Learning the Lessons from Cloud Comms Summit 2019

Our roundup of Cloud Comms Summit 2019 which has been taking place in Washington DC

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Lecture CCS
Unified Communications

Published: September 13, 2019

Patrick Watson

September brought us one of the unified communication industry’s most valued events, the Cloud Comms Summit which concluded this week. The event, targeted at the service provider community, attracted over 300 service providers to the Lansdowne Resort and Spa in Virginia, USA. UC Today was one of the event’s 32 sponsors and was in attendance to bring you all of the key news and trends from this year’s conference.

Cavell Group is one of the thought-leaders in the global future voice and VoIP marketplace, providing analytics and insights across the industry. The US marketplace is a key focus for Cavell and in an increasingly globalised world there are growing synergies between different geographical markets. The event is hosted in conjunction with the Cloud Communications Alliance, CCA, a global association committed to promoting and growing the cloud communications industry and made up of companies with related interests within the market.

Cavell and the CCA committed to donating a proportion of the ticket sale revenue from this year’s event to the charity Tuesday’s Children. The organisation provides lifetime support for survivors of terrorism or traumatic loss. In the week marking the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist atrocity it was a gesture that was particularly fitting as the organisation was founded in the aftermath of the tragedy to support children who had lost a parent.

Matt Townend, Cavell’s Research and Consulting Director, explains the ethos of the Cloud Comms Summit.

“The event is all about learning – from key industry experts, peers and vendors, we hope that we can deliver an insightful event sharing our own research and having all our attendees sharing their experiences”

Gathering a host of industry leading speakers, this year’s Summit aimed to allow attendees to share best practices, discuss key trends and meet leading communications vendors to explore their latest solutions. The opening keynote, from Elka Popova, VP & Senior Fellow for Digital Transformation at Frost and Sullivan, examined the main workplace trends that will be impacting service providers. As well as covering the increasing value placed by decision makers on environmental factors, Popova also reviewed ‘key success’ factors that will help service providers succeed in an increasingly crowded market.

Popova cited the importance of integration capabilities for service providers, through APIs, but also was keen to impress the vital role that emerging technologies are going to play in truly differentiated solutions. As well as highlighting key technology factors Popova also called on those gathered to look at the industry’s ‘winners’, highlighting companies like Microsoft, Zoom and RingCentral providing different examples of why each business is doing so well. Focuses on extensible platforms, creating a great user experiences, unique marketing and sales tactics were all referenced as factors in these companies’ successes.

For the event the CCA along with Cavell also unveiled the results of a survey put to service providers which unveiled some interesting trends. By canvassing 45 leading service providers the survey revealed various trends impacting the market covering merger and acquisition plans, their views on market growth and analysis of perceived threats.

“70% (of service providers surveyed) believe that Microsoft will become more of a competitive threat in the future.”

There is more detailed analysis of the research to come from UC Today over the coming weeks.

CCS19 Panel An industry panel taking place at CCS19

As well as thought leadership from the industry’s most well respected analysts the Cloud Comms Summit also called on the knowledge of peers to provide crucial insights to the community. A host of interactive panel sessions bought together business leaders from the likes of Cisco, RingCentral, StarBlue, and Vonage to discuss and debate the nuances of various aspects of the industry. These sessions covered information on building value for shareholders as well as generating interest from new customers, who are moving in increasing numbers from legacy based communication solutions.

A large proportion of two day conference was dedicated to separate topic tracks focusing on specific areas of the marketplace. SD-WAN, Product Innovation, Go-To Market strategies and Regulatory Sessions each provided attendees the chance to focus on specific areas of particular interest.

There were various recurring themes that were consistent throughout the event, in keynotes, panels and discussions delivered from different industry perspectives.

We often hear about the role knowledge workers play within the deployment of technology solutions but at this year’s Cloud Comms Summit the importance of not neglecting frontline workers was repeated by various independent sources. A number of the analysts in attendance examined this theme and produced figures showing that frontline workers fulfil an underrepresented proportion of potential technology users in the working population. Other speakers and vendors during the conference implored the service provider community to embrace this section of the workforce by offering solutions that can meet their needs. If service providers can succeed in tapping this neglected area it will virtually guarantee their own strategic successes.

Mobility also garnered huge attention. The adoption of mobile first solutions appears to be led geographically, somewhat surprisingly, by the Nordic region. Now however there was more on more focus placed on the ability for service providers generally to be equipped with a selection of mobile centric solutions. User demand has driven a larger proportion of organisations to want to explore the benefits and cost savings that mobile centric solutions can potentially offer. A new waive of mobile market competition may well be about to dawn, and at this year’s summit providers were actively encouraged not to lose ground by investing in their mobile provision and network management capabilities.

The rising importance of CPaaS, communications platform-as-a-service, was also highlighted from a number of different angles. Integrating communication functionality into business processes appears to be the next generation of the industry’s evolution. Providing customers with specific business applications, catering for different market verticals, with communications forming just one aspect of those solutions may well be ultimate tactic enabling service providers to transform their businesses for foreseeable future. Partnering with other technology businesses specialising in complementary areas of software and service provision to offer end to end, unique business line systems could be key.

Another realisation was acknowledged throughout the conference and that was the power of platforms over products. Most platform providers begin with product development but making the transition to platform provision is not an easy one. The benefits when successful can be remarkable. The likes of Salesforce and Slack provide a perfect example of how the transition can amplify the value of a SaaS provider exponentially. It’s important to differentiate between platforms and products. Products represent an application that caters to a specific problem, or use case, whereas a platform provides a common framework forming the base which is essential for multiple applications to function on top. Creating a platform that can draw additional value from its users could be a route to sustained success. Successful platform providers can draw some of the revenue generated by the application providers operating on top of their platforms. The fact that many of the world’s most successful technology companies are platform providers is no coincidence. Whether the service providers in attendance at the Cloud Comms Summit have the capability, or inclination, to create a successful platform is yet to be determined but the potential rewards were made clear at this year’s conference. Some service providers have already taken action.

In a crowded industry calendar selecting the most valuable events to attend is a difficult task. If you are service provider and want unique strategic insights then the Cloud Comms Summit is one date not to be missed.

Stay tuned to UC Today for more news and video coverage of this year’s Cloud Comms Summit.

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