Many organizations depend on ubiquitous and seamless access to real-time applications to communicate, collaborate, and drive business success. Unified Communications solutions like Skype for Business and Office 365 are built to boost productivity and drive down costs, but oftentimes organizations do not get the results they were promised.
Avaya's recent news has overshadowed everything else in the market, but Cisco and Microsoft are very good at staying in the limelight. As it turned out, last week both companies had collaboration updates, and I happened to get briefings on both. Cisco's latest iteration of Spark has been in the works for some time, and with so much at stake in terms of owning the collaboration experience, Microsoft was not going to remain on the sidelines.
The Cisco Spark Launch event in San Francisco and online on January 24 was a top-notch production. The day-long event went from the always-excellent stagecraft of Rowan Trollope to the great hands-on demonstrations spaces to the small group sessions with Cisco's Spark leaders on both technical and business topics. Thanks, Cisco, for the invitation. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be there.
At its Spark Event in San Francisco, Cisco introduced the new Spark Board and Spark Meetings to revolutionize the way people meet. That's a pretty tall order, but Cisco seems to have done a great job in simplifying and improving the meeting experience.
Microsoft's FastTrack is undergoing an expansion, with its services extending to Windows 10 and Dynamics 365. At the same time, the support for Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) continues to grow, including new support and certifications.
Introduction by FOX GROUP Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer, Roberta J. Fox
As experienced technology analysts and consultants we spend a great deal of time tracking and analyzing a broad range of telecom, network and IT players. We also work with many end user government and enterprise organizations in a broad range of industry sectors. This enables us to look at things from both the industry and customer side of things.
Companies headquartered in the United States and abroad are identifying regions beyond their borders as the greatest potential growth areas for their businesses. According to the latest Wells Fargo International Business Indicator, a majority of U.S. companies expect an increase in non-U.S. revenue over the next 12 months as they continue to pursue business opportunities in international markets. The report also notes the ongoing value in doing business globally, with 47 percent of U.S.
Today Vidyo announced a new cloud delivery solution for embedded video, Vidyo.io. The solution is based on all the core capabilities of the routed Vidyo core for delivering high quality video over the inconsistent networking in the internet. Vidyo based the new solution on the work the company has been doing in enabling premise-based embedded video solutions extended to a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) delivery model.
First investment from a major telecommunications company into global SD-WAN technology
Aryaka announced that it has completed a $45 million Series D round of financing. The investment, led by Third Point Ventures, adding new investor Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), and with participation from existing investors, represents a powerful validation of Aryaka's global SD-WAN platform and marks the first investment in global SD-WAN technology by a major telecommunications company. The new funding round will help Aryaka aggressively expand its global reach.
In 2017, we are very likely to hear many, many claims for leadership in "collaboration." However, as is often the case, the leadership claims will be based on definitions of collaboration that are shaped to match a vendor's product offerings, rather than on the actual needs of the users and of the enterprises who employ the users to deliver the enterprise's products and services.