Top 10 No Jitter Posts in 2019

1. Avaya does nothing; it remains a public company and operates as it has since it hopped back on the NYSE almost two years ago.
2. Mitel purchases Avaya and rolls up the company, continuing the consolidation mission of its CEO, Rich McBee.
3. Avaya goes private. As reported previously on No Jitter, based on a Reuters article, private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice is considering partnering on a bid with UCaaS leader, RingCentral.

2. No — Teams Isn’t Next Version of Skype for Business — In introducing its team collaboration app, Teams, back in late 2016, Microsoft set the stage for it to become the UC client of choice over time. In the ensuing couple of years, many enterprise communications leaders who had committed to Skype for Business for UC found themselves grappling with how best to proceed in the new Teams-oriented world. Kevin Kieller, co-founder of enableUC, and regular No Jitter contributor on all things Microsoft, unmuddied the waters in this Jan. 31 piece, in which he described Teams as “a distinct product that provides new collaboration capabilities akin to persistent chat on steroids” and explained how it combines capabilities of Skype for Business with SharePoint and OneDrive. “The correct way to think of Teams is as two significant products rolled into one, a collaboration tool and a communications tool …,” Kieller wrote. “This mindset assists organizations deciding if they want to use Teams and, if so, how to optimize it for increased business productivity.”

3. Mobile Voice, Data, Text: Unlimited for $20 a Month?! — In this Sept. 19 post, wireless watcher Michael Finneran, of dBrn Associates, used the news that Altice, which owns cable operators Optimum (formerly Cablevision) and Suddenlink, would be following market leaders Comcast and Charter Communications in offering cellular service as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The catch, as captured in the headline, is that Altice would be doing so at a new price point for unlimited voice, data, and text. And, Altice would be offering “infrastructure-based MVNO,” through partnerships with Sprint and AT&T, rather than playing the traditional MVNO role as reseller. Finneran quoted a CNBC interview with Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei to explain the difference. In that interview, Goei had stated: “We have our own core network, we control the SIM card, and we are able to manage the traffic that goes on and off the Wi-Fi network more accurately and seamlessly [than traditional MVNOs]. That allows us to be a lot more cost effective in terms of what we pay to our roaming partners.” Finneran went on to suppose that while Altice’s move will have minimal impact on large enterprises, “small business is a different animal, one for which ‘cost control’ has a much stronger pull.”

5. Avaya, Mitel Said to Be in Merger Talks — Well, we know this one didn’t pan out, but in late April the scuttlebutt, as originally reported in The Wall Street Journal, was that Avaya and Mitel were discussing a merger. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the WSJ report said the negotiations involved a $2 billion stock deal, representing a share price of about $20 to $22 that Mitel was willing to pay for Avaya.

6. Skype for Business – Death Exaggerated, but on Life Support — Following on Microsoft’s summer announcement that it had set July 31, 2021, as the retirement date for Skype for Business Online, UC consultant Kevin Kieller, of enableUC, penned this Oct. 28 piece around the premise that “Skype for Business Server is now suffering from a potentially fatal wound.” He offered two critical reasons why the retirement of the online version spells the demise of the premises counterpart: For one, it feels like Skype is dead emotionally; and secondly, Skype for Business is being left behind technically. His advice: “Even if Skype for Business is providing excellent benefits to your organization, it can only be kept on life support for so long; you need to start saying your goodbyes and planning your transition to Teams now.”

• It enables Avaya R&D and marketing to ignore UCaaS and focus on CCaaS
• It gives Avaya a UCaaS answer in the market, providing clarity to existing IP Office customers and channels that the UCaaS future is clearly ACO
• It allows Avaya to work more closely on how its large customers can integrate their existing Avaya products with their O365/Teams direction or consider ACO
• It allows Avaya to buy back shares and placate its bondholders turned stock investors

10. Exploring How to AI-Enable IVR for the Contact Center — AI and the contact center hits the list at this No. 10 spot, complements of Brent Kelly, of KelCor, and his Jan. 31 post about Inference Solutions and its platform for creating intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). In this article, Kelly provided a complete rundown on the company and the platform, and even provided a customer snapshot. For the article, he spoke with Jeff Coomans, director of virtual solutions for BluIP, which helped a hotel chain deploy an IVA for reservation calls. Based on his experience working with the hotel chain, Coomans told Kelly that virtual agents will replace or augment many existing contact center agents over the next five to 10 years. “It’s hard to beat a well-designed virtual agent that can interact with people 24/7,” he said.