Magical Time of the Year! Insider Lite | TalkingPointz

It has been an extraordinary month. I’ve partially attended 5 events this month, and 2 of them were in-person. And, there’s still 3 more to go before month end. Why is October such a popular month for events?

Now that I am attending events again, I appreciate certain elements of virtual events more than I realized. The biggest benefit of the virtual event is efficiency, and it’s more than travel. When it comes to digesting PPT presentations remote is better, and I particularly value async participation. Remote events live are stressful (content, chat, distractions). Async allows me to focus, pause, and rewind.

Unfortunately, it’s way too common for recordings and slides to be delayed a week or more. This completely destroys async benefits. I don’t seem to ever get to week old event videos. Pro tip: Don’t send a survey before sending content.

This month Gartner published two important MQs: UCaaS and Meetings. I always enjoy the MQs and read them thoroughly. In a word, I describe these new reports as similar. The 2021 reports are similar to the 2020 editions and also they are similar to each other.

Actually, all three enterprise comms MQs (UCaaS, Meetings, and CCaaS) are nearly identical to last year. It’s an odd result because there is so much going on in enterprise comms.

The UCaaS and Meetings reports are also similar to each other. My hypothesis is that they put a lot of weight on the meetings capabilities (more than voice) in the UCaaS report. For example, Microsoft is rated very strongly in UCaaS, but then earn the caution that Teams does not address requirements for advanced telephony. Google too was rated very strong on ability to execute but it hasn’t announced any significant updates to Google Voice in years.

I kind of agree with the importance of meetings, especially during the pandemic. But, this is Gartner’s only MQ on enterprise voice and voice is critical. Plus they have a different MQ on Meetings (surprise, three of the Leaders are the same in both reports).

Voice is back baby. For a while voice was demoted as we focused on meetings and chat, but voice is back on top. Cisco, Microsoft, RingCentral, and Zoom all spent about a third of their EC21 keynotes on enterprise voice.

I will be covering the MQ UCaaS in more detail shortly.

From the September Insider Report:

AppStore Suit: The court ordered Apple to let US developers bypass the App Store’s in-app payments with links or directions to “purchasing mechanisms” outside of the platform. Though a blow to Apple, neither Apple nor Epic got what they wanted. The winner in the lawsuit will probably be Microsoft. 

Microsoft has attempted to create a Windows Apps store with lackluster results, though it has struck success with Xbox. I expect the big success will be the MS Android store. Android is a free, open-source operating system. Many firms have taken Android and made it their own, including Amazon, Huawei, Cisco, Logi, Poly, and more. Google monetizes Android via the Play Store. Amazon Fire devices don’t use the Google Play Store. They use Amazon’s own store. Windows 11 will support a Microsoft version of Android, and it will also use the Amazon Appstore. 

My theory is Microsoft is starting with Amazon’s store, but this court ruling just made its own store more important. Microsoft will eventually make its own Android store. Let’s call it Microsoft Work as an alternative to Google Play. Windows 11 users will likely be limited to its “Work” store, but general Android users will likely have options for both Google Play and Microsoft Work. Basically, MS is going to hijack Android, and this isn’t the first time Microsoft borrows Google innovations: See web-based office apps and Chromium in Edge. 

No new episode. This last episode for Week 40 2021 covers Genesys acquisitions, UC Expo, and NICE analyst event. New episode coming on Monday.