Inc., a provider of custom UCaaS solutions for mid-market and enterprise businesses.
Voxter will complement the Ooma Office solution for small business, giving Ooma a business communications portfolio that can meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.
Founded in 2005 and based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Voxter provides its clients with fully hosted VoIP solutions, taking productivity to a higher level through a voice architecture that’s feature rich and highly customizable to meet the individual needs of each business. Beyond telephony, Voxter offers instant messaging, videoconferencing, contact center capabilities, integration with mobile devices and more.
Voxter provides its advanced UCaaS solution to leading businesses, including Slack, Optimizely, Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort, Hyperwallet and Grafana.
Suddenly, Ooma has a set of larger enterprise customers and some pretty slick back-end processing technologies. Slack is quite the reference customer too. In August, Ooma announced (featured in Quipz) a new GTM partnership with Talkdesk. It shows a commitment to expand its enterprise business with a broader, integrated portfolio.
Another interesting tidbit about Ooma is its DECT know-how. I've always been a fan of DECT wireless technologies, though they are not that popular in the US. Since Ooma's premised-based gateway device has DECT for wireless phones, they also expanded into home security. DECT has better range, requires less power, and offers better security than Wi-Fi.
https://talkingpointz.com/talkingheadz-15-chris-burgy-of-ooma/
Published October 3, 2018
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