If you were enjoying a little well-deserved down time last week, you might have missed some of No Jitter’s year-end coverage, which mostly focused on looking ahead to 2024. Naturally AI dominated the discussion, as I expect it will continue to do as we head toward Enterprise Connect 2024, which is now less than 3 months away (March 25 – 28 in Orlando).
One noteworthy development during the usually-slow last week of the year, which sets some context for 2024’s debates over AI, was the lawsuit filed by the New York Times against Microsoft and OpenAI, charging the two tech powerhouses with copyright infringement in training their AI models. The suit serves as a reminder that critical compliance issues are still to be resolved for many applications of AI.
Indeed, some of our No Jitter writers chose to focus on the potential for 2024 to be a year when AI hype clashes with some of the hard realities that may lie ahead. In his 2024 predictions post, industry veteran David Danto opined that AI will not take over the collaboration world this year: “It’ll be more like taking the first few steps up a very long staircase,” Danto wrote. “For all of 2024 we’ll still be far closer to that first step than the very distant last one.” Similarly, analyst Jon Arnold of J Arnold & Associates predicted a “backlash” driven by uncertain ROI for AI in collaboration.
CX and the contact center are another matter, though. Robin Gareiss of Metrigy presented research showing that, “39% of IT, CX, and business unit leaders say 2024 will be the turning point for their company’s acceptance of using AI for customer interactions. Another 20% say that will happen in 2025.” Gareiss adds some caveats around consumers’ resistance to chatbots and business leaders’ cautious attitude toward generative AI, but does anticipate AI boosting self-service and voice of the customer applications.
Finally, Tom Nolle of Andover Intel takes the long view in arguing that the industry needs to recognize what he regards as just about a once-in-a-lifetime situation: “We’re in the most revolutionary period in technology for decades, maybe for all time, with the reality of the Internet combining with the promise of AI,” he writes. “You don’t justify a revolution with trivia, you have to think big, think not only out of the box but ahead of it. That’s what enterprise technology planners, planners like you, need to be doing in the new year.”
All of these themes will find an outlet at Enterprise Connect 2024. The event’s mission has always been to help you position your enterprise for what’s next—whether that’s an imminent technology migration or need for strategic positioning on a potentially revolutionary technology like AI. Our conference tracks on AI, CX, and Collaboration & UC all feature perspectives on AI that will give you the range of opinions, research, and experience.
And as the hybrid work picture appears to settle in, another topic Danto addresses in his No Jitter post, our Video Collaboration/AV and Employee Experience tracks are packed with enterprise-led sessions as well as sessions offering you a strategic vision for how best to equip your meeting spaces for collaboration—whether those spaces are in the office or at a user’s remote location.
So I hope you can join us in Orlando to get the learning and networking that can help you plan how to make new technologies drive better collaboration and customer experience for your enterprise. You can get more information and see our amazing list of enterprise speakers at the event’s home page. See you at Enterprise Connect!
