Enterprise Connect stands out as one of the world’s most valuable and informative events for the communication industry. Every year, thousands of technology and business leaders visit the halls of Enterprise Connect to learn more about the latest influential tools in the marketplace.
This year, the atmosphere was slightly different. With the COVID-19 outbreak forcing more people to stay at home and avoid crowded spaces, events around the world were shut down. Enterprise Connect was forced to shut its physical doors, but that didn’t stop the event’s organisers from finding a different way to reach would-be attendees.
This year, the Enterprise Connect conference took place completely online, allowing individuals to access virtual webinars, and event experiences from the comfort of their own homes. The Enterprise Connect team even announced the winners of the Best of Enterprise Connect Awards program as part of a virtual session.
The Winners: Best of Enterprise Connect
Eric Krapf, Program Co-Chair, and Enterprise Connect General Manager, extended his thanks and congratulations to everyone who took part in this year’s awards. All of the companies that were nominated for one of the awards this year showed incredible innovation and insight with their offerings. Here are the companies that came out on top.
Overall Best of Enterprise Connect:
Journey won the Best of Enterprise Connect award with its Journey Identity platform. The solution aims to support enterprises in establishing reliable connections with customers. The platform solves problems with security, privacy, and customer experience, using best-in-class solutions for identity, and an encrypted network. The features of the platform can be applied dynamically using the existing enterprise mobile app.
Journey was chosen over:
- Genesys Predictive Engagement, working within Genesys Cloud to help enhance interactions across multiple channels
- Glia conversational compliance AI framework, offering intelligent tools within the digital-first customer service platform from Glia
- Mio’s intercompany federation solution for Cisco Webex Teams, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, which allows users to chat easily with people using different apps
- Omilia’s Cloud Platform miniApps system, a zero-touch offering in natural language that can handle single dialogue tasks and adapt to any CCaaS service
- Pexip’s adaptive composition technology, with auto-framing, real-time face detection, and optimised use of screens
The Winners: Best Innovation for Meeting Rooms
Interestingly, this year’s best innovation for meeting rooms award went to three companies instead of one. Avaya, Kramer Electronics, and RingCentral all shared the top spot.
Avaya was recognised for its Spaces solution, the cloud offering that integrates team collaboration tools and web meetings into a single app.
Kramer Electronics earned the award for VIA GO2, a technology that provides PC, Mac, Chromebook, Android, and iOS users with instant wireless connectivity and advanced presentation tech. What’s more, RingCentral was celebrated for its new product, to be announced at Enterprise Connect.
The Enterprise Connect judges couldn’t choose between the three incredible services, and so decided to award the commendation to everyone instead.
Best Innovation in Customer Experience and Best Application for AI
The winner of the Best Innovation in Customer Experience award was Journey. The Journey team walked away with both the Best of Enterprise Connect overall and the best of customer experience for its Identity platform, delivering more secure and advanced experiences to customers.
For the Best Application of Artificial Intelligence, there was another three-way tie between all of the nominees, Genesys, Pexip, and Theta Lake.
Genesys earned the award for the Genesys Predictive engagement solution within Genesys cloud, offering new features to enable companies to anticipate customer needs on every channel. Pexip was recognised for the Adaptive Composition AI technology. The solution offers auto-framing, face detection in real-time, and works with any camera device.
Theta Lake received the award for the Compliant Collaboration archive. This updated module within the Compliance Suite from Theta Lake offers eDiscovery, archiving, and record-keeping solutions for audio, video, and collaborative chat. There’s even on-demand risk analysis with machine learning and artificial intelligence that works across a range of UCaaS platforms. Theta Lake’s solution works with RingCentral, Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and many others.
Best Innovation for Advancing End/User and Employee Engagement
Finally, the award for best innovation for advancing end user and employee engagement was given to Embrava. The Embrava Desk Sign solution offers Office Hotelling, Hot Desking, and Activity-Based Working solutions.
Mio was commended as a runner up for this award, with their intercompany federation technology for Slack, Webex Teams, and Microsoft Teams.
Celebrating Enterprise Connect
For 30 years now, Enterprise Connect has stood out as a leading exhibition and conference for the enterprise unified communications and collaboration environment in North America. Delivered by Informa Tech, Enterprise Connect brings industry vendors, analysts, and buyers together in a shared environment for discovery and innovation. Even now, the conference stands out as one of the biggest events of the year.
The Enterprise Connect Awards was an excellent opportunity for celebrating some of the most innovative tools and technology in the current landscape. Even with the COVID-19 lockdown in place, Enterprise Connect was still able to deliver some much-needed recognition to the companies transforming the communication space for the better.
This year’s judges included the Principal of J Arnold & Associates, Jon Arnold, as well as Principal Analyst and President of KelCor, Brent Kelly. President of Leaden Associates, Steve Leaden, and Principal Analyst and Founder of McGee-Smith Analytics, Sheila McGee-Smith were also judges.
