For 3 consecutive years now, UC Today has been an official media partner for the leading cloud communications event in Europe, Cloud Comms Summit. This year was another exciting opportunity for us to visit the conference and find out more about how cloud comms is taking shape. Despite a few missing attendees unable to travel due to the Coronavirus, the Summit was just as good as last year in terms of the overall number of attendees.
Aside for some excellent chances to network, the Cloud Comms Summit also delivered a lot of outstanding messages about how the market is changing. Last year, the focus was heavily on differentiation and how service providers could compete in the marketplace. This year, there was still plenty of discussion in this area, with insights into things like M&A deals for growth, and conversations about video collaboration being the next must-have for service providers.
Incredible Insights from Cloud Comms Summit
Discussions around M&A deals in the industry were particularly exciting this year. Blueface’s Group CEO was there, who have recently sold the company to Comcast Business. That acquisition offers a great example of UCaaS providers selling platforms, technology, and people to another major player. Deals like that allow Comcast Business to access more investments, while the Blueface company has a chance to drive transformation quickly with its own cloud solution.
Companies maintaining their own cloud communication solutions is a particularly important consideration today. In a world where Cisco is dominating with BroadSoft technology, there’s still some concern around Cisco and BroadWorks playing a major role in the service providers future.
A big discussion at Cloud Comms Summit was where and how providers could scale, and what they might do next to evolve. There was also a lot of discussion around the cultural differences among countries. Many companies and end-users work in different ways across various geographies. The customer, the SMB and the enterprise all work in different ways too. There was a lot of discussion about how you’re going to deliver what the customer really wants in this new environment.
As the service provider landscape becomes more competitive, it’s important for business leaders to make sure that they’re doing enough to understand what their clients need. This plays into the differentiation theme that appeared in last year’s Cloud Comms Summit.
Setting a New Strategy for the Future
Another major discussion point for this year was around Microsoft Teams, and how people could address the demand for this kind of technology. Businesses now need to think about how they’re going to either work with the Microsoft Teams solution or compete against it.