There was lots of energy and enthusiasm on display at Cisco’s recent Collaboration Analyst Summit with several new team members, new announcements, and new messaging. Amy Chang, Executive Vice President, Cisco Collaboration, put together a top-notch team of professionals who shared their vision of workplace transformation during the three-day event (which included a bonus Contact Center Day) held at Cisco headquarters in San Jose.
At the recent Enterprise Connect 2016, I moderated a session on Cloud Case Studies, where four enterprise organizations discussed their migration to the cloud, lessons learned, benefits, etc.
The UCaaS channel has been full of promise since the launches of Cisco's HCS, Microsoft's Lync, and numerous other vendor and service products in the 2010 timeframe. Although a few partners are scratching a living off of their offers, by virtually all measures the UCaaS channel has underperformed its promise and its expectations. This two-part series will take a look at what the UCaaS channel needs to have to develop a robust ecosystem for growth.
I keep getting excited and disappointed about the potential of UCaaS, but the perfect storm is forming. The cloud will do well in 2013, the question is who is going to be selling it? It should be UC VARs and SIs.
That's the message for this year's state of collaboration from Cisco, and with such noble intentions, you'd think we were just a few apps away from sending an astronaut to Mars. I'm all for dreaming big, and when Marthin de Beer talked about the Curiosity Rover mission to Mars, you have to conclude that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. More to the point, you can do anything by collaborating and harnessing our collective abilities.