Leapfrog CX Strategies

Dave and Evan chat with Sagi Dudai, the CTO of Vonage. 

As CTO he is responsible for leading Vonage’s technology vision, architecture and design, overseeing all aspects of technology development, including new products, their enabling technologies and R&D. 

Prior to being named CTO, Mr. Dudai was Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Vonage, responsible for software development company-wide. Prior to joining Vonage in 2012, he held engineering leadership roles at various technology companies, including three startups – Mercury Interactive, TelMap & fring. Earlier, he also worked on a number of classified software and hardware engineering projects for Israeli intelligence.

He graduated from IDF computer science training program and earned his BA in Computer Science & Business Administration from Tel Aviv University. He also holds an Executive M.B.A from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Dave and Evan chat with Eric Yuan the founder and CEO of Zoom. In this conversation we learn that Eric credits something different than his product to Zoom's success and why it's so sweet that Walmart is a customer.  Other topics include Eric's views on social media, freemium software, business travel, and contact centers. 

Eric is a Chinese Internet Entrepreneur and was a founding engineer at Webex. He departed Webex about four years after its acquisition by Cisco in 2011 to start Zoom. Zoom had its IPO last may, a highly successful event that Eric considers just a milestone in his and his company's journey. 

Yuan graduated from Shandong University of Science and Technology with a degree in Applied Math. He earned a Master's degree in engineering from China University of Mining and Technology. 

Dave and Evan chat with Amy Barzdukas about her fascinating year of launches as the CMO of Poly. We learn that friends don't let friends conference with earbuds, her Spartan approach to glamping, and the world needed the Poly Studio. 

Amy Barzdukas is an EVP and CMO at Poly. She is responsible for Poly’s global marketing strategy and execution. Barzdukas has more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry. She joined Polycom in 2015 as Vice President of Global Solutions Marketing and was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer in 2017. She retained the CMO role after Plantronics and Polycom merged into the new Poly. 

Prior to joining Polycom, Barzdukas served as VP WW Marketing for HP’s Business Personal Systems group and had a successful 16-year career at Microsoft with multiple leadership and GM roles.

Dave and Evan meet with Rowan Trollope, the CEO of cloud contact center provider Five9. 

Rowan has a billion things on his mind, yet found time to share some of the recent organizational changes at Five9, what comes next for the contact center after the cloud, how is background helps him at Five9, and he also confirmed he doesn't ski with OJ Simpson. 

Rowan Mehail Trollope was named the CEO of Five9 in May 2018. Previously, he headed the Collaboration group at Cisco. Rowan also held several leadership positions over 20 years at Symantec, where he helped grow it to the global leader in consumer security.

Rowan has completed the Executive Institute at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and the Stanford Directors College at Stanford Law School.

Dave and Evan meet with Vasili Triant to better understand how and why contact center has become such a priority at Cisco. Vasili brings a tremendous amount of sector experience to Cisco. He shares what's changing in the industry, how collaborative Cisco is in terms of its R&D, and why all the execs left ShoreTel. 

Vasili Triant serves as Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Contact Center Group. Vasili brings Vasili resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and family of eight kids. He volunteers with the Lake Travis Youth Sports Association where he is a Board Member and has coached football and baseball for the past six years. Vasili has a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of San Diego.

Dave and Evan meet with Praful Shah, the Chief Strategy Officer at RingCentral. We discuss recent acquisitions, life as a pediatrician, and stadium names. Praful is responsible for defining RingCentral’s business, product, and marketing strategy. He brings more than 20 years of experience with major technology companies in the software and cloud industries. Before joining RingCentral, he worked at WebEx from its founding days until its acquisition by Cisco in 2007. 

Shah holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India and a master’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University.

Dave and Evan meet with Ilya Bukshteyn, the Partner Director over Teams Devices at Microsoft. We discuss how Microsoft is changing, new types of devices, and of course Tesla cars. 

Ilya was there when real-time communications started at Microsoft. Actually, he was there when most things started at Microsoft as he's been there for about 25 years. He made the transition from SfB to Teams and wants to make sure you can too, so works to make sure that you have an ecosystem of high quality, certified devices for desktops and rooms. 

Dave and Evan meet with Bryan Martin to discuss the history of VoIP, UCaaS, video,  the cloud, and 8x8.

Bryan Martin is 8x8’s technological visionary, leading the company’s drive to patent a range of disruptive and innovative technologies. With an excellent sense of how cloud communications transform enterprise communications and customer service, Bryan led 8x8 as CEO from its early days as a VoIP pioneer. Before becoming CEO in 2002, he held the positions of Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President, Engineering Operations.

Martin holds 64 United States Patents in the fields of semiconductors, computer architecture, video processing algorithms, videophones, and communications. Internet Telephony magazine named Bryan one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications.” Bryan also served on the California Broadband Task Force for the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, and later became Chair of the task force’s Emerging Technologies and New Applications Working Group.

Bryan is a member of the IEEE and Tau Beta Pi and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Dave and Evan meet with Tsahi Levent-levi to discuss WebRTC, video, and IP-based communications. 

Tsahi has over 15 years of experience in telecommunications, VoIP video, and networking technologies. He has collected numerous titles in his career including CTO, Entrepreneur, Analyst, Engineer, developer, and more. Titles aside, his main role is to align a communications strategy with business objectives. 

Tsahi is one of the most well known thought leaders on the subject of WebRTC. He’s published numerous articles and training materials related to WebRTC and believes it’s one of the most significant recent communications developments. 

Tsahi holds an MSc in Computer Science, and an MBA. He has been awarded three patents and advises clients on  the patent processes. 

In this podcast we get into WebRTC as well other communications technologies and applications such as healthcare and travel. 

Tsahi stays close to industry standards and the standards making process. He has previously acted as chairman of various activity groups within the IMTC (regarding interoperability of multimedia) and now holds the position of W3C Evangelist for all things WebRTC.

Visit Tsahi's site: BlogGeek.me

Dave and Evan meet with Alan Lepofsky of Salesforce to discuss the object of his evangelism, Quip.

With almost two decades of experience in the software industry, Alan helps companies understand how to develop and/or implement collaboration solutions that help employees get work done. He prefers to focus on how organizations can improve their existing business processes by providing access to the colleagues, content and communities that can help people get their work done more effectively.

After over seven years as a collaboration software analyst, Alan became the newest VP Evangelism for Business Productivity at Salesforce last February. Specifically, he is working with the Quip division to showcase the benefits of uniting content, collaboration and business objects. Quip is a digital canvas that empowers people to bring context to their conversations.

Learn more about Quip, collaboration, and how nothing has changed since Lotus Notes.