For 30 years, Enterprise Connect’s been the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise-grade unified communications and collaboration in North America. This year was the conference’s first-ever digital iteration. The event brought together IT decision-makers, industry vendors, analysts, and consultants, to explore the technologies that enable enterprises to, well, connect.
The four-day event lasted from August 3-6, 2020, and there was a robust lineup of content and speakers. There were over 20 sessions, tech demos, and the conferences first-ever “Women in Communications Awards, which honored six female trailblazers in enterprise comms, including Jennifer Berry, PMP, Cigna, Gauri Bhalerao, Yum! Brands, Kim Corazzini, Capital One, Melanie Parker, Centene (WellCare), Kristina Russell, MedStar, and Josée Duchesne, Pembina Pipeline.
The online event had a lot of sessions focusing on unified communications, contact center/customer experience, team, audio, video collaboration, and cloud communications. After the online event ends, you can still purchase a premium pass to gain access to four, two-hour seminars for $299. Those are as follows:
- Practical post-pandemic strategies for success
- Unified communications security
- Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom: clearing the WFH fog
- CCaaS: Is it delivering on its promises?
“These in-depth seminars will take place every Friday in August, starting the day after the main Virtual Event closes. They will be led by long-time industry experts and consultants,” conference organizers shared in a statement.
Starting things off, 8×8 showcased its Open Communications Platform. The company has one of the industry’s most comprehensive portfolios of enterprise communications tools. Bandwidth Inc. announced its DuetSM for Microsoft Teams, the only comprehensive solution for Direct Routing and E911 available from a carrier that owns and operates its own underlying infrastructure.
Crestron Electronics, Inc. displayed a variety of new and updated products that help organizations drive greater communication, collaboration, and productivity at scale. This included the company’s latest – the Crestron Flex UC solutions; Crestron XiO Cloud; AirMedia 2.0 wireless presentation technology; Crestron advanced room scheduling, and, Crestron digital signage platform.
Fuze enhanced its Microsoft Teams integration, expanding on existing meeting capabilities, enabling global calling escalation across the two platforms, and on any device. Fuze’s real-time communications, combined with Teams’ messaging and content collaboration let users around the globe access seamless, enterprise-grade communications, and collaboration.
On the service management front, Ivanti recently unveiled Ivanti Neurons, a hyper-automation platform that lets enterprises to proactively, predictably, and autonomously self-heal as well as self-secure devices/users. Lifesize debuted new enhanced collaboration features to its secure video conferencing platform and gave a demo of upcoming integrations with Alexa for Business, virtual backgrounds, and meeting transcription.
Lifesize also previewed new ‘CxEngage’ Video functionalities meant to enhance contact center customer engagement. Newline Interactive announced the expansion of its award-winning IP series, introing a new 55″ touch display designed for huddle rooms. Vision Point Systems, Inc. launched a set of managed service offerings to support Twilio Flex.
Eric Krapf, General Manager and Program Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect, told UC Today: “This all took place in the event’s virtual exhibition hall, where attendees got a look at the newest technology and solutions impacting our industry.” Krapf added: “We’re excited to provide a virtual environment where attendees can network with exhibitors and compare the products and services organizations need to advance their communications strategy.”
