Phil Edholm
- President and Founder, PKE Consulting LLC
Phil Edholm is the President and Founder of PKE Consulting LLC. PKE consults to end users and vendors in the communications and networking markets.
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Articles by Phil Edholm
A Successful Hybrid Event May Be All About Timing
As we emerge from our pandemic isolation into the new normal, the challenge of hybrid meetings has dominated the business communications market. As some workers return to the office and meeting rooms, how do we take the virtual meetings and productivity gains and integrate it together with rooms and facilities. In meetings, the hybrid goal is to get a group of people together at the same time in both individual and shared spaces to integrate with one another around a specific meeting topic.
Microsoft Teams Operator Connect Accelerator Program May Speed Teams Phone Adoption
Microsoft last week announced the Operator Connect Accelerator program, which shifts the integration of service provider / Microsoft APIs for Operator Connect integrations from the service providers to the SBC vendors. This program has the potential to significantly simplify the configuration of a Teams PSTN access through a service provider, while enabling a wider range of service providers to participate in the Operator Connect program.
Scheduling Meeting Spaces: Is the Conference Room Available?
At Enterprise Connect, I try to identify one new product that innovatively meets an emerging need. This year, I found a room system usage display that does not require power to be installed, resulting in much lower costs to enable room availability indications. One area of office life that many organizations are trying to resolve is how to manage conference and huddle rooms.
Is Your SBC a Security Breach Waiting to Happen?
Over the last 18 months, companies have adopted advanced communications platforms and cloud-based architectures to enable remote work. At the same time, an increasing number of companies are moving to the cloud for telephony. The result of this migration has been the adoption of Session Border Controllers (SBCs) at the edge of enterprises. The SBC is designed to manage real-time flows and act as a security checkpoint at the edge of the enterprise.
Good Old POTS is Going Away. Is Your Organization Prepared?
Plain Old Telephony Service (aka POTS), the legacy analog copper phone line, is going away. While this isn’t generally a business concern for human voice telephony (as virtually all have already migrated to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) or mobile) POTS’ sunsetting poses a huge challenge for the myriad of devices and systems engineered to use a POTS line for monitoring and signaling.
The Other ‘CaaS’ Company Positioned for Success
I recently wrote a post in No Jitter about how the UCaaS “industry” appears to be maturing and there are a limited set of companies well positioned to be the large dominant players in the space. However, while UCaaS seems to be maturing, enabling business communications and collaboration toolsets outside the core UCaaS user base is a parallel market.
In 2022, the UCaaS Market Will Belong to the Chimps
In the tech classic book “Crossing the Chasm” Geoffrey Moore details the stages a disruptive technology goes through in transforming a major market. In his book, crossing the chasm to the bowling alley is the beginning of a tornado of adoption resulting in the technology being commonplace and on Main Street.
What Does ‘Back to the Office’ Mean for Employees and Managers?
Over the last months there has been much discussion among the UCaaS vendors and IT organizations about how to accommodate the return of employees who have not yet had to come back to the office. Regardless of the emergence of new COVID mutations, it is clear that we will return to an office world that is fundamentally different than the one we left. For the last 18 months, most of the workers who use advanced communications and collaboration systems have been working from home.
RingCentral: Thanks to Partnerships, Poised to Grow With Cloud
Last week RingCentral held its analyst event (still virtual). As part of that event, RingCentral discussed their partnerships with both premises PBX vendors and global service providers (GSPs). What struck me is the scale of the market where RingCentral has built partnerships and may gain subscribers.
Putting an End to the UC Federation Myth
Last week, Cisco and Google announced a partnership that enables room systems from either company to join a meeting hosted by the other service. That is, Cisco Webex Room systems will have a one-touch join option for Google Meet, and Google Rooms (the Google Room Software in Google Rooms) will have the same for joining Webex meetings.
How Cisco is Embracing the Changing Telephony Market
In preparation for the Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom comparison session at Enterprise Connect, Brent Kelly, president and principal analyst at KelCor, and I met with each of the companies for a detailed review of their current offers and future plans. First up, we sat down with Cisco for several meetings, starting with a conversation on how they are approaching telephony in the UC era.
UC Industry Wakes Up to Frontline Moment
As many organizations contemplate the mythical return to the office, and address the accompanying technology and workplace issues that it brings, it’s important to remember that the majority of workers never had the opportunity to work from home. Of course, I’m talking about frontline workers. Frontline workers are those that have to go to a specific physical location to perform their work.
Cisco Braces for Hybrid, But It’s Not Alone
With a fresh Webex logo and a new suite offering, Cisco might appear to be just doing a branding refresh. However, it's more than that; Cisco is preparing for a hybrid future — one that includes but goes beyond video meetings and office buildings. As enterprises plan for the future, some of the habits formed during the pandemic will stay with them. In fact, 92% of meetings will have at least one remote participant post-pandemic, Cisco shared in a survey.
Customer-Facing Video: UCaaS Vs. Embedded Video?
Over the course of the pandemic, the adoption switch has flipped on video communications — not just within the enterprise for employee collaboration, but also for consumers, many of whom have become more and more comfortable with videoconferencing through social and hobby usage.
Cisco Live: Foretelling the Future
Cisco, as demonstrated last week at Cisco Live, has put its stake in the ground in a few areas — video meetings, hybrid work, platform integration/embedded communications, frontline communications, the desktop, and the contact center —that will define our industry in the next few years. Let’s explore.
Returning to the Office Requires the Right IT Strategy
The impact of COVID-19 and work from home has clearly transformed our industry, changing the adoption cycle for both communications and collaboration technology. And as we plan for the future, these changes will stay with us even as we return to the office. Looking at the trends that will drive the return-from-home process, a few stand out. First, not everyone will want to return to the office. Based on surveys and analysis, the current workforce will fit into one of three categories post-pandemic.
Can Your Network Handle WFH, Hybrid for the Long Term?
For the past year, enterprises have scrambled to deliver VoIP, UC, video meetings, team collaboration, and other tools to make working-from-home (WFH) employees as efficient as they were in the office. And new research suggests that the WFH trend isn’t going away anytime soon, which will have lasting impacts on an enterprise’s network.
Does the UC Industry Need More Privacy Regulation?
One consequence of COVID-19 has been a massive adoption of IP-based communication and collaboration tools for most workers, which will have implications in the new year and well beyond 2021. But with these tools widespread use, there is a potential ethical quandary for vendors, enterprises, and users alike. The critical question is who owns conversations when they are recorded?
Personal or Corporate: What is Your Device Strategy?
After nearly a year away, many workers will soon have the option to return to the office in 2021. The pandemic hasn’t only changed the offices themselves but how we work in general. And at the same time, the big collaboration players are providing functionality that can make remote interactions even more effective than in person for many instances, which was evident by the plethora of announcements made at Cisco’s WebexOne event.
Do Your WFH Employees Need Gig-Speed Access?
Two different media items caught my attention recently, both involve Comcast. The first was a Comcast ad targeted at consumers extolling the value of gigabit-speed Internet access for their households. The company told of the challenges of teenagers and video calls and why every such residence needs a gigabit pipe. The second was a news story about Comcast’s decision to apply throttling for customers that use more than 1.2 terabytes (TB) of data monthly.
Telephony Costs Decline: Video Takes Center Stage
The potential for cloud communications providers to impact the telephony cost structure has been a point of discussion for the last five years, further illustrated by the $10 Zoom Phone offer shown at Zoomtopia. As the cloud deployment model emerged, I predicted a 50%-75% decline in the cost of business telephony, and now it appears that we are reaching a $5/month subscription for individual phone licenses that bundles video meeting and telephony.
Zoom Consumer Devices - A Unique Change in the Market?
At Zoomtopia yesterday, a primary focus was on the Zoom for Home initiative, which is paying close attention to delivering Zoom experiences inside a person’s residence. Before COVID-19 hit, Zoom’s focal point was predominately honed-in on Zoom Rooms for businesses and business phone devices. Personal devices were only a small component as the vast majority of those users have some form of personal computer or tablet/mobile to use as an endpoint.
Communications Adjacency: Networking Out, Productivity In
In a No Jitter article posted last week, Brent Kelly, of KelCor, posed the question of whether Cisco should divest its collaboration business unit. As I read the article, I mused on how that might happen. While spinning out the unit as a standalone entity could help Cisco forge a new path forward, selling it off also has potential. My mind went to a few logical suitors. Google has been trying to get into the enterprise market in a larger way for years.
Zoom Outage Resurrects Availability Concerns
I wrote an article back in April 2018, “Where’s My Cloud,” about the reality of cloud reliability and availability. The point of the article was how data on reliability was lacking, while claims of availability were questionable. In light of Zoom’s recent outage that impacted millions, the topic is relevant for enterprises deciding on their cloud direction.
Ease of Use vs. Security: The Zoom Conundrum
The trade-offs between security and ease of use have long plagued technology. Dispense with passwords, and users are happy until they are hacked. Users prefer things to be easy and straightforward, but they are often the weakest link in any system. Many companies have been done in by an employee clicking on an email link to a voicemail message. This same challenge has affected communications and collaboration solutions. Complexity has been the bane of adoption in many organizations.
3 Ways COVID-19 is Changing How We Look at Cloud Calling
A couple of weeks back, I was invited to take part in a Cisco webinar to discuss the enterprise drivers for moving to cloud calling and away from on-premises telephony solutions. We started planning this webinar back in February, and the original plan was for me to go to the Cisco office and do the webinar in-person. Clearly, with California’s shelter-in-place order, that was not an option, so we did the webinar over Webex — and it went well.
If You Can, America, Stick to WFH
Beyond the fact that the rapid and unprecedented increase in the use of meeting and collaboration solutions has enabled some businesses to keep employees working and delivering value in these troubling times, these tools have proven invaluable in enabling the physical distancing with social proximity required to limit the spread of an incredibly contagious disease.
Business Communications Will Never Be the Same
As we move into the fourth week of shelter in place in California, the capability of the IP-based meeting software to enable a large portion of us to continue to work from home is saving huge parts of the economy. Imagine if this virus had emerged in 1990, or in 1980 when cell phones were in their infancy. While there are challenges and hiccups, cloud-based meetings and collaboration software are critical to maintaining economic velocity over the next three months.
Cisco & Microsoft: Changing Their Battle Tactics
As fans of history, we occasionally are reminded that the battle tactics used by the main combatants in our industry, Cisco and Microsoft, sometimes resemble those of the major combatants in World War I. The Western Front’s expansive network of trenches and tunnels inhibited progress and resulted in a stalemate for most of the war. Many times, the combatants launched massive offenses only to see the frontlines move just a few miles in either direction.
Avaya Goes All In at Engage
Last week, I was able to spend some time with Avaya's new management at its user event, Avaya Engage. This was the first big event since the RingCentral partnership announcement and Avaya Cloud Office, based on RingCentral’s UCaaS offering. As I indicated in this post, my key focus was understanding how Avaya was positioning its vision for its three major markets: large enterprise general employee communications (Aura and CM), SMB/mid-market general employee communications, and contact center.
What are Avaya’s Next Steps Heading into Engage?
Sometimes, I get accused of ignoring the other major vendors, and it doesn’t help that at Enterprise Connect Brent Kelly and I will host a session on Microsoft and Cisco. In the vein of looking at the major vendors, it’s time to look at where Avaya is heading. When Avaya announced its relationship with RingCentral to provide Avaya Cloud Office as a UCaaS migration solution for its current IP Office base, it was both an astute and creative move for the company.
Can We Finally Cut the Phone Cord in 2020?
If your last business meeting was held on Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, Circuit, or any other UCaaS/IP-based communications platforms, no doubt your old friend, the telephone, is sitting forlorn on your desk, just waiting for you to jump on the next conference call. The reality is the telephone, and the PSTN federated networks (and SMS) that it represents are still critical to many businesses.
Cato Networks Meets Security at the Edge With SASE
Cloud is changing everything – transforming how businesses process and operate. And the consumer cloud is driving an explosion in capacity, often consumed counter-cyclical to business usage. Using their gig infrastructure that was originally built for consumers, Comcast is moving into business access solutions. SD-WAN, VPN, or other overlay networking solution providers are allowing enterprises to use low-cost Internet access for business-critical operations.
The RingCentral Deal: Potential Revenue Impact on Avaya
As discussed in the previous articles in this RingCentral-Avaya series (here and here), the final conclusions of the Avaya strategy appear to be clear. By partnering with RingCentral to deliver the Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) UCaaS solution to the SMB/midmarket base, Avaya appears to be ending any speculation about an internally developed SMB UCaaS offer.
Is the RingCentral Deal Good for Avaya, Financially?
As I noted in the first piece in this three-part series, Avaya’s strategic partnership with RingCentral, announced two months ago, was a savvy strategic move considering the challenges the company faced internally. But was it the best financial deal for Avaya versus potential alternatives? Does it enable Avaya to finally achieve revenue growth?
Avaya & RingCentral: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
As has been discussed on No Jitter, including here and here, Avaya earlier this month announced a partnership with RingCentral whereby RingCentral would offer an Avaya-branded UCaaS service based on the RingCentral platform. This new offer, Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (ACO), would be marketed through the Avaya channel as the UCaaS migration platform for the existing installed base.
Mitel Delivering on its Category Roll-Up Strategy
Having attended a Mitel analyst briefing a few weeks ago, I began writing an article with my perspective on the company’s strategy and place in the industry. But since I started writing, the industry changed, and I had to take a pause to consider the impact. First, Avaya announced an exclusive partnership with RingCentral, with a goal of facilitating its customers’ migration to that UCaaS platform; RingCentral has invested in Avaya, too.
Facebook Changes the WebRTC Game
This week Facebook announced the long expected video extensions to the Facebook Messenger, using WebRTC. The release of video calling in Facebook can be seen as both a simple change to the existing Skype integration and as the first real salvo in creating the next generation communications system. The big news is that 600 million Facebook users will instantly get real-time video, with a simple click, added to the app they use daily. WebRTC will never be the same.
WebRTC World Miami Wrap Up and Review
Last week the WebRTC World Conference and Expo took place in Miami. Overall it was an exciting conference and a great view of where WebRTC is today and where it is going. While the conference did not start formally until Tuesday morning, a group of developers took part in the WebRTC University starting on Monday afternoon with Dan Burnett and Alan Johnston, getting a hands-on learning and certification in WebRTC technologies and development.
SD-WAN Key for Digital Transformation
Cloud-native carrier Cato Networks last week released the results of a survey of how WAN implementations impact corporate IT organizations. The survey included responses from more than 400 IT executives. Overall, the survey had a number of findings relative to digital transformation. It’s always interesting to see how implementors perceive new technologies.
Pursuit of Recurring Revenue & Three Views of the Cloud
For most No Jitter readers, the cloud represents an opportunity to change telephony business models coupled with the challenge to deliver or consume communications solutions that correspond to the cost and reliability of existing on-premises solutions. When we discuss cloud and UCaaS, we’re usually looking at it through user and vendor views. In the financial world view, however, cloud represents monthly recurring revenue, or MRR (sometimes called annual recurring revenue, or ARR).
Migrating to SD-WAN: One User's View
I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Nick Dell, who manages IT for an auto parts manufacturer in the Detroit area. Over the last couple of years, Nick has migrated from a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based WAN to a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) from Cato Networks, and I wanted to learn about the factors that drove him to consider SD-WAN as well as why he felt Cato had the best solution for his deployment. Two simultaneous events drove Nick to consider an SD-WAN.
RCS: Mobile’s Next-Gen Customer Interaction Platform
If you’re an enterprise communications and collaboration specialist, especially if you work in the U.S., it’s totally understandable if you haven’t heard of or paid attention to Rich Communication Services, or RCS. But you might want to starting familiarizing yourself with this technology. RCS, developed in a GSMA-led wireless industry initiative, is a multichannel augmentation/replacement for SMS.
Will Spam Be the End of the PSTN?
Will Spam Be the End of the PSTN? New research shows almost 50% of mobile calls will be spam in 2019, as further evidence of a growing epidemic. New research shows almost 50% of mobile calls will be spam in 2019, as further evidence of a growing epidemic.
Edge Computing Key to Access Carrier Services Success?
Low latency and bandwidth requirements could provide necessary differentiators against over-the-top providers. Low latency and bandwidth requirements could provide necessary differentiators against over-the-top providers. In my previous No Jitter post, "Why Vonage's TokBox Buy Is a Big Deal," I discussed the challenges for carriers in the emerging IP-for-everything world of delivering services.
Why Vonage's TokBox Buy Is a Big Deal
Points to how critical it is to have a complete cloud-based communications suite Points to how critical it is to have a complete cloud-based communications suite Vonage's decision to purchase video communications platform provider TokBox, announced earlier this month and covered on No Jitter here and here, probably flew under the radar of many industry watchers.
WhatsApp: A New Business Player?
A familiar trend, but one that raises a variety of pressing questions A familiar trend, but one that raises a variety of pressing questions WhatsApp, the Facebook messaging application provider, today introduced multiparty video calling, available on iOS and Android mobile phones, for up to four participants. This is another example of how communications is moving into applications in general, but raises interesting questions for business communications.
Mitel Managing Transformation in Turbulent Times
There is no question we live in interesting times. Whether on the global stage or in the fiercely competitive world of business communications and collaboration, both the environment and the competitors are changing. Mitel, a 45-year-old telecom equipment vendor, under the leadership of its CEO, Rich McBee, has embarked on a strategy of scale and cloud focus.
NEC Delivering an Advantage for Verticals
At its annual conference for channel partners in June, NEC shared a status report on its UC business and discussed how it intends to continue competing in the rapidly transforming communications and collaboration markets. First, NEC shared data from telecom advisory firm T3i Group showing it's leading the industry in number of communications lines shipped (licenses/devices), with a 13.3% share of the total.
WebRTC Is Peer-to-Peer, Not Browser-to-Browser
One area of confusion in WebRTC has been the comment that it is real-time communications for browsers. I have repeatedly heard this in discussions and seen it in public comments. While the first places the WebRTC standard is being implemented is in browsers, there is no real limitation on WebRTC locations or devices. The standard is written to provide two basic defined functions: a standard set of APIs that a server can use to manage endpoint behavior and a set of protocol to enable peers to talk.
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