UCaaS is done. The Enterprise Connect Expo has moved past it. This show resembles InfoComm circa 2013. A/V, interactive displays, whiteboards have joined contact center in the cloud for this show.
It is CCaaS with AI. It is CPaaS with AI. Alexa with AI. Google Assist.
This show is definitely geared to sell to enterprise and to impress the analysts, who are here en masse.
Google Cloud was a surprise booth.
Dolby has a booth?!
There are some names I have never heard of. I wonder if they will be here next year.
Plantronics rolled out the new brand: Poly. (They own Polycom.)
NEC is showcasing all the IoT that they layer on top of UC, like sound detection, biometrics, smart building and employee experience.
AWS has a big presence, touting AI, which seems to be the magic term here.
Intelepeer is giving out free t-shirts as they tell the story of their CPaaS 2.0/AI/chatbot marketplace.
VoIP Innovations launched their Showcase (marketplace for CPaaS also).
So the hot topic is AI – or intelligence layered on top of 15 year old technology.
Let’s not forget that a lot of these homebrews – 5Nines, Ring, Vonage, 8×8 and others – are approaching 15 years sitting on the same technology. Think SOAP, Java and other language snippets that no longer are used (or supported). In 15 years, your PC was running XP in 2001 to Win10 today. Or more likely to Apple.
Channele2e has a round up of news I left out.
UBM (owner of EC) has chosen to go big with booths. There are a lot of booths larger than 30×30. It makes it all look bigger but it also hides all the smaller booths.