For 3 consecutive years now, UC Today has been an official media partner for the leading cloud communications event in Europe, Cloud Comms Summit. This year was another exciting opportunity for us to visit the conference and find out more about how cloud comms is taking shape. Despite a few missing attendees unable to travel due to the Coronavirus, the Summit was just as good as last year in terms of the overall number of attendees.
Aside for some excellent chances to network, the Cloud Comms Summit also delivered a lot of outstanding messages about how the market is changing. Last year, the focus was heavily on differentiation and how service providers could compete in the marketplace. This year, there was still plenty of discussion in this area, with insights into things like M&A deals for growth, and conversations about video collaboration being the next must-have for service providers.
Incredible Insights from Cloud Comms Summit
Discussions around M&A deals in the industry were particularly exciting this year. Blueface’s Group CEO was there, who have recently sold the company to Comcast Business. That acquisition offers a great example of UCaaS providers selling platforms, technology, and people to another major player. Deals like that allow Comcast Business to access more investments, while the Blueface company has a chance to drive transformation quickly with its own cloud solution.
Companies maintaining their own cloud communication solutions is a particularly important consideration today. In a world where Cisco is dominating with BroadSoft technology, there’s still some concern around Cisco and BroadWorks playing a major role in the service providers future.
A big discussion at Cloud Comms Summit was where and how providers could scale, and what they might do next to evolve. There was also a lot of discussion around the cultural differences among countries. Many companies and end-users work in different ways across various geographies. The customer, the SMB and the enterprise all work in different ways too. There was a lot of discussion about how you’re going to deliver what the customer really wants in this new environment.
As the service provider landscape becomes more competitive, it’s important for business leaders to make sure that they’re doing enough to understand what their clients need. This plays into the differentiation theme that appeared in last year’s Cloud Comms Summit.
Setting a New Strategy for the Future
Another major discussion point for this year was around Microsoft Teams, and how people could address the demand for this kind of technology. Businesses now need to think about how they’re going to either work with the Microsoft Teams solution or compete against it.
Every CSP seems to understand that they need to tick the Teams box. However, they have to figure out how to get involved from the right angle. Will you partner with someone else to create an alternative or will you look into integrations with Microsoft?
Perhaps one of the most significant conversations this year was also the discussion of how we’re moving beyond voice in the marketplace. We’ve heard a lot about the move to video these days, and a lot of businesses are rethinking their communication stack accordingly. All service providers today need collaboration and video conferencing tools. However, the way that they implement these solutions can vary. There are options to find an open API based solution, partner with someone like Zoom, or even acquire a pre-existing technology.
What Does the Future Look Like?
The Cloud Comms Summit included some consideration of what the future might look like for small cloud communication service providers too. It seems as though we’re moving more aggressively beyond the voice-only cloud PBX solution into a full-fat UCaaS offering from every provider. Most service providers are catching on to this, but there are still some voice-only vendors that need to catch up.
Experts discussed how these businesses can go forward and differentiate in a very busy environment. Dom Black got on the stage to discuss the incredible growth of the industry, and how the cloud communications market in Europe is set to double in the next five years.
Despite some small impact from the coronavirus, the event was still a thriving and educational experience for everyone involved. I’d definitely encourage any reseller looking to become a service provider, as well as all service providers to visit one of these events if they can. If you’re looking to grow and succeed with UCaaS, this is a fantastic event to be a part of. You can check out the Cloud Comms Summit website to find out when the next event is available.
