What has been your business/work highlight or achievement of 2024?

Launched our new and improved Channel Insight service to drive better insights into the IT and telecoms channel.

Who do you think has had the most positive impact on the UC space in 2024 and why? 

I know the majority of the impact that he would have had on the industry would have been in 2023 but I’ll still say Sam Altman and OpenAI. 2024 saw providers and vendors rapidly embedding AI into their product suites and without OpenAI, the increased adoption and focus on AI probably wouldn’t have happened.

What was your biggest business surprise in 2024?

The lack of differentiation still exists for many providers in the industry. There is still very similar messaging and positioning of their product sets and as the market matures there is going to have to be a rapid change in how businesses make sure that they can offer true differentiation as it is only getting more competitive.

What was the most useful business book/podcast you’ve read/listened to in 2024?

On the recommendation of Zoom’s CTO, I read The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind. Great insights into how AI may be adopted into different areas of our lives as well as the growing risks. As I’m still in the midst of new parenthood, most of the books I read are children’s books!

What’s the biggest challenge you and your team will face in 2025?

I think the requirements that our customers are looking for us to help them with is changing at a much faster pace. This is creating a challenge for us of how much deeper we need to go into new areas and the widening of areas that our customers don’t understand. We’re currently supporting customers on their strategy around business messaging, regulation, AI, security and many more. Whether it is GTM, product or M&A strategy, there is always more to learn!

What technology will have the greatest impact on your business in 2025 and why?

I’m going to say what I imagine everyone else is going to say and go for AI. We’re testing a number of AI services and tools to make our team more productive, some are great, some not so much.