UC Expo was all about three things: cloud, AI and flying saucers
When you gather the UK’s unified communications experts in one place, you have an unmissable opportunity to gain valuable insights. You can really take the temperature of the sector.
After two hectic days at UC Expo in London ExCeL, Formation can tell you this about the market’s pre-eminent buyers and vendors:
The flying saucer is their favourite retro sweet.
Along with fizzy cola bottles and Black Jacks (also surprisingly popular), the saucers were part of a retro theme on display on the stand that we shared with our good friends at Avaya. As well as sugary treats, we displayed vintage video games and even old tape decks.
It was our way of saying: if you still have a hardware-based approach to UC, you might as well be in 1992 playing Streetfighter 2 on the SNES
The market is already catching on.
Just a year or two ago, Formation’s cloud-based alternative was pretty radical – certainly for the mid-market. Not any more. UC Expo proved it. People may have visited the stand for the E.Honda vs Chun-Li dust-up, but they stayed to hear about turning their UC into software.
It also helped that we were exhibiting on Avaya’s stand. Our ‘official’ status reflected Avaya’s commitment to our mid-market cloud model.
In fact, Ioan McCrae, MD of Avaya UK, went further. He told us: “We now have a saying: cloud first. Everything we now do in R&D has to be on a cloud-deployed consumption-based model. That’s how services are designed and how they’re taken to market. You’ll only see Avaya focus and grow on cloud in the next year and in years to come.”
Ioan made the comments just days after a very revealing set of financials from Avaya – its first as a public company.
The earnings showed how well Avaya has bounced back from the uncertainty of its chapter 11 period. They also show the contribution cloud is making to its recovery.
Some highlights:
- Software and services accounted for a record 83 per cent of non-GAAP revenue
- MRR (monthly recurring revenue) represented 57 per cent of revenue, up from 50 per cent a year before
- Mid-market MRR grew 53 per cent quarter-over-quarter
- Cloud overall is now 11 per cent of total revenue, up from nine per cent the last quarter
- Cloud is now at three million seats
While we’re on the subject, congrats to the team at Avaya for being named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for contact centre infrastructure last week!
AI — QED
Overwhelmingly, cloud dominated the conversation at UC Expo. But a close second was artificial intelligence.
People in every industry are pondering the consequences of the AI revolution. UC is no exception.
At ExCel there were numerous talks and workshops on the topic. It was also covered in a series of insightful blogs on the official exhibition web site.
What we learned was that there are two mains ways that machine learning/AI can change UC.
First, there are programmable assistants or chatbots that act as the first line of customer contact, and deal with the most common queries. Obviously, these tools are already out there.
Second, there are applications that can crunch real life data to make UC more productive for both the people inside an enterprise and the customers calling them.
We’re talking about machines that can understand sentiment by ‘listening’ to multiple voice recordings or analyse thousands of interactions to identify what made them successful or not
Ultimately, the most forward-looking companies will use these systems to improve the workflows and processes.
There’s no doubt AI will be a hugely important tech. And it’s significant that, just before the show, Avaya made its own move in the space by announcing a strategic partnership with Afiniti to develop AI systems to improve the contact centre.
Overall, we’ll look back on UC Expo as a landmark event – the first to feature a post C11 Avaya with a ‘cloud first’ strategy. Also, the first to showcase Formation as Avaya’s chosen mid-market partner.
The stand was buzzing, and we brought back a stack of business cards from interested customers.
But no flying saucers. All gone.
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