The Gist of ITEXPO

ITEXPO just ended in Fort Lauderdale, where it was for quite a few years. (The Miami Beach Convention Center is being renovated.) Here are a few things I saw at ITEXPO:

SD-WAN is a better term than SDN (software defined network) and dynamic bandwidth is a better way to talk about it to your customers.

The data center is a pivotal part of any network – VoIP, Enterprise or Service Provider. Improvements to the data center are coming from NFV, SDN and companies like Fiber Mountain and Rackspace.

After the acquisition and absorption of FreePBX, Sangoma looks a lot like Digium. The two had booths next to each other and the similarities were startling.

You knew you were in the ITEXPO hall by all of the desk phones on display. (The room lacking the phones was the IOT expo.)

In my open source panel discussion, one comment that I liked was that the Bell-Heads are retiring (finally), hence why open source is being adopted.

I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but many people that were in telecom have fled. Quite a few went to cloud providers, but a good number have left the industry altogether.

One discussion at the dinner Monday night centered on the sudden drop in demand for desk phones when selling UCaaS. Seems folks would rather have a Plantronics bluetooth headset and the softphones. Also, users want to be able to turn up the UC fast, which CAN be done with apps/softphones, and not with desk phones (or number porting).

From the API panel, a few points were made. (1) The value in Business Process Improvement (BPI) is in the removal of friction. Remove friction from sales, from paperwork, from data entry, from support, from implementation. (2) The API lets the information (data) be free. (3) The biggest companies have ecosystems powered by APIs – Google, Apple, Amazon, Salesforce.

Back in the day, the Holy Grail for contact center was single call resolution, which was almost impossible because of organizational silos, walled gardens of data and software project management. Today, those obstacles are slowly disappearing.

Customer Experience will be the chief differentiation. If 420 carriers are selling BSFT, the one that provides the best CX or UX will win. (No one stands out yet).

Hotels and convention centers have to get better at wi-fi.

Trade shows are still the best way to meet people face to face which is still the foundation for relationships, an element required for sales.

Tags: API, app, BPaaS, BPI, broadsoft, call center, customer service, data center, SDN, UC, UX
Related tags: phones, itexpo, center, better