CXTech Week 1 2023 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 1 2023 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech?  The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.

You can sign up here to receive the CXTech News and Analysis by email. Please forward this on if you think someone should join the list. And please let me know any CXTech news I should include. I skipped a couple of weeks as things have been a little hectic.

Covered this week:

  • Welcome to the New Year – let’s make TADHack Open a Success
  • Communicating The ROI Of Web3 To End Users
  • Will Avaya end up going the way of Nortel?
  • notRCS
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Welcome to the New Year – let’s make TADHack Open a Success

In CXTech Week 52 2022 I mentioned TADHack Open before Enterprise Connect, 25/26 March.

What do we mean by Open? We have stated since our founding in 2013, ‘TADHack is for everyone.’ The diversity of people involved in TADHack has improved over its 10 years, however, we can do more.

TADHack is working with groups committed to increasing the influence that women have in building the technologies that shape our culture and change our world.

TADHack Open will help women, but not exclusively, demonstrate their vital contribution to programmable communications. Not only in building skills in important new technologies, but also demonstrating their abilities to industry leaders at the largest enterprise communications event on Monday 27th March, at Enterprise Connect in Orlando.

We’ll accept remote hacks from around the world and also have a couple of satellite locations, e.g. in Sri Lanka where they’ve run several women focused hackathons in the past, and have dedicated support that we’ve covered at TADSummit.

Sponsor benefits are:

  • Logo in sponsor position on TADHack Open website and banner (your logo is in all pitch videos);
  • Coverage in the CXTech newsletter, on the TADHack weblog, and at TADSummit 2023.
  • To win any of the TADHack prizes requires they use the sponsors’ technology.
  • You can publish articles on the TADHack weblog or webinars in the run up to the event to educate developers on your platform.
  • Session dedicated to TADHack at Enterprise Connect 2023 open to all attendees, where your technology is showcased through hacks, and linking to the Women in Communication program at EC23.
  • Hacks created on sponsors’ tech with all the usual promotion and coverage (videos, blogs, social media).
  • Running the weekend before EC23 generates lots of interest before and at the event, not just the dedicated session.

If you’d rather have your brand associated with the event as a partner than sponsor, we have lots of opportunities such as paying for lunch, dinner, or coffee.

If you want to see previous events like this, we have loads of content. Here’s some reviews of TADHack-mini Orlando with Enterprise Connect over the past few years so you can see the pictures, winners, and video pitches:

Communicating The ROI Of Web3 To End Users

This is a nice Forbes article from Nikki Shum-Harden, based on the TADSummit panel discussion “Future of WebRTC and Web3 Panel Discussion.”

Communicating The ROI Of Web3 To End Users

Its a call to action for marketeers to get serious in communicating the benefits of Web3 to consumers and businesses. It’s great to see the ideas, issues, and concepts discussed in the panel session be expanded upon into a call to action by Nikki Shum-Harden, thank you.

Will Avaya end up going the way of Nortel?

An interesting analysis based on interviews with Jon Arnold and Gregg Willsky. One thing not discussed is how the move to CCaaS impacts their channel partners’ revenues. This has been a perpetual challenge for Cisco and its channels in the move to ‘aaS.

CCaaS is an increasingly fragmenting business, in CXTech Week 3 2022 we covered how Sprinklr has entered the CCaaS market. Spinklr listens to what people are saying online about a brand, and uses that to support agents, and better target online advertising and sales. Now it’s adding voice. Its an interesting move that shows CCaaS has become a feature to other industries – e.g. online sales, marketing, and customer care.

In the SMB segment we’re seeing CCaaS offers, low price-points in a monthly all you can eat bundle, and good enough functionality and integrations. Plus everyone else in the programmable communications space has added or is adding some type of CCaaS offer, e.g. RingCentral.

The in-the-pocket analysts will claim such CCaaS are not true-CCaaS, only big expensive contact centers can be true CCaaS. Sigh, I’ve not placed an international call for quite a few years, Zoom has replaced that. While Skype did at one point for some international calls, Zoom has replaced completely.

Avaya’s approach appears to be primarily focused on keeping their existing customer base by migrating them to CCaaS. These are not fast moving customers, and with Avaya potentially entering its second bankruptcy, this will likely stimulate a broader review of possible CCaaS vendors.

Let me be clear, Avaya is not Nortel. Nortel was deluded when it fell apart, Avaya is not. But Nortel’s revenue was relatively solid, carriers were still buying, though vendor financing had become silly. Avaya’s business is being eaten by many competitors, large and small. Also the commoditization of CCaaS means the pricing, especially features and integrations, has plummeted. The current plan does not offer a clear picture on how revenues will first stabilize given the current market reality, and how the current channels can still make money. Avaya needs a reset strategy, not a more of the same just better strategy. Let’s see.

notRCS

A fun post from Mark Hay. notRCS will be a collaborative effort between interested parties to develop an open standard and technology for business messaging. It aims to deliver the benefits of RCS using established web and telecom technologies. Many aspects of RCS will be achievable, and notRCS will be able to go beyond what RCS alone delivers.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Evin Hunt is now Chief Technology Officer at IDEOlogy Health. Previously he was with Commio / Thinq and has been part of TADHack and TADSummit since the beginning.

I missed this move last year, Vince Puglia is also now Sr Product Manager at Visionable Global, connected health. Previously he was with Syniverse, Vidyo, and Dialogic. He was one of the first winners at TADHack Global in 2014. And has been part of TADSummit and TADHack since the beginning.

And I missed this one as well, Mitch Lieberman left Genesys in November 2022. If you know of any large contact center migrations, please let me know. Currently he’s exploring ChatGPT and application integration – keep you eye’s on that space if Mitch is investing his time.

Eero Tarjanne is now Chief Ecosystem & Bus Dev Officer at ayoba. Same role, different title.

Jens Voigt is now Vice President – Head of Product Management BlueMarble at Comviva. BlueMarble is a commerce, order management, customer care and partner management platform for telcos. I’ve known Jens since his time at Redknee when they bought NSN’s BSS business. Now in Redknee there lies a tale…

Tomorrow (January 6) is Ryan Daily’s last day at No Jitter, WorkSpace Connect, and Enterprise Connect, as she’s accepted a new position at a different B2B media company. In many ways, this new job will have her return to a “first love.”

Alexandre Gomes da Silva is now Head of Bank as a Service & Fundos de Investimento at ZIPDIN

Saeed Saatchi is now Founder and CEO at SimpliTend.

Sandeep Jain is now Senior Product Manager – Collaboration at TELUS.

Bernice Thor is now Sales Engineer at Juniper Networks.

Frans Meuwissen is now Director of Business Development at Futuralis

Anthony Wong is now a Manager at EY. Anthony was a winner at TADHack 2018, with Gavel.io, a decentralize bidding platform utilizing live video/chat stream and Ethereum blockchain.

Grahame Davies is open to new opportunities. Previously he ran Simwood.

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