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BCStrategies Expert David Danto interviews Expert Kevin Kieller related to the April 2025 Comms vNext conference which focused on the Microsoft ecosystem. Kevin recounts his overall impressions and discusses the two sessions he delivered: An AI Assistant Comparison, and Leveraging Copilot Analytics.

Avaya has been sharpening its focus for the future of customer and employee experiences. In this conversation, Blair Pleasant catches up with Pete Lavache, CMO of Avaya, to discuss where the company is focused, what’s different in the contact center space today, and how Avaya is approaching AI.   Blair: “You joined Avaya as CMO last November. Would you be able to tell me what the company’s been focused on since you joined and how your team is supporting those efforts? “   Pete: “Yes, it’s been a busy time. First and foremost, we’ve been laser focused on aligning and operationalizing the company to serve the largest and most complex enterprises and governments around the world—a market Avaya is best fit to serve. Centering the strategy and associated investments has helped us not only exhibit the necessary financial discipline required to baseline Avaya’s cost structure in a way that streamlined operations but, more importantly, helped build a much more agile organization. I’ve also been partnering closely with Tony [Lama, our product leader] and David [Funck, our Chief Architect] on the product strategy targeting the enterprise. We are continually refining our approach to better align with the needs of that market, including how we service these customers and ensure that our solutions are personalized for organizations at scale.    I’m very much a product-focused CMO, and the product aspect of this role was something that further piqued my interest about joining Avaya—the company has an incredible legacy as a technology pioneer. Additionally, the Edify acquisition and the potential to streamline and simplify operations and hyper-personalize experiences was a big draw. When combined with our core hallmarks of  reliability and scalability, which are things we do head and shoulders better than our competition, Avaya is able to meet customers where they are and enable them to go where they want to go.”     Blair: "You’ve spent time in the contact center space before, then pivoted into cybersecurity— and now you’re back. Given that unique perspective, what’s different about the contact center industry today? What are you seeing now that maybe wasn’t as front and center before?"   Pete : “Honestly, it kind of feels like everything old is new again. The problems we were trying to solve years ago — they haven’t changed all that much. It's still about improving agent experience, customer satisfaction, and making things work better. But what has changed is the toolkit we have to address these problems.   As I mentioned, one of the things I was really excited about was the Edify acquisition. When I looked at that technology and how it fits into our space, it opened a whole new set of possibilities — especially around customers being able to go back and modernize the parts of their infrastructure that maybe they didn't get quite right the first time. You know, those original systems that were implemented years ago but never really delivered the value they were supposed to. Now, with AI-driven tools and more flexibility around deployment options – whether on-prem, cloud, or hybrid – we can help optimize workflows, make agents more efficient and ultimately streamline operations in a way that’s scalable and future-ready.   Whether its agent assists or sentiment analysis or voice analytics — things customers have been chasing forever — you’ve now got a whole new generation of tech to solve these problems in new ways. If you look at players in many of these spaces, they were desparately trying to transform those features into standalone companies when I left. Now, with the shifts in the market especially around AI, many of these companies are struggling because those features are finding their way back into platforms. This creates opportunities for companies like Avaya, because we can bring those capabilities back into the platform and do it in a way that’s scalable and reliable — what Avaya has always done well.   If you look at our competitors, everyone’s leading with AI in their boilerplates and overall marketing.  We’ve been intentional about not just jumping on buzzwords. We’re focused on practical AI — what value AI will drive for our customers. To me, this is a big shift we’ve made and one that presents both an opportunity and a responsibility for us  as business leaders. We can either let AI be shaped solely by scale, or we can design it to foster richer, smarter, and more trusted relationships between companies and their customers, and between organizations and their employees.”    Blair: “I’m glad you brought up AI — let’s talk about that. What’s different between Avaya’s AI strategy compared to what we’re seeing from others in your space?”   Pete : “The big thing with us is we’re not trying to become an AI company. Does Avaya have modernized AI features in our platform? Yeah, absolutely. But our approach is centered around the things that help reduce costs and frees agents to focus on more valuable, human interactions that result in better customer retention and loyalty. We’re not here pretending we invented AI or that we have the world’s most secret, best algorithm.   The reality is our approach is a lot more pragmatic. We’re building a platform that enables customers to use whatever technology, AI or otherwise, that they think is best for their business. That’s where we’re putting our investment — in giving them the flexibility and simplicity to integrate the tools that make sense for them. Whether that’s ChatGPT today, DeepSeek tomorrow, or something else entirely, we can support that without requiring armies of developers. We’re doing it through a drag-and-drop workflow interface that’s faster, easier, and doesn’t lock you into one vendor’s ecosystem.   When you think about AI-driven automation — that’s where this gets powerful. We’re helping reduce operational costs and free up agents to focus on more meaningful work. That’s the unlock. It’s not about building some mythical AI — it’s about making it usable, flexible, and valuable right now.”    Blair: “What do you say to those who write this off as just the next strategy and talking points from Avaya?” Pete : “I’d say, look, I get the skepticism – but you are wrong if you read into what we are doing as business as usual.  And although I’m sure there were reasons for prior leadership’s decisions, let me be clear – this is a management team that’s perfectly comfortable building a fact-based plan and making the hard calls necessary to execute that plan. I’d also say, as evidence by the amount of spotlight we seek - we really don’t do talking points or believe trying to make ourselves a part of every conversation is an effective strategy. The fact is, in the short run the market is going to believe what it wants.  All the while we’ll continue to stay maniacally focused on our core customers and markets and what delivers value for them. We’ll continue investing in and aligning our resources to focus on delivering that value in those markets.  And we’ll continue to explicitly implement broad based fiscal discipline and talent management to ensure we have the right workforce focused on the right opportunities.  Funny thing is, if you heard that and didn’t know it was Avaya, you’d likely think that’s exactly how you’d want all the companies you do business with to operate.  And that’s who Avaya is. I guess that’s my long way of saying we don’t obsess about the nay sayers. And the reason for that is simple. As a private company, with an execution focused management team, we have both the latitude and support to make the changes necessary to create a formidable competitor serving the needs of the largest and most complex requirements in this market and that's exactly what we are doing.    Blair: “So, tell me what’s next for Avaya?”   Pete : “First off, we're going to focus on the customers we’re best equipped to serve and do so to the best of our ability. And the customers we’ve been speaking with are genuinely optimistic about what we are delivering. We’re laser-focused on execution—and the difference now is that we’re not just talking about what’s possible; we’re showing real software in action. Customers can see, touch, and test it, providing direct feedback that’s shaping where we go next.     We’re continuing to build a durable, enterprise-focused business that helps our customers achieve their goals on their terms—not ours. Unlike the market, we’re not pushing a one-size-fits-all approach. Avaya remains committed to supporting on-prem, private, and sovereign cloud deployments because we understand that enterprise and government customers demand security, data sovereignty, privacy, and rich customization.   While many in the industry have moved toward multi-tenant public cloud solutions, the reality is that they don’t always meet stringent regulatory and operational requirements. With Avaya, customers have real choices—whether they need the flexibility of cloud, the control of on-prem, or a hybrid approach that balances both. In other words, we are committed to ensuring they have the right solutions to support their long-term success.

It was another whirlwind Enterprise Connect, with tons of announcements and news – especially around AI. Analysts are in high demand at this event, as it’s a great way for vendors to spend time with many of the analysts in attendance. I participated in 20 1:1 vendor meetings, attended 10 analyst breakfasts/dinners/receptions, and only had time for a few keynotes and a couple sessions. I also moderated two sessions -   Harnessing the Combined Power of UCaaS amp; CCaaS for Enhanced EX and CX: A Customer Case Study with Reggie Scales of Vonage, and GAF’s Christine Baumeister Re-tool Your Teams (and Users) for AI with representatives from Microsoft, Google, and Miratech discussing the need for upskilling IT teams, AI training and training programs for both IT teams and end users and driving user adoption. By now you know that the major theme of the event was AI, and the word of the week was “Agentic,” as in Agentic AI and AI Agents. Every vendor meeting and keynote included discussions on how Agentic AI impacts how businesses communicate, serve customers and get work done. During my many meetings, whenever someone brought up the term “agentic,” I asked how they define agentic AI or AI agents. While every vendor defines agentic AI/AI agents differently (usually based on what they offer), there’s some consensus that it involves reasoning and action, and the ability to perform tasks on behalf of someone (or something) without explicit instructions. There are some differences of opinion in whether AI agents are autonomous, with some vendors noting that there’s a continuum, with autonomy being the end goal that hasn’t been achieved yet. For example: NICE defines AI agents as having reasoning and taking action, while maximizing value through workflows, rather than being fully autonomous. AI agents take action and connect with other systems to resolve complex intents with automation. According to Zoom, agentic AI does the work for you, takes action, and executes on your behalf. Zoom notes that agentic AI includes four skills: reasoning (it can size up situations and map out the best game plan to complete a goal), memory (it learns from the history of interactions), task action, and orchestration. Salesforce sees agentic as the ability to reason and take action, including the ability to form and execute a plan - whether done autonomously or in assisted mode. While unified communications and collaboration have been the central theme of Enterprise Connect for many years, Enterprise Connect is quickly becoming a contact center event. Many of the keynotes and announcements focused on customer experience (CX), especially as most of the traditional UCC/UCaaS vendors have made significant strides in their CX efforts. A few examples include Microsoft, Cisco, Google, and Zoom. Throughout the event (when time permitted) I did short vendor video interviews, which are included throughout this article (yes, I know – if you took the time to watch every video this article would take hours to get through, but the videos are a great source of information). The following covers some of the key CCaaS/CX announcements and news and my video interviews. AWS AWS launched the next generation of Amazon Connect, which provides “AI everywhere,” while continuously analyzing interactions to improve the customer and agent experience. In his keynote presentation, Pasquale DeMaio, VP of Amazon Connect, described some of the new features being introduced, including native integration of AWS AI. This makes it easy to AI-enable every customer touchpoint in the contact center with one click, adding AI capabilities such as GenAI self-service, GenAI Agent assistance, conversational analytics, GenAI post-contact summaries, screen recording, GenAI Performance evaluation, forecasting, and scheduling. This next generation of Amazon Connect includes Amazon Q for Connect, providing automated agent assistance and end-customer self-service, as well as Contact Lens for conversational analytics, screen recording, and performance evaluation. According to DeMaio, AWS is taking what they’ve learned about AI in the past eight years and making it a key part of Connect, with everything in one package. AWS also announced the general availability of Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect, which integrates all of Connect’s digital channels into Salesforce Service Cloud. In this video interview, DeMaio and Heidi Elmore, Senior Product Marketing Manager - Amazon Connect, discuss how AWS brought together all the key capabilities in one solution, while making things simple with pay-as-you-go pricing. This helps companies think differently about the way they interact with customers and provide more proactive service. DeMaio also describes the various AI capabilities for customers, agents, and supervisors, while Elmore provides insights about customers using the new Amazon Connect and AI capabilities. Cognigy In addition to its strong conversational AI capabilities, Cognigy provides fully pre-trained AI agents, including AI Voice Agents, AI Agents for Chat and Messaging, AI-Powered Agent Assist, and AI Agents for Sales & Marketing, in addition to AI agents for various vertical industries. Cognigy launched its AI Agent Console, providing workforce management for AI Agents to monitor human and AI agents in real-time to manage the workforce. In this video, Cognigy’s VP Marketing, Alan Ranger, talks about the AI Agent Console, which sheds light on AI agent performance, along with relevant metrics to help organizations better manage these agents. The same console interacts with human agents using the Cognigy copilot to measure success. Ranger also provides some interesting predictions about how everyone will have an AI agent on a mobile device that will act on our behalf to interact with other AI agents for tasks such as booking a restaurant reservation. The AI agents will use a conversational interface when interacting with other AI agents to complete the tasks. Cisco Cisco isn’t new to the contact center world but has made some major strides recently, adding new capabilities to its Webex Customer Experience portfolio, notably Webex AI Agent and AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center. At Enterprise Connect, Cisco introduced new agentic AI capabilities, including the general availability of the Webex AI Agent, as well as new workflows in AI Assistant for Webex Suite, Webex Calling Customer Assist, and AirPlay on Cisco Devices for Microsoft Teams Rooms.   Webex AI Agent will be GA at the end of March, providing “a 24/7, self-service solution that works alongside human agents to answer routine and high-volume customer questions and executes actions to fulfill customer requests.” Cisco notes that businesses can design and deploy AI Agents tailored to their requirements, choosing between autonomous agents for dynamic conversations or scripted agents with pre-configured responses. Webex AI Agent integrates out of the box with Webex Contact Center and provides omnichannel, multilingual AI agents (supporting nine languages), and real-time intent fulfillment. Cisco  added several new features   to AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center ,  including suggested responses and real-time transcription for agents. The Cisco announcement that intrigued me the most was Webex Calling Customer Assist, aimed at frontline workers. This allows workers in local and regional branches, including retail stores, bank branches, pharmacies, and healthcare clinics, to assist customers and resolve issues. Available through a new Webex Calling offer, capabilities include voice queues with custom messages, advanced auto attendant, click-to-call, AI Assistant for Agents, call sentiment for supervisors, analytics, and more. This offering helps break down the walls of the contact center, enabling frontline workers to assist customers and resolve customer issues, enhancing customer interactions. At a noisy airport on the way home from Enterprise Connect, I spoke with Vinod Muthukrishnan, Webex Customer Experience VP & COO about some of Cisco’s new announcements. Dialpad Dialpad demonstrated its Ai-Powered Customer Intelligence Platform, combining its Ai Contact Center, Ai Sales, Ai Voice, and Ai Meetings with Ai Messaging. The company recently introduced its Ai Agent, an AI-powered virtual assistant that offers 24/7 digital assistance. Using RAG and genAI, Ai Agent searches an organization’s knowledge base to provide answers and information that’s presented to customers conversationally and naturally. Other recent contact center offerings include Launchpad for real-time performance insights, Ai Assistant with integrations into existing knowledge centers and systems, and WFM based on Dialpad’s acquisition of Surfboard.   In this video, Vice President of Product Management Sara Jew-Lim, and   Fabrice Della Mea, Vice President of Product Management, Contact Center, discuss these recent announcements, including information on Dialpad’s WFM integration with HR IS systems to improve agent scheduling. Lastly, they discuss Dialpad’s own large language model and how it provides real-time benefits, such as real-time coaching and guidance. Five9 Five9 announced Spotlight for Five9 AI Insights, powered by Five9 Genius AI to extract actionable insights from conversation transcripts. The Spotlight feature for AI Insights analyzes customer conversations to provide operational data and relevant intelligence that can be tailored and used by sales and marketing teams. For example: Sales teams can  prompt AI Insights to  "Track the most common objections that cause a possible sale to stall," Marketing teams can prompt it to "Identify which elements of our messaging customers reference the most in conversations," Product teams could  prompt it to  "Spot what product-related issues are generating the most support tickets."  In this video, Jonathan Rosenberg, Five9 CTO and Head of AI explains how Five9 uses genAI for analytics and insights. He explains how Five9’s AI Insights transcribes each call and uses genAI to figure out the reason for the call, adding additional metrics like customer sentiment and customer satisfaction. Rosenberg provides examples of how various people in organizations can easily prompt the system to get information and mine data for relevant insights. As Rosenberg notes, with Spotlight “You think it, you type it, you graph it.” GoTo GoTo launched several products recently, including AI Receptionist, the first offering in GoTo Connect’s new Digital Workforce portfolio aimed at complementing human employees. GoTo Connect AI Receptionist uses genAI to greet callers and create human-like conversations. Supporting more than 10 languages, it handles mundane tasks, resolves routine inquiries by leveraging knowledge bases and FAQs, and intelligently routes callers to the right destination when needed, providing always-on coverage. GoTo also launched AI Quality Management (QM) for GoTo Connect Contact Center, using genAI to simplify agent coaching and training through automated AI-powered reporting and analysis. The company has been doubling down on several vertical industries, and introduced GoTo Connect Automotive, which integrates GoTo’s platform with dealer management systems and CRM systems for automotive dealers. In this video, Joe Walsh, VP Global Marketing & Site Leader provides insights about GoTo Connect AI Receptionist, GoTo Connect Automotive, and AI QM. Microsoft Microsoft has been making important headway with its Dynamics 365 Contact Center, a Copilot-first contact center solution that is built to work with a business’ existing CRM or Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The big news at Enterprise Connect was the integration of Teams Phone and Dynamics 365 Contact Center integration, enabling customers to use Teams Phone as their contact center telephony system. By offering a single telephony solution, Microsoft reduces operational complexity, improves billing processes, and provides broad geographic coverage, leveraging the global availability of Teams Phone numbers. As Ilya Bukshteyn, Corporate VP, Microsoft Teams Calling, Devices, and Premium Experiences, explained during his keynote presentation, this integration lets organization levering their Teams Phone PSTN investment to work with their contact center solution of choice, starting with Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Businesses can take advantage of Teams Phone enterprise features, including the Teams management interface. Teams Phone Extensibility will support certified ISV contact center solutions, including Anywhere365, AudioCodes, ComputerTalk, Enghouse, IP Dynamics, Landis, and Luware. As someone who’s been advocating the integration of UCaaS and CCaaS for many, many years, I was extremely happy to hear this news. I’ve long touted the benefits of having a single, consolidated phone system to eliminate the need for separate UCaaS & CCaaS solutions. With Teams Phone integration, organizations using Dynamics 365 Contact Center will have access to various capabilities, while reducing cost and complexity, and simplifying deployment and management. Microsoft also added features in its Teams Queues App, aimed at groups and departments that don’t have or need full contact center capabilities. New features include monitor, whisper, barge, and takeover capabilities for supervisors. Mitel Mitel’s big news at Enterprise Connect was the general availability of its omnichannel CX and contact center suite, Mitel CX, which includes genAI-powered virtual agents, agent assistance with real-time prompts, suggested responses, and intelligence-based coaching, and real-time analytics. It also provides customizable workflow automation, including Mitel’s Chatbot Builder and low-code/no-code Workflow Studio. Mitel CX’s UC integration lets businesses analyze omnichannel customer interactions, workforce performance, and operational trends. In this video, Mitel CMO Eric Hanson and Luiz Domingos, CTO, Group VP Large Enterprise and Vertical Solutions R&D discuss the Mitel CX and how it fits in with Mitel’s hybrid strategy. They also provide information on Mitel’s partnership with Zoom, offering a unique hybrid cloud solution that integrates Zoom Workplace and Zoom AI Companion with Mitel’s communications and telephony platforms. MITEL 6526 NICE NICE introduced CXone Mpower Orchestrator, the winner of the Best of Enterprise Connect award and Best Innovation in Customer Experience award. Built natively on CXone Mpower, Orchestrator automates customer service workflows with agentic AI across the entire customer service organization, including both the front and back offices. It unifies all touchpoints, including virtual agents, live agents, and back-office workflows, on a single AI platform while integrating AI-driven insights, third-party applications, and enterprise-wide workflows into a unified, automated, and optimized framework. In this video, Andy Traba, VP of Product Marketing, discusses how CXone Mpower Orchestrator integrates data, AI models, and knowledge to optimize and automate workflows across teams and applications. He also discusses how NICE defines agentic AI, which involves workflows across the entire business, as well as openness and flexibility to interact with third-party applications. Lastly, Traba discusses how NICE’s vision for automating customer service goes beyond the contact center to ensure the right resources are in place across the entire workflow. I also spoke with NICE’s Jennifer Wilson, Director of Product Marketing, about NICE’s copilots that assist agents, supervisors, business leaders, and system administrators. Wilson notes that AI augmentation is not just for agents, but also other personas and employees within the customer experience space. For supervisors, copilots can identify coaching opportunities and create and deliver personalized agent coaching models. For business leaders, copilots can provide more insights into KPIs, uncover how different touchpoints are intertwined, identify bottlenecks in processes, etc., and provide full visibility to the customer experience workflow ecosystem. Salesforce As shown below, Salesforce announced a slew of Agentforce innovations to assist customers, customer service representatives, and contact center supervisors. The company announced Agentforce 2dx, providing agentic reasoning for workflows with the ability to take action on its own. Agentforce 2dx   offers new low-code and pro-code tools for admins and developers to configure, test, and deploy Agentforce faster. The new version lets  organizations integrate autonomous agents into their existing data systems, business logic, and user interfaces, helping agents be more proactive. I met with Ryan Nichols, Chief Customer Officer for Salesforce Service Cloud, who explained Salesforce’s views on agentic AI. Nichols sees a progression in AI agents and discusses how customers can get started: First, start with an AI agent that can answer a question based on information that’s grounded in a company’s data (e.g. What’s your refund policy?) Next, personalize the answers based on data that’s specific to the customer (e.g. Where’s my order?) Take action on behalf of the customer using the same workflows for contact center agents. (e.g. Cancel my order) Upcoming Agentforce innovations include the next generation of customer support assistants that help agents respond to complex and tricky questions and guide the rep on generating a plan to subsequently resolve this in self-service. In this video, Nichols describes Salesforce’s platform approach, the company’s view of AI agents, and Salesforce’s new integration with Amazon Connect. He gives a glimpse into Salesforce’s next generation of customer support assistance. Talkdesk Talkdesk’s key announcements at Enterprise Connect included: Talkdesk Knowledge Creator, which uses generative AI to create and maintain knowledge for customer service. It automates knowledge gap discovery and transforms conversations, transcripts, and agent responses into AI-generated knowledge. Talkdesk AI Agents for voice, powered by agentic AI, that analyze, decide, and act in real-time, providing a more natural customer self-service experience. It can match the customer’s language and even switch languages mid-stream in an interaction. Talkdesk After Hours, which extends a business’ contact center availability, creating a 24-hour operation. Supporting 59 languages, it uses AI to address customer inquiries with natural, conversational responses. It can then capture key customer details and schedule a callback when necessary. In this video, Crystal Miceli, Talkdesk’s VP of Product and Industry Marketing, and Kevin McNulty Senior Director of Product Marketing discuss these new offerings, as well as Talkdesk’s AI agents for various vertical industries. Verint Verint has long touted its various bots that perform a range of functions and continues to evolve its bot story and deliver outcomes at scale. During a meeting at Enterprise Connect, Verint discussed micro-workflows, where bots and AI are injected into workflows to drive outcomes. Rather than focusing on the bots themselves, the focus is on solving one specific problem and then moving on to solve another specific problem. This makes it easier for customers to see the business outcomes and understand the value that Verint and the bots provide. One thing that stands out is Verint’s hybrid approach, which enables the bots to be plugged in to on-prem systems if needed. This lets on-prem businesses still get value and benefit from AI without having to move to the cloud. In this video, Dave Singer describes how Verint bots automate micro-workflows, which are steps in larger workflows, such as call handling. As Singer notes, “generative creates things, agentic does things.” He explains how Verint daVinci AI looks at what’s needed and then chooses and optimizes the right model to power the bots for the specific workflow and situation.   Zoom   Zoom added new agentic skills to its AI Companion, which is embedded across the entire Zoom platform. On the CX side of things (which Zoom refers to as part of its Business Services), announcements included: Zoom Virtual Agent New capabilities for Zoom Contact Center, including AI Intent Routing, AI Expert Assist for Video, Team Chat as a Channel, Unified Reporting, Zoom CX for Microsoft Teams, Zoom CX for Chrome OS Quality Management and Workforce Engagement Management In this video, Michelle Couture, Global Lead, CX Product Marketing, discusses the addition of AI Companion with Agentic skills to Zoom Contact Center, including Zoom Virtual Agent with AI capabilities through voice and chat channels. In the second video, Couture discusses Zoom’s contact center momentum, and new video capabilities for Zoom’s AI Expert Assist.   I also spoke with Ted Yoshikawa, Head of Product, Zoom CX, about how Zoom defines agentic AI and how Zoom is adding agentic AI throughout its portfolio. He also discusses how customers are using Zoom’s AI today. Conclusion It’s impressive to see how quickly the industry moved towards adding agentic AI capabilities to their portfolios and roadmaps. Of course, some (most?) of the demos we saw were just that – demos – and it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s slideware at this point. But there’s no denying that vendors are working feverishly to develop AI agents and fully integrate them into their CCaaS/CX offerings in various ways. CX/CCaaS vendors will need to clearly articulate their agentic AI stories (and define how they view agentic AI) while being forthcoming about what’s currently available and what’s in development or on the roadmap. Seeing demos is great, but the proof is in actual customers and use cases and delivering these capabilities at scale. I expect to see more real-world deployments and implementations in the coming months, providing insights into how customers are using AI agents and the value they provide. As always, I’ll be looking for best practices to help customers get started and successfully deploy these solutions, as well as insights about user adoption. And I expect to see some high-profile failures along the way as customers rush out to deploy AI agents that aren’t quite ready for prime time. Looking back at Enterprise Connect, it's truly the end of an era as the conference moves from the Gaylord Palms - with its alligators, turtles, and beautiful foliage - to Caesars Forum in Las Vegas in 2026. As always, special thanks to Eric Krapf and the Informa team for all their hard work in bringing together the unified communications & collaboration and CX communities year after year. I guess all we can say is, see you later, alligator. The alligators at Gaylord Palms

You are investing money in your UCaaS (unified communications as a service) platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom Workplace. You think this investment is boosting productivity, improving customer service, making employees more engaged and driving innovation. You invest for return, focus on ROI (return on investment), and yet while organizations track their investment they often “guesstimate” the return, or even worse, simply “hope” for a return. Hoping is not a strategy to drive adoption. “Thinking” you are getting return is not proof. You need data, “hard numbers”, to understand what is working and what is not. This is where analytics comes in. The Imperative of Data-Driven Decision-Making The deployment of UCaaS solutions generates a substantial volume of data pertaining to call patterns, meeting dynamics, messaging activity, and employee/customer interactions. This data, when properly analyzed, provides invaluable insights into the operational efficiency and strategic impact of these platforms. Analytics tools turn data into actionable insights, helping you measure, and optimize your return on unified communication investments. Key Metrics for ROI Assessment To effectively quantify the ROI of UCaaS deployments, organizations should focus on the following key performance indicators (KPIs): Usage and Adoption: Who is using which tools and what features in your communication and collaboration tools (adoption)? How much of specific service are being used (usage)? ➡️ Adoption is typically more important than usage in terms of delivering return on investment. Where adoption is low, consider if more training is required, different tools need to be deployed or existing tools reconfigured. Consider surveying users to gather qualitative data. Quality and Reliability: Are calls being reliably connected and maintained from and to all locations? Is call quality in offices or for remote users adequate? Are meeting join times on laptops and video conferencing devices fast? Is meeting video, screen sharing, or audio quality being impacted for some users, locations, or devices? ➡️ Poor call quality or reliability can impact adoption or user satisfaction. Alternatively, users may choose to use other, sometimes more expensive options, for example using their mobile devices to make calls. ➡️ Laptop processor, memory, or other running applications often impact UCaaS communication quality as much as the network. Meeting Productivity/Efficiency: Evaluation of meeting attendance, frequency, duration, participant engagement, screen-sharing activity, and chat interaction within Teams, Webex, and Zoom Meetings. Identification of unproductive meeting practices and implementation of strategies to enhance meeting efficiency. Assessment of feature adoption to ensure optimal utilization of platform capabilities. ➡️ Gathering and interpreting actionable insights related to meetings is often more difficult. Many analytics tools ignore this area. Messaging and Collaborative Workflows: Monitoring of message volume, channel activity, file-sharing patterns, and integration with third-party applications within Teams, Webex, and Zoom chat functionalities. Identification of collaborative bottlenecks and implementation of strategies to streamline workflows. Analysis of feature utilization to ensure employees are using the tools correctly. ➡️ Effective use of the various collaboration channels (chat, email, calling, SMS) often involves establishing and communicating organizational best practices. Employee/Customer Experience Metrics: Evaluation of user satisfaction scores. Where UCaaS solutions are used for internal “contact center” processes, for example an IT, HR, or travel coordination service desk, “call center light” metrics such as call volumes, average hold time, handle time, abandonment rate, etc. is valuable. Identification of areas for improvement in customer service delivery. ➡️ Not all UCaaS platforms directly capture user satisfaction scores. You may need to survey your end users. ➡️ Follow-up conversations with users who repeated score low for user satisfaction is often insightful. In my experience, low scores may be related to technical issues, training issues, or simply a reaction to change. The Distinct Advantages of Cloud-Based Analytics Cloud-based platforms provide several distinct advantages in the realm of analytics: Centralized Data Repository: Cloud-based architectures facilitate the consolidation of communication data, enabling streamlined data collection and analysis. Real-Time Data Visualization : Cloud analytics platforms offer real-time dashboards and reporting capabilities, enabling prompt responses to dynamic operational conditions. Scalability and Adaptability: Cloud-based analytics solutions can readily scale to accommodate evolving data volumes and organizational requirements. Translating Data into Tangible Business Outcomes The utilization of analytics in UCaaS deployments yields tangible business outcomes, including: Reduction of Operational Expenditures: Identification and elimination of superfluous communication expenses. Optimization of resource allocation and network efficiency. Enhancement of Productivity : Usage, adoption and meeting metrics can help streamline workflows, improve team collaboration, and mitigate meeting fatigue. Improvement in Employee Satisfaction : Matching the right tools to the right people and providing adequate initial and on-going training can drive broad-based adoption, improve employee satisfaction, and improve ROI. Promotion of Innovation: Properly deployed and used, UCaaS can foster collaborative environments, facilitate and speed knowledge sharing, and accelerate product development cycles and issue resolution. Enhancement of Strategic Decision-Making: Data-driven insights inform strategic decisions regarding technology investments and business strategies. Conclusion The implementation of comprehensive analytics is indispensable for quantifying the ROI of UCaaS deployments. Organizations that fail to adopt a data-driven approach risk operating in a state of uncertainty, unable to ascertain the true value of their technology investments. By embracing the power of calling, meeting, and collaboration analytics, enterprises can optimize their UCaaS deployments, enhance operational efficiency, and drive sustainable business growth. About CallTower CallTower provides industry-leading Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), and collaboration solutions along with analytics services that support these solutions. CallTower does this using 15 geo-redundant data centers strategically located around the globe, providing connectivity in 80+ countries . CallTower provided me with this opportunity to highlight the importance of using analytics to optimize the return on investment associated with UCaaS solutions and some of the best practices in doing so.

(Podcast length: 31:33) BCStrategies Experts Kevin Kieller, David Danto, Thomas Brannen, Jon Arnold, Melissa Swartz, Robert Harris, and Steve Leaden cover their key takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2025 -- the most surprising, interesting, or thematic items from the great conference put on by Eric Krapf and his team.

(Podcast length: 20:14) BCStrategies Experts Blair Pleasant, David Maldow, and Martha Buyer discuss their key takeaways and observations from Enterprise Connect 2025 (moderated by Kevin Kieller). They then share expectations and hopes related to hashtag EC26 as it moves to Las Vegas for next year.

My favorite line from A Complete Unknown – “ Don’t be afraid to track some mud on the carpet ”. My favorite line – and pretty much everybody else’s from the 8x8 event – “ We’re on offense now ”. Being a music guy and a film guy, I really enjoyed watching A Complete Unknown  on the flight home from 8x8’s event last week, in Southampton, UK. I hadn’t planned to watch it, but am glad I did, as that line really made me think about 8x8. If you haven’t seen it, the film is about Bob Dylan’s early career, and his realization that he had to move on from the tradition-bound folk scene that nurtured his formative time in New York. The climax is the famous Newport Folk Festival in 1965, where he makes his definitive break from that all-acoustic world by playing the closing set with electric instruments. The times they were-a-changing, and he wasn’t going to wait around for blessings from the folk establishment. He still needed a boost of confidence before pulling this off, and he got it from Johnny Cash, who did his own set earlier in the program. Cash was the ultimate outlaw country singer, and by telling Dylan it’s ok to “ track some mud on the carpet ” before he went on – in the house of folk - he had all the blessings he needed to do his thing, and that’s the moment when Bobby Dylan became Dylan. When CEO Sam Wilson told us “we’re on offense now” – something we really haven’t heard from 8x8 before – it sure sounds to me like they’re also ready to track some mud on the carpet in the cloud communications space. The company has long been in the shadow of larger players, but is still very much in the game. With the leadership transition from Bryan Martin to Sam Wilson now complete, Sam and his team is ready to execute on a vision they have been carefully honing the past three years. Time will tell how much mud they’ll be able to track in, but with the cloud communications space so crowded – and so fluid – they’re in as good a position as anyone to chart their own course and change with the times. I’m not alone in liking what they shared with the analyst community, and here are four key themes that tell me they’re ready for their moment. 1. Shift From Defense to Offense The main way they go on offense is to take a fresh approach to the “blurred lines” state of the cloud communications space. Sam Wilson talked about the growing overlap among CCaaS, UCaaS and CPaaS offerings, where it’s getting harder for buyers to know which platform to adopt. Nothing new there, but it’s all about how you read the landscape. Rather than focus on which platform the customer should buy, 8x8 is taking an outcomes-based approach to solving business problems. Other vendors are doing this too, but Sam summed up the reality very well by saying that customers don’t think in terms of which of type platform – agreed - so focus instead on the business issues – agreed as well. That’s the language customers understand, and since 8x8 has highly-integrated capabilities across CCaaS, UCaaS and CPaaS, it really doesn’t matter which one you wrap the offering with. 2. Focus on AI-Driven CX 8x8 has fully pivoted now to CX, and while they’re not alone in doing so, they’ve also tied their new branding to CX, so there’s a lot at stake here. The branding messaging is all about this, such as “Power your CX ambitions”, and “CX limits were meant to be broken”. For businesses embracing CX, these messages are aspirational and empowering, and by extension makes 8x8 look like the ideal company to partner with. While that messaging focuses on how the customer’s customers feel when CX is good/great, there’s a lot of AI behind the scenes making that happen. The new branding is about outcomes for end customers – as it should be – rather than trying to dazzle them with AI magic. The magic, actually, is to not  talk about AI, and let the end customer outcomes speak for themselves. In terms of a key takeaway, it’s important to note that CX is now front-and-center for 8x8, and their fortunes will ride on how well they can compete in this space. UCaaS and CPaaS remain in the mix, but it’s CX that will carry the day. With AI being everywhere now, the challenge will be how well they can make CX be AI-driven, and this takes us to their AI story, along with how the overall portfolio has evolved to support CX. 3. Broader AI Story There’s a lot to like in their AI story, and as the next section will outline, it’s broader than you might think. All the CCaaS vendors are now using conversational AI and agentic AI for customer service, and it will quickly be difficult to differentiate this way. Aside from what the vendors are doing, AI adoption will ultimately be driven by how fast contact centers can move on their AI journey. 8x8 understands this, arguably better than most, as their customer base has been closer to SMB/mid-market than large enterprise, where new tech adoption happens at a slower pace. Hunter Middleton did a great job articulating this, starting with the fact that most customers are still on their voice journey. Their journeys to digital channels, to AI and for some, even cloud, are further down the tech evolution path. The good news is that AI can do wonderful things with voice – today – but many contact centers are not willing/able to go all-in yet. However, they recognize the value that can be extracted from voice for improving CX, but don’t know how to get there. Hunter talked about “building an incremental adoption pathway” for AI, where they don’t get overwhelmed by the endless features all the vendors are offering. 8x8 is taking a more practical approach, to help customers “visualize the outcomes with AI”. Hunter used a Lego analogy, where customers will need some hand-holding with pre-built models, but also to give them a blank slate where they can create their own solutions based on what end customers are asking for. This is where an open, API-based platform comes into play, along with a best-of-breed partner ecosystem. For customers, the end result is to use AI on their terms to advance their voice journey, both for basic modernization, but also to leverage the more advanced capabilities for voice, such as customer sentiment. Not to be overlooked here is the foundational importance of voice, which Hunter and others rightfully stressed. One of their slides stated that 40% of self-service interactions are voice, and they did a good job connecting the dots between voice and AI. Only with AI, do contact centers have to the tools to capture voice interactions in a way that can help make everything better, and for this reason, they stressed the importance of transcription accuracy. AI outputs will only be as good as the inputs, and they cited a Tolly study showing 8x8 to have the most accurate scores. To be fair, many vendors have their own studies that show them to be the best, so this always has to be taken with a grain of salt. That aside, the important point is for contact centers still on their voice journey – and there are many – they need to see why AI voice is so central for CX, and how this should be a key criterion for choosing a CX partner. 4. Portfolio Transformation is Done This theme warrants a separate post, as much of our time with 8x8 was about the platform, the new announcements and the roadmap. While much of this was NDA, the main message is that they have finally evolved from a suite of platforms (XCaaS), to a broad, but highly-integrated set of offerings. As Sam Wilson noted, they have gone from having 2 to 20+ products. While much of it is native technology, they have a “curated set of partners” that are certified and integrated with their core platform. The underlying message here for customers is that 8x8 provides a full set of capabilities, so they don’t have to worry about making all the pieces fit together. The partner ecosystem itself is interesting, as it reflects the growing need to have an integrated offering to become truly AI-driven. This goes well beyond standard integrations around WFM or CRM, and good examples include Cognigy for agentic AI, Meltwater for social listening, and support for vertical applications, such as SpinSci for healthcare. As AI advances, this ecosystem will expand, and with the right partners, this model will help 8x8 track even more mud on to the carpet. Not only will this broaden the markets they can compete in, but it also helps them develop new offerings that you might not expect from 8x8. Two examples would be CIDP and RCS. CIDP – Comprehensive Interaction Data Layer – reflects much of their internal AI story, where all interactions are tracked and analyzed to provide a 360 view of the customer. With all that data, the AI piece identifies anomalies that need attention, along with actionable insights across the organization – CX leaders, supervisors and agents. Most CX vendors have similar capabilities now, but coming back to the full integration across UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS, CIDP brings rich customer journey orchestration that 8x8’s customers never had before. RCS – Rich Communication Services - is another interesting piece of the puzzle, as this reflects how mobile-centric CX is becoming. Mainly the domain of brands as an outbound channel to engage customers and prospects, 8x8 sees use cases to make mobile CX better. Instead of static, text-based engagement via SMS, RCS can add video and images for deeper engagement – over a channel that reflects where customers are. RCS may not yet be mainstream in North America, but it’s coming, and will soon become core to the CX landscape.   Conclusion There is a lot more to cover, especially around 8x8’s portfolio, and announcements during the event - and for some of that detail, I’ll steer you to fellow BCStrategies colleague, Blair Pleasant. You can find her post here – on our newly refreshed website – which includes some video interviews done at the event. Overall, it looks like things are coming together in a good way now for 8x8, both in terms of their offerings and the team that’s in place now. Sam Wilson brings a compelling vision, and those around him bring the passion he talked about on Day 1. Those are pretty good building blocks, and if the portfolio resonates with both channels and customers – we got validation from both during the sessions – then 2025 should be a good year for 8x8. Now let’s hope some of that rubs off on the Southampton Saints, an 8x8 customer that hosted us for the event. If they can somehow leverage all this good technology to make the team better, and perhaps stave off relegation from the EPL, that would be next-level for tracking mud on the carpet, or in this case, the pitch. Nothing is impossible with AI, right? Before you go, if you want to literally see more about 8x8’s event, I’ve posted a set of photos on my blog, and you can view them here .

Not all AI chatbots are created equal, especially for business professionals! In this video, I break down the best AI assistants and rank them based on their real-world capabilities. This isn’t about which AI is the smartest, it’s about which ones actually help you get work done efficiently. 🚀 What’s in this Tier List? ✅ A & B Tiers: AI tools that integrate directly with your work in real time (Zoom AI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini) ✅ C & D Tiers: Great chatbots, but they require copy-pasting or file uploads to see your work (ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek) ✅ Honorable Mentions: AI-driven business tools that don’t quite fit the “conversational assistant” category (Cisco AI, RingCentral AI) ✅ S Tier: No AI assistant qualifies yet! To reach S Tier, an AI needs to be a unified assistant that follows the conversation seamlessly between apps. Right now, switching from Copilot in Word to Copilot in Outlook means starting over. Once an AI truly remembers and connects across all your work apps, it’ll earn S Tier status. 💡 What do you think? Would you rank them differently? Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments! OpenAI   Google   Microsoft   Anthropic   Cisco   Zoom   DeepSeek AI   RingCentral   Eric S. Yuan   Leo Boulton   Ilya Bukshteyn   Tim Dreyer   Anne Purvis-Blomquist   Alison St.Cyr (Parker)   Julie Steele

If event hosts simply started using the tools that are available today, we could instantly enjoy a massive positive transformation in the world of conferences and trade shows. The world of conferences and trade shows was hit as hard as an industry could possibly be hit by the Covid pandemic. The industry was completely dependent on physical events, which were almost totally shut down for over a year. During that time, we scrambled to shift everything to completely online events. Unfortunately, the leading events platforms at the time the pandemic hit weren’t ready for prime time. The top services were primarily designed for in-person events to handle registration and badging. They were quickly modified to add video feeds and were sold as virtual event platforms. Event hosts and attendees found the resulting experience to be confusing, cumbersome, glitchy, unreliable, and low quality. Several big players in the video space (including Zoom, Cisco, RingCentral, and others), rushed to acquire and/or develop true hybrid event platforms that provide an acceptable, even excellent, experience for remote attendees. However, the adoption of these new, current generation, hybrid event platforms is suffering. They have some happy customers and are generating some profit for their respective companies, but they aren’t seeing the adoption that I think they warrant. For example, I’m not seeing widespread usage of them in our leading trade shows. The Hybrid Event Platform Adoption Struggle There are two big reasons why trade shows aren’t giving enough attention to the hybrid aspect of their shows and these new hybrid event platforms. The primary reason is that they had such horrible experiences with hybrid during the pandemic. They just want to go back to the good old days of focusing on the in-person event. They don’t know, and don’t care, that the platforms have been improved and the hybrid experience can be excellent. The second reason is that they don’t fully understand, or appreciate, the benefits of a hybrid event. Their mindset is that the event is physical and anyone who needs to be there should hop on a plane to fully experience the conference. At best, some events may video record some of the sessions and put them on the web for people who couldn’t attend. That is not a hybrid experience! For hybrid events to achieve their true potential, the events community must do a better job of communicating and understanding the benefits of hybrid events.   Benefits of Hybrid Events There seems to be this perception that a hybrid event is somehow a lesser version of a trade show or conference. I’ve heard many event planners say that they “had to go hybrid/virtual” because of Covid or other issues. I’m not hearing event planners say they “choose to go hybrid” because they understand that it will be a better overall event for everyone, including the in-person attendees. Fortunately, I have attended a few fantastic, truly hybrid, events. Notably, they were events hosted by event platform providers. The 2023 Zoomtopia and Webex One events in particular showed the true power of hybrid. To be clear, I attended both events in person, yet I still enjoyed the benefits of the hybrid event experience. The fact that remote attendees were not just passive viewers of a video feed but were able to participate (for example in live QA sessions), made it feel like a bigger, more important, and valuable event for me. My hope is to see a lot more successful hybrid events, but by actual customers of these services. The benefits for in-person attendees are certainly significant, but they pale in comparison to the benefits for the event hosts! Hybrid events can massively increase their audience, and potential revenue by opening up their show to those who wouldn’t otherwise travel to attend. I believe event hosts fear that if a show goes hybrid, some attendees might forgo the $500 in-person ticket and choose to just catch the event online for $100. This fear is unfounded. The value of attending in-person is still massive. As wonderful as video can be, it will never match real human contact. Deals get made at these shows over handshakes. Events will not lose significant in-person attendance by going hybrid, but they may grow a significant virtual attendance. Of course, the greatest beneficiaries of hybrid events are the remote attendees. Accessibility should be a primary concern for event planners! People with disabilities or mobility limitations must be welcomed into our events and accommodated for. This doesn’t just mean having accommodations at the physical location. It means considering those who can’t physically attend, and not just including them but providing them with a great event experience. Accessibility isn’t just about physical barriers. There are also financial barriers. Obviously, we can’t just make our trade shows free to the world. It is necessary to charge high registration fees for in-person attendees to pay for the in-person event facilities. However, adding an affordable hybrid component can vastly increase the size of your community by including those with smaller budgets. Finally, accessibility can address geographic barriers. Members of your community may be willing to take a 3-hour flight to your show, but they may not think it merits a 12-hour flight. A hybrid event allows everyone to be included regardless of geographic location and willingness to travel. Hybrid Events Are More Than Broadcasts You can’t simply point a webcam at your keynote speaker, put it online, and call your event hybrid. That is a simple broadcast. A hybrid event requires much more. A crucial element of a true hybrid event is interactivity between remote and in-person attendees. One major way to do this is through internet “chat”. First, you obviously need some kind of “chat” that is accessible to all attendees. This part is easy as it is provided by all leading event platforms. It is even available on typical webinar platforms. The second part of the puzzle is a bit trickier. Remote attendees will automatically be placed in the chat when they enter the platform. But we need the in-person attendees to access the chat so that everyone can interact. This can be achieved by best practices during events. Chat can be displayed on a screen on-stage at the event. This ensures that in-person attendees are aware of remote attendees and encourages in-person attendees to join the chat to participate. Also, Q&A at events can be limited to online chat, pushing in-person attendees to join the chat to ask their questions. I’ve seen both practices put into effect with fantastic results. Once all attendees, remote and physical, are in the same chat, you have a community. Event platforms will have a separate chat for each session, and an overall event chat, or lobby chat. The leading event platforms do a great job of navigating attendees to the sessions and chats that they want to be in at the right times. But chat, and its proper usage, is just one example of how current generation event platforms foster interactivity. It’s worth doing a deep dive into the feature sets of these platforms to see how they can be used to create an accessible and interactive experience for your attendees. The Future of Hybrid Events The potential for hybrid events is ripe with opportunities for innovation and growth. We haven’t even talked about AI or VR yet, both of which have incredible implications for the virtual aspect of hybrid events! But if event hosts simply started using the tools that are available today, we could instantly enjoy a massive positive transformation in the world of conferences and trade shows. While I hate to be negative, I feel that I must have low expectations here. I would love to say that this is the year of the hybrid event, and that our cutting-edge hybrid event platforms will see a massive surge in usage and adoption. However, I fear that things will continue along the same lines. Event hosts are still freaked out from the pandemic and afraid to try anything new. The event platform vendors and community aren’t doing enough to educate the public about the value and benefits of hybrid events. There will certainly be more and more successful hybrid events as the years go on, and these events will shine. But I can’t, at this time, forecast that true hybrid events will be ubiquitous, as they should be. Most of our events will continue to be primarily physical, with some sort of virtual afterthought at best for remote attendees. I hope the world of events proves me wrong and quickly masters hybrid events. It would make the events themselves more successful, profitable, and enjoyable, would grow the communities that these events support, and do the right thing when it comes to accessibility. Until that time, we will all be missing out on better event experiences.

In this exclusive interview, Adam Heimlich, Founder and CEO of Chalice AI, breaks down how his company is disrupting the ad tech space by using custom AI to create highly personalized advertising solutions with a small, efficient team, just like DeepSeek’s revolutionary approach in tech. David explores Chalice’s mission, how it connects data and AI to reshape advertising, and the future of value-driven impressions. Adam shares insights on why AI won’t replace creativity in ad tech and how Chalice is making big waves with their lean, powerful team.

Eye contact has been a challenge in video calls since the beginning, but real innovation is finally happening! In this video, I break down three different approaches to solving the problem, explaining how they work and their pros and cons. AI Eye Contact Correction: I demo NVIDIA Broadcast to see how well AI can fake eye contact.Teleprompter & Mirror-Based Solutions: These setups place the camera behind a reflective screen, but are they practical? In-Front-of-the-Screen Solutions: I test the iContact Camera Pro, a simple and portable way to keep natural eye contact without AI. Which solution do you think works best? Let me know in the comments! Check out the iContact Camera Pro here: https://icontactcamera.com/

Discover how Vedubox simplifies online learning by replacing a jumble of apps with one integrated platform. In this brief video, we cover the basics and key benefits of Vedubox, from streamlining live classes with Zoom integration to scaling for big organizations. If you’re looking to streamline your online training or education program, watch on to see why Vedubox could be the perfect solution. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights! Learn more here: https://vedubox.co.uk/