For more than 25 years, Enterprise Connect has been the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise IP Telephony, Converged Networks and Unified Communications in North America. Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industry’s vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise networks and communications.
In a recent post on No Jitter, a blog run by Enterprise Connect, General Manager and Program Co-Chair for Enterprise Connect Eric Krapf wrote about the key issues that enterprises and technology decision makers should be considering as they plan for the new year. As Krapf explains:
The industry is moving into a time of transition and, hopefully, innovation. It’s been three years since the end users on our opening General Session panel agreed unanimously that they hoped not to buy another PBX. But the question of what comes next has yet to be fully answered. Navigating the transition and getting to the next phase will be more complex than any transition the industry has been through previously.
The first issue concerns the cloud, and the fact that the delivery model in communications is moving to it. From Microsoft Skype for Business in Office 365 to Cisco acquisition of Tropo and the Spark application, it may be happening in different ways and timeframes but movement to the cloud is apparent. Technology decision makers should take a look at their own communications strategies to see if the cloud fits in, and wonder about what they should do if it’s not clear.
Next come WebRTC and communications APIs. These next-generation cloud capabilities are very new areas, and may not yet be ready for prime time, meaning many enterprises may not be ready for the tech. There will be a full day on WebRTC at the Enterprise Connect conference.
Unified Communications is still complicated and user adoption is slow, which is a problem. Without user adoption, the benefits inherent in UC disappear.
While it is extremely prevalent in the office, mobility still stands separate from core communications systems. While a new generation of applications are attempting to bring mobile users into the corporate system, it’s unclear whether this trend will be accepted. Enterprises that can’t manage mobility will see service costs increase.
Finally, the legacy problems – How do you marry video and collaboration? How can communications tech make customer service more effective? How do you successfully implement SIP Trunks? Enterprise Connect will have sessions focusing in these areas as well.
While there aren’t a lot of answers yet, it’s important to think about the problems. TechDecisions will be attending Enterprise Connect in March, and we’ll be sure to bring you the news you need to help assuage and solve these problems in 2016. You can sign up for Enterprise Connect at the expo’s website.
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!
Leave a Reply