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To start February, we’ve seen new announcements from the leading communications company, Cisco, celebrating its Cisco Live event. Recent reports have revealed that UC cloud adoption is growing rapidly, and more companies are jumping into CPaaS than ever before.
Gamma, an award-winning and leading provider of UCaaS are this month’s headline sponsor. Across February we’re covering all things about UC and UCaaS, so be sure to check out all our latest features and news stories by visiting our UCaaS category on the UC Today website
If you’ve missed out on any of our most exciting stories from the past few weeks – here are some of the highlights to keep you on track.
Microsoft Patches Embarrassing Bug
For many businesses, Monday mornings often start the same way – checking emails and logging into Microsoft Teams. Unfortunately, this week, that schedule was thrown out of the window, as thousands of people faced error messages when they attempted to check their Teams app. Just after 9 am Eastern Standard Time, Microsoft confirmed that the Teams app was experiencing outages.
A little later, the company noted that the reason for the problem was that they had forgotten to renew a crucial security certificate. Though Microsoft repaired the issue quite quickly, it was an embarrassing fumble for one of the leading tech brands, and a problem that left countless companies without access to their collaboration tools.
Comcast Buys Blueface
Consolidation has been a common trend in the UC and collaboration space recently, as businesses of all sizes look for new ways to optimise and grow for a new generation of customers. On the 27th of January, the American Telecoms conglomerate, Comcast, announced that it had completed its acquisition of Blueface, the Ireland-based provider of UCaaS tech.
The Comcast portfolio of business-grade communication solutions will now include the proprietary and fully-customizable UC platform from Blueface as part of its offer, further helping organisations to find the UC&C services best suited to their needs. You can learn more about the acquisition in our full news report, here.
Rounding Up Cisco Live!
Cisco held its exciting Cisco Live! Europe event in Barcelona at the end of January this year, providing an excellent opportunity for buyers, partners, and others to catch up on the latest innovation from the collaboration giant. Just some of the announcements from this annual event included the news that the Webex Assistant that would be able to speak Spanish soon, and that Cisco would be bringing more AI to everything from IVR to chatbots.
Cisco also revealed a bunch of exciting new improvements to the Webex Contact Centre for enterprise companies, which will now support up to 24,000 agents at a time through Cisco’s “Flex Plan.” What’s more, we learned about the arrival of things like searchable meeting transcripts, improved huddle rooms, and patched bugs too. Here’s everything you might have missed.
Avaya Appoints New Managing Director for UK
Avaya is another business that’s been seeing a lot of strategic growth in recent months. In 2019, Avaya announced its new partnership with RingCentral, designed to take the company further into the age of cloud. Now, the brand is introducing Steve Joyner to the C-Suite as the new Managing Director for the UK and Ireland.
Joyner will be reporting to the VP of Europe, Ronald Rubens, and he’ll be working on championing and enhancing the customer-first culture of the Avaya brand. Rubens will also be working hard to take Avaya’s cloud strategy to the next level as the company continues to embark on a massive-scale digital transformation. Check out the story here.
Cisco Patches IOS Software Risks
Cisco, one of the leaders in the communication and collaboration landscape, recently announced that it has successfully patched up some high-risk security flaws that recently appeared in its portfolio. The flaws were evident on the Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE releases that emerged prior to 2019.09.19.1956m.
According to Cisco, the company found a vulnerability within the web-based interface of the Video Mesh for Cisco Webex. This vulnerability allowed remote intruders to perform certain commands within an affected system. The flaw was instantly deemed a high-priority case by Cisco, and the team worked to repair the bug as quickly as possible.
Microsoft Teams Releases its January Update
Microsoft Teams might be the most popular and fastest-growing collaboration tool for enterprises today, but it’s not going to just sit back on its laurels now that it’s achieved the top spot. Microsoft is still working on making Microsoft Teams the best collaborative solution for all businesses, which means constantly rolling out a stream of new technology updates.
Our own Rob Scott spoke to Microsoft MVP and Expert Guest Tom Arbuthnot about all of the latest updates to the Microsoft portfolio, including the arrival of the new Lenovo ThinkSmart View video endpoint, and the introduction of new features for Teams focused on firstline workers.
Top Tips for CPaaS in 2020
Communications Platforms as a Service might not be a new concept for 2020, but it’s certainly something that many people are beginning to pay more attention to. As businesses search for more flexibility from their communication and collaboration network, CPaaS allows them to escape the one-size-fits-all environment once and for all.
The question is, how do you get started with CPaaS if you’re new to the marketplace? This week, we covered some of our top tips for CPaaS, and you can make the most of this flexible new approach to communication. From learning about APIs to understanding your market leaders, read our latest guide for some much-needed insights.
What are your favourite stories from the last week? Let us know in the comments or come and join the conversation with us on social media. Don’t forget to check out the UC Summit if you haven’t already too. The summit is open and ready to access now!
The Latest Cisco Contact Centre Updates
On the second day of the Cisco Live event this year, the company introduced attendees to some thrilling changes within the contact centre landscape. Cisco told us about the upcoming integrations it would be embracing with Google’s Cloud Contact Centre AI, and the Voicea brand. These collaborations will help people using the Cisco landscape to take their contact centre environments to the next level.
The collaboration between Cisco and Voicea creates a new Webex AI assistant that provides full transcripts and summaries of voice conversations. On the other hand, the integration with Google Cloud Contact Centre AI helps to unlock new conversational AI opportunities in the customer experience landscape.
UC Cloud Adoption to Grow in 2020
We’ve seen a lot of evidence over recent years that businesses far and wide are ready to embrace the flexibility and scalability of cloud technology. Now that the new decade is here, it seems as though the demand for cloud UC is bound to grow even further. In a recent guest blog, Steven Johnson of Ingate Systems shared his insights into the evolving cloud UC environment.
Steven highlighted the expanding need for a cloud-based voice in an environment affected by digital transformation. He also drew focus to the “many flavours of cloud” and how interoperability is bound to be a crucial consideration in the years ahead. Check out the full guest blog here.
RingCentral Explains the Benefits of CPaaS
CPaaS has emerged as one of the most valuable as-a-service technologies in the communication and collaboration landscape of late. This technology ensures that businesses of all sizes and backgrounds can make the most out of their communication stack, without having to rely on one-size-fits-all tools. VP for Product Platform, David Lee of RingCentral, shared his thoughts on the importance of leveraging CPaaS.
According to David, companies need to consider CPaaS with a focus on intent. It’s important to ensure that IT can effectively manage and monitor a full CPaaS environment if companies want this innovation to thrive. Check out Lee’s thoughts here.
What are your favourite stories from this week? Let us know in the comments or join the conversation on social media – as usual! Don’t forget to continue climbing to the top of our UC Summit too – for plenty of exciting insights and knowledge from the UC&C space.
