by Jim Lundy
In 2019, the unified communications and collaboration market will shift to be more focused on people and less focused on specific channels. Aragon has termed this new category people-centric collaboration.
People-centric collaboration is about putting people at the center of collaboration and communications, versus focusing on the specific channel of communication.
Although 2019 has just begun, many major providers are making strategic moves in this new market. This blog summarizes some of the moves by Bose, Five9, Microsoft, and Pexip.
Bose Acquires ZiipRoom
ZiipRoom, a 2018 Aragon Research Hot Vendor, launched in 2018 and had a big presence at InfoComm. Last week, Bose announced it was acquiring the company and adding it into the Bose Professional business unit. ZiipRoom CEO Marty Bodley will lead the new enterprise conferencing group that is part of that unit.
Bose’s move follows moves by Plantronics last year, which acquired Polycom. This move makes sense for both firms due to the growing PCC category. Bose needs to diversify into larger addressable markets.
Five9 Hires Jonathan Rosenberg as CTO
Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope continues to pull talent from Cisco. One of the biggest moves was hiring Jonathan Rosenberg, who joins as Five9 CTO. While it is important to note that Jonathan left Cisco before Five9 made this move, the talent movement out of Cisco continues.
At Five9, Jonathan will focus on overall technology and product strategy with an emphasis on AI, which Aragon refers to as the intelligent contact center—and we feel that 2019 could be a breakout year for intelligent contact center. The proof will be in tangible, AI-based product offerings.
Microsoft Updates Teams with New Productivity Features
Microsoft continues to innovate on its core team collaboration service—Microsoft Teams. Last week, it announced a new scheduling service called Shifts, and new productivity features for mobile teams. Besides Shifts, the key things that were added include:
- Praise: telling a team member that they did something great.
- Location Sharing: using GPS to tell others where you are.
- Smart Camera: content analytics that allows images to be understood and easily shared with others.
- Audio Messages: recording and sharing an audio message. (I’d note most smartphones have this feature already.)
Pexip Merges with Videxio
As of January 14th, 2019, Videxio is now part of Pexip, which sells its video conferencing offerings globally through 300 different partners. Odd Sverre Østlie will serve as CEO of the combined companies. The new headquarters will be relocated to Oslo, Norway later in 2019.
2019 looks to be a very busy year in people-centric collaboration. Look for more coverage of this growing market on our main unified communications and collaboration page at Aragon.