As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Enterprise Connect content team is busy planning the 2018 program. Today I have the privilege of sharing the latest conference news, the addition of keynote speakers from industry giants Amazon, Cisco, and Microsoft.
As regular readers may recall, we'd earlier announced that Slack will be joining our keynote lineup for the first time in 2018. Join us at Enterprise Connect 2018, March 12 to 15, to hear insights and product directions from:
With the whirlwind of change bringing its disruptive forces in enterprise communications, can you afford to miss hearing about what's propelling these companies forward? To learn what's top of their minds, and how they're intending to deliver on their visions to better serve enterprises at large?
This has been one busy week in the world of enterprise communications and collaboration.
The big news, as I'm sure you've heard by now, is Cisco's surprise acquisition of BroadSoft (that BroadSoft was entertaining suitors wasn't news; that Cisco entered the fray, was). In one fell swoop, Cisco lands itself on top of the UCaaS heap, after struggling to gain traction with its Spark-based cloud communications offering. We've got the story dissected every which way on No Jitter from our regular crop of third-party contributors. UC analyst Dave Michels, for example, shares evolutionary perspective in declaring "there's no better fit than Cisco" for BroadSoft, while Irwin Lazar, a VP with Nemertes Research, raises the specter of UCaaS market disruption. And Zeus Kerravala, another industry watcher, noted how bad Cisco's ownership would be for BroadSoft endpoint partners.
Questions abound, especially around how Cisco will resolve product and feature overlap -- because, as Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of Cisco's Internet of Things and Applications business, told a group of analysts at BroadSoft's annual Connections event, Cisco needs a single offer going forward. Toward that end, Cisco is already talking about "rationalizing" Spark Call, Trollope said, giving a nod to the more advanced state of the BroadSoft calling technology, as Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes, shared on No Jitter.
Cisco expects to close the acquisition in the first quarter, and so surely will have lots more to say on its future direction come March, when Enterprise Connect rolls into Orlando. Will Rosenberg address any of this from the keynote stage? I don't know, but I would have to guess the topic might come up...
What else might we hear from the keynote stage? Last year AWS introduced its contact center offering, Amazon Connect. What's it got in store for 2018? What messaging will Enterprise Connect newcomer Slack share for an enterprise IT audience? Where will Microsoft be in shifting its client focus from Skype for Business to Teams, and more deeply integrating with the full Office 365 suite?
Enterprise Connect offers you the unique opportunity to hear from industry leaders in one place -- not only from the keynote stage, of course, but throughout the conference program and out on the Expo floor, too. You need to be there!
Register now using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advance Rate or get a free Expo Plus pass.
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