No, I don’t be AI.
Does anyone remember PGi and their GlobalMeet product? Siris acquired PGI in 2015 for $1B! PGi was in the video meeting, webinar, collab space. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, they were nowhere to be found. Kind of like Webex. When was the last time you received a Webex invite? Except for my clients that own a BroadWorks, I never receive a Webex invite.
At CCA, all the talk was about AI.
At Enterprise Connect, much of the talk was about AI.
No one is talking about service delivery or customer pain.
During the pandemic, it was Zoom and Microsoft that took hold. Neither were on any quadrants prior to that.
As I look at the cloud communications arena, I am almost sure it will be an outside horse that takes the market by storm.
There are dark horses already: Content Guru, Sprinklr, Gladly, Kustomer and so many more.
There are platforms launching aimed just at very small business.
Everyone is looking at AI.
The business software platforms like Hubspot, Zoho, Freshworks, Zendesk and of course Salesforce and Adobe – are all making noise in Agentic AI. All have added Voice and chat. These platforms alongside Amazon are eating away at the market that was dominated by Avaya and Mitel.
Ultimately, the UCaaS providers have to realize that voice is why people are buying from them – along with a sense of “replacing the PBX” while remaining close to that experience. They need to RE-IMAGINE what cloud comms mean.
Prior to the pandemic, UCaaS was a solution without a problem. It still is. Hybrid communications, Work from Anywhere or as Cavell has coined, “Intelligent Workplace”. It all is still in the UC&C bucket. The problem is what pain point is the Buyer searching for?
At CCA25, the analysts said that the use cases were generic and the AI was generic. This industry should have Gone Vertical years ago. But they all thought they would be the next AT&T or get acquired. How did that work out?
Even with AI, the lack of Differentiation is a large problem.
Sales are getting bogged down by AI.
