Discussing the New Wave of Cloud at the Cloud Communications Summit 2018

The Cavell Group comment on the transformation in cloud

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Unified Communications

Published: March 14, 2018

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

Following the success of the European VoIP Summit from 2017, the Cavell Group travelled to London on the 8th of March this year to discuss the present and future state of cloud communications. The “VoIP” event was rebranded to the Cloud Communications Summit for 2018, as the industry begins to discuss possibilities beyond voice to customer contact, collaboration, and more.

I was lucky enough to attend the Cloud Communications Summit for this year, where Matt Townend from the Cavell Group took the stage with a keynote speech about the evolving state of communications, and how service providers must transform to serve an enhanced customer base.

A New Wave of Cloud Communications

Matt began his speech by suggesting that we’re currently experiencing new waves in the way that we approach cloud computing and communications.

“For a long time, we were just creating desk phone replacements. Now, vendors are in the middle of a better, and broader cloud communications wave, and a broader collaboration wave too. We’re moving towards more intelligence, AI, and analytics for the industry.”

Townend said that the industry has been stuck in a PBX replacement world for some time now, but we’re starting to see growth in a new world coming through. While the market in the UK is still fragmented, things are changing. “We’ve started to see growth slow in the SIP trunking space over the last period as people move directly to the cloud. We’ve also seen a much higher penetration of “Guerrilla” providers who take up more of the market.”

The hosted market is maturing, and Europe is an example of the significant growth that the space has seen. “People in the UK are starting to look at the possibilities of better mobility, stronger collaboration features and more. The challenge, of course, is how service providers can take these new trends and implement and monetise them.”

The Importance of Differentiation

Matt Townend Cavell Group
Matt Townend, Cavell Group

According to Matt and the Cavell Group, as everyone begins to look at the same trends in the cloud industry, one of the biggest challenges that service providers face is how they’re going to differentiate their offering. “Smart segmentation is one option and offering smarter service approaches to customers is crucial too.

“Companies are innovating more, pushing more cash into research and development. We’re also seeing people looking at buying up other companies so that they can evolve. 2017 was a hell of a year in terms of acquisition and consolidation. There’s been a huge amount of activity happening in terms of growth and strategic partnerships, particularly across the international market.”

Townend noted that he believes we’ll begin to see more “European roll-ups” in the industry.

“I think we’re going to see more people launching European services and going for acquisitions that expand their reach.”

He also suggested that there’ll be a lot of new names as we head into the next year. Strategic partnerships could be more of a significant opportunity as vendors look at offering solutions to a wider selection of customers who have similar business behaviours.

Transforming Teams for Vertical Solutions

Another point that Townend made during his speech, is that we’re going to be seeing more vertical solutions in the industry.

“The biggest challenge for a lot of vendors is figuring out how to transform their sales teams so that they can approach new vertical customers. The answer could be to change the sales teams by employing people outside of the Comms market and looking for expertise within the marketing world.”

According to the Cavell Group, in the years ahead, it’s going to be crucial for brands to start figuring out how they can have the right conversations with customers and set themselves apart from the crowd. Matt suggested that we’ve started to see some service differentiations already, with companies offering broader ranges of service levels. “People are looking for new ways of carving out new channel opportunities, and some really interesting analytical things are going on.”

Cavell Cloud
Panel debate – “Is Voice Dead?”

Cavell reports also suggest that many people will be looking for an SD-WAN offering in the upcoming year, followed by options for team collaboration, video services, video calling and more.

“SD-WAN is either a big enabler or big threat depending on where you’re sitting. However, as a cloud Comms provider, you have to offer the quality your customers are looking for. If you’re the person providing SD-WAN to the user, then you have a stickier solution and more opportunities for sales.

The Value of Strong Customer Interactions

During the last 2-3 years, buying decisions have changed drastically in the modern marketplace. Today’s consumers are pre-qualifying themselves by going online and searching for the brands they might want to buy from before they ever land at an enterprise. These people are highly qualified, empowered, and informed, which is why interactions are growing more complex for enterprises.

“There’s great value in how people can help their customers maximize their interaction experiences. That’s why we’re seeing things like recording, analytics, and other sorts of intelligence coming into the fold.”

“I think this is going to be a huge area as the advanced contact centre becomes a main point of differentiation for organisations focused on customer experience (CX).”

Additionally, as people work more frequently outside of the office, the workplace environment will rely more on the cloud for mobility too. There are new opportunities everywhere for collaboration, and Cavell’s latest research suggests that companies need to differentiate themselves by looking at how to compete with the /unified-communications/cpaas providers in the marketplace. The Smart CSP report offers more information, but for Matt, the main issue right now is all about differentiation – ensuring that there’s something you can offer their customers that they can’t get elsewhere, whether it’s contact centre, data access, or analytics.

Talking About the Future

As his keynote came to an end, Matt once again established that he believes that owning the SD-WAN relationship is going to be vital in the year ahead – as it’s the new sticky product for Comms resellers.

“If you own the SD-WAN relationship, you’ll drive revenue and new customers.”

Additionally, Townend also announced the exciting news that the next event the Cavell Group will be hosting will be within the American market. “We’re taking this event to the US. Our friends in the US have nothing like this event – no vendor-neutral place that they can get together to discuss opportunities and technology, so we’re going to bring it to them.”

The Cloud Communications Summit will be running on the 26th of June 2018, in Washington, and it will be organised by the Cloud Communications Alliance and the Cavell Group. To find out more, click here.

 

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