Leapfrog CX Strategies

Dave and Evan meet with Michael Quinn of Q Advisors about mergers and acquisitions in enterprise communications.

Michael Quinn is a founding partner of Q Advisors, and shares his insider views on industry M&A activities. With more than 25 years of international operations and investment banking experience in the telecommunications industry, Michael has originated, structured, and executed more than 100 deals totaling more than $4 billion in transaction value. 

Michael has led transactions for Q Advisors' clients including: Arkadin, Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc., Broadcore, Grande Communications, Hudson Fiber, Masergy Communications, Neverblue, One Source Networks, NuVox, Inc., and WildBlue Communications. 

Prior to forming Q Advisors, Michael was a founder of and Chief Corporate Development Officer for VeloCom Inc., a Latin American wireless services provider, where he was responsible for capital raising and acquisition activities. Michael began his career with the New York-based law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. He later became a partner in the Denver-based law firm Holland & Hart LLP, guiding their international corporate finance practice.

Michael received a B.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. He is currently on the Advisory Board of The George Washington University School of Business and on the Board of the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. 

Michael is currently on the Board of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA), also serving as Secretary.

Dave and Evan meet with Zoom CIO Harry Moseley.

Harry joined Zoom just about a year ago to be its CIO. Formerly the CIO of KPMG, Blackstone, Credit Suisse, and UBS, Harry brings considerable expertise in solutions development, infrastructure, security, strategic planning, and building technology teams to Zoom.

Harry is responsible for creating business value at Zoom through technology innovation, supporting business growth objectives, and ensuring its technology platforms and procedures give the business outcomes customers expect.

Before we get into video streaming, we talk about streaming video. Harry shares a few things he's learned in the past year, a few things about millennials, why video is the new voice, and what it is like in the fast lane.

From Zoom:
Harry brings to Zoom a blend of transformational leadership, disruptive innovation, and corporate growth strategies. As the former CIO & Managing Director for KPMG, Harry was responsible for technology and innovation to support the firm’s competitive growth. Over five years he identified and replaced legacy technology to dramatically improve productivity, security, and reliability. Before joining KPMG, Harry served as CIO & Senior Managing Director − Partner for Blackstone, where he led the company’s transformation to the world’s best digital alternative asset manager. Prior to Blackstone, Harry was a Managing Director for Credit Suisse, where he served as the CIO of Global Investment Banking, and Global Co-Head of Application Development / Co-CIO of the firm. Before Credit Suisse, Harry served as CTO & Managing Director for UBS Americas.

In this TalkingHeadz, Dave and Evan hangout with Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management at Google. Among Scott's responsibilities are the communications and collaboration applications within G Suite which includes Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, and Google Voice. 

We discuss all of those as well as other things G including new leadership, Chromebooks and the Jamboard. 

2019 is expected to be a big year for Google with regards to enterprise communications and collaboration. The Hangouts Classic app will be replaced with two separate apps: Hangouts Meet (for conferencing) and Hangouts Chat (for messaging). Additionally, Google will be launching Google Voice as an integrated, optional UCaaS service. 

Google has quietly become not only an enterprise vendor, but a comprehensive one. The anchors are Google Cloud services for workloads and G Suite for workflow or office productivity. G Suite communications includes Hangouts and Voice. Google also has a number of additional communications services including Google AI for Contact Centers, room systems for conferencing, Duplex chatbots, Google Fi wireless service, and an arsenal of endpoints (Chrome browser, ChromeOS, and Android). 

In this podcast, Dave Michels and Evan Kirstel chat with Colin Berkshire, a regular yet mysterious contributor to TalkingPoitnz.

Colin has an opinion on a lot of things - possibly everything, but especially Apple, Asia, 4G/5G, and Bell Labs. He's been a regular contributor for several years now, yet no one has met him. He guards his privacy and "Colin Berkshire" is a pen name. He does not use social media and doesn't directly respond to comments.

He does read them, and he's been known to indirectly respond with a separate, new post.

In this podcast we cover a lot of ground and air too. We get right into 5G and Colin explains that if you exclude cell phones, it's a great technology. We learn how to ascertain the proper amount to bribe, and why Tim Cook isn't a thief and doesn't want Colin's money. 

Many people inquire if Colin is real. He finds that humorous and responded directly in a post titled: Do I Exist? He does. And now, for the first time, you can hear him in this podcast.

Here's a few of his greatest hits:

I Beat Apple
Betting on Magenta
The Best Money Government Can Buy
Reflecting on Bell Labs Era
AT&T and Verizon's Towers

Colin is technical, analytical, opinionated, historical and sometimes hysterical. He's mostly retired and enjoys rolling his eyes at just about everything, but does so with piercing accuracy. Colin is genuinely surprised that he enjoys writing posts, and even more surprised that anyone reads them. 

One of the benefits of changing TalkingHeadz from a video to an audio format is that Colin agreed to participate. 

In this podcast, Dave Michels and Evan Kirstel chat with Mathilde Collin, CEO and co-founder of Front. 

While there's a general consensus that we have evolved past email, there's little agreement what to do about it. Many vendors are looking to replace email with workstream collaboration apps. Mathilde and Front are taking a different approach, and are reimagining email to better accommodate group collaboration.

Front offers an email client for effective team collaboration. It can be used with Exchange or Gmail -- though Mathilde makes a few comments that suggest a bigger plan. 

Momentum is on her side. Email is growing, not declining. It's a problem because the universal inbox wasn't designed for today's volume or workflow. Can Front fix email before email breaks us? The original app of collaboration is indeed due for a makeover. 

Mathilde Collin moved her company of 17 people to Silicon Valley and now has thousands of enterprise customers including Tesla, Shopify, and Dropbox. Front can be used by departments, and in some cases gets deployed enterprise-wide. 

Front is a graduate of Y Combinator. The company recently raised millions from Sequoia Capital and investors such as Alexis Ohanian of Reddit and Stewart Butterfield of Slack.

In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave learn that Joe Manuele moved into video because he likes watching.  We also learned discussed contact centers, and Teslas.

Joe was recently named as the first non-founder CEO of video conferencing provider Highfive.

About Joe Manuele 
Prior to joining Highfive, Joe Manuele ran the global Collaboration and Customer Experience practice at Dimension Data. An Enterprise Sales and GTM veteran, Joe’s background includes leadership roles at Cisco, Adtran, Actelis Networks and Avaya. Joe has a Computer Science degree from Control Data Institute in Montreal.
Prior to Cisco he was Chief Technology Strategist for Skype.

Highfive is an innovative video conferencing provider. The solution uses open WebRTC technology and offers room system hardware as part of its subscription offer. 

Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-highfive

In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave ask the legendary Jonathan Rosenberg if SIP was a mistake. We also manage to discuss WebRTC, robocalls, Facebook, and fine dining.

JR was joined Cisco in 2013 where he a chief architect of what Webex Teams.

About Jonathan Rosenberg
Jonathan Rosenberg is the outgoing VP, CTO, and very fine Fellow of Cisco Collaboration. Having worked in IP communication and collaboration for 18 years he has some hang-ups on disconnects. He has authored many of the Internet standards that define modern telecoms, including SIP, SIMPLE (SIP for presence and IM), and ICE. He has held numerous leadership positions in the IETF, is the fourth most prolific author of Internet standards of all time (with 70 RFCs), holds 52 granted US patents, has served on advisory boards of numerous startups, given nearly a hundred industry talks, and has received several industry awards, including being named to the Technology Review TR100 in 2002 – the 100 most innovative young technologists in the world.

Prior to Cisco he was Chief Technology Strategist for Skype.

In 2002 JR was named one of the most innovative young technologists in the world by Technology Review magazine. He also was named a "Top Supergeek" by CRN and won a Pulver Von Pioneer award for contributions to the VoIP industry. In 2015 he was presented with the Ohio University Strowger Award for transformational innovation in the telecommunications industry.

Rosenberg holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from MIT and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Columbia University.

Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-jr

In this TalkingHeadz, Evan and Dave discuss the UC channel with SVP Todd Abbott at Mitel. Todd joined Mitel in April of 2017, and before that he worked everywhere else. He is in the complex role of encouraging UC channel partners to both sell and evolve as industry evolves toward cloud-delivered services. Todd takes us on a channel evolution safari.

About Todd
A seasoned executive with more than 30 years of experience in the computing, networking, and business communications industries, Todd Abbott develops go-to-market strategies, sales models, and channel programs. He is currently Mitel’s Executive Vice President of Global Sales & Services, and oversees global sales operations, including cloud and enterprise sales, professional and support services, and channel programs.

Prior to joining Mitel, Todd has held senior executive positions at several business communications companies, including Symbol Technologies, Seagate Technology, Avaya, and Sonus Networks. Earlier in his career, Todd spent eight years at Cisco Systems. Todd began his career in 1982 at IBM Corporation.

Todd has a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in Finance and Marketing from Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts).

Cross posted at https://TalkingPointz.com/th-todd-abbott

Dave and Evan ask Jason What's Next? Jason is a very technical, UC/VoIP/CPaaS industry pioneer, and he's currently in a free agent mode, We took the opportunity to ask him what's on his mind - and the answers range from cameras to Twitter. 

Ooma is suddenly on the enterprise UCaaS stage. Like Vonage before it, Ooma has broken free of its consumer VoIP roots and expanded into enterprise UCaaS. Perhaps suddenly is the wrong word, it had Ooma Office, but last March expanded its footprint with the acquisition of Voxter:

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ooma, Inc. (NYSE:OOMA), a smart communications platform for businesses and consumers, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Voxter Communications Inc., a provider of custom UCaaS solutions for mid-market and enterprise businesses.

Voxter will complement the Ooma Office solution for small business, giving Ooma a business communications portfolio that can meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.

Founded in 2005 and based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Voxter provides its clients with fully hosted VoIP solutions, taking productivity to a higher level through a voice architecture that’s feature rich and highly customizable to meet the individual needs of each business. Beyond telephony, Voxter offers instant messaging, videoconferencing, contact center capabilities, integration with mobile devices and more.

Voxter provides its advanced UCaaS solution to leading businesses, including Slack, Optimizely, Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort, Hyperwallet and Grafana.

Suddenly, Ooma has a set of larger enterprise customers and some pretty slick back-end processing technologies. Slack is quite the reference customer too. In August, Ooma announced (featured in Quipz) a new GTM partnership with Talkdesk. It shows a commitment to expand its enterprise business with a broader, integrated portfolio.

Another interesting tidbit about Ooma is its DECT know-how. I've always been a fan of DECT wireless technologies, though they are not that popular in the US. Since Ooma's premised-based gateway device has DECT for wireless phones, they also expanded into home security. DECT has better range, requires less power, and offers better security than Wi-Fi.

https://talkingpointz.com/talkingheadz-15-chris-burgy-of-ooma/

Published October 3, 2018