BIG UC NEWS from Zoom, Dialpad and Google

Welcome back to your weekly gathering of all the hottest news coming from the unified comms space.

This week Zoom held its annual Zoomtopia event, where it introduced its Video Engagement Center, among many other new features to the video platform. Elsewhere, Dialpad acquired customer experience analytics platform Kare Knowledgeware, and UC EXPO returns next month!

Zoomtopia’s Biggest Announcements

The video conferencing vendor announced several new features to its platform at its annual Zoomtopia event, held virtually again this year.

One of the most exciting reveals is that of the Zoom Engagement Center (ZEC), which is built on the same technology that powers Zoom’s meetings and is designed to make it easier for companies to engage with their clients digitally.

“Our customers told us they need help supporting inbound, customer-driven requests around service and satisfaction,” stated Oded Gal, Chief Product Officer at Zoom.

“These opportunities to connect your end users and organisations through video are something we feel passionately about.

“We’re building an end-to-end service that integrations many of the isolated systems that customers use to address their own customer satisfaction, and we’re doing it in a very Zoom way” 

Zoom also announced a new partnership with Oculus, which will see Zoom Whiteboard and Zoom Meetings integrated with Oculus’ recently announced Horizon Workrooms. Along with these, it also launched a whiteboard feature in a bid to boost asynchronous collaboration.

The vendor also launched a new partner programme with the aim of increasing the adoption of Zoom Phone. The Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) programme lets resellers sell licences that allow customers to connect their existing PSTN calling plans into the Zoom Phone platform.

We’ve seen a lot of success in selling Zoom Phone, reaching two million seats in just 10 quarters, and I see a lot of opportunity for our resellers with our Zoom Phone BYOC programme,” said Laura Padilla, Head of Global BD and Channel at Zoom.

“Zoom Phone BYOC provides customers with the flexibility to stay on their current carrier or easily use a combination to best meet their geographic reach and service needs.”

Who’s Leading the CPaaS Market?

Synergy Research Group revealed that Twilio, Vonage, and Sinch dominate some 58 percent of the fast-growing communications platform as a service (CPaaS) market.

Twilio is leading the pack, with a 38 percent slice of the pie, followed by Vonage at 11.8 percent and Sinch at 8.1 percent.

Fazil Balkaya, Principal Analyst at Synergy Research Group, stated:

“We believe the technology is poised to provide significant enhancements to business communications and sophisticated customer service applications, driving this market to the $14bn mark by 2025″

“We believe we are at the beginning of the CPaaS evolution as sophisticated customer engagement and advanced communications can become the key building blocks of future communication tools.”

Dialpad Snaps Up Kare Knowledgeware

Dialpad acquired London-based customer experience analytics platform Kare Knowledgeware.

Kare specialises in the optimisation of workflow orchestration, knowledge management, and business intelligence.

Kare will be integrated into Dialpad Contact Center, broadening the use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing across the Dialpad platform.

Craig Walker, CEO at Dialpad, said of the acquisition:

“Kare Knowledgeware and Dialpad have very similar DNA, with a passion to pursue the vast possibilities of AI, turn them into reality and leverage the power of AI to revolutionize the CX industry”

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The Return of UC EXPO

Europe’s largest unified communications and collaboration event is back next month for a two-day, in-person event to be held at London ExCel.

UC EXPO will take place on 6 and 7 October and, for the first time, be combined with Digital Transformation EXPO Europe.

“We’ll share ground-breaking strategies, inspiring case studies, and the very best solutions available for essential IT projects,” said James McGough, Managing Director of Clarion Events, which organises the event.

“We’ve enjoyed keeping people connected virtually, but there’s nothing quite like face-to-face for sharing ideas and finding those all-important ‘light bulb’ moments.

“There’s a huge appetite returning for live events. People are ready to get out from behind their screens and we’ll be making sure that we follow the All Secure Standard to keep everyone safe and comfortable in October”

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Google’s Latest Hardware

The tech giant has revealed two new additions to its Meet-certified hardware line-up.

The new devices, Desk 27 and Board 65, are manufactured by Avocor and are part of the Google Meet Series One portfolio.

Dave Citron, Director of Product Management for Google Meet and Meet hardware, said: “The best video and collaboration experiences bring together Google Meet and Meet hardware—accelerating overall productivity.

“Google Workspace users logged more than 1 trillion video minutes in 2020 and the number of Google Meet video users continues to grow, so we are pleased to work with Avocor to bring exciting new hardware options to our customers”

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