Dave and Evan chat with Del Currie, Head of Solutions at Sneek.io.

Sneek.io provides what's known as persistent video. Though, it's not persistent video. It's really better described as a next generation of presence that involves frequent snapshots. Instead of a green or yellow icon, Sneek.io users see frequent snapshots of their colleagues, and presence can be seen if he or she is in the photo. A single click turns that snapshot into a live video chat. 

Persistent video can be viewed as a new form of presence, a new form of chat, an Orwellian Big Brother, or potentially as a portal to another location. Whatever it is, it's a fascinating form of business communications. It's not a new concept, but perhaps its time has finally come. None of the persistent video apps that came before are still around. This doesn't bother Del, and he explains why in this podcast. 

Dave and Evan chat with Sri Srinivasan (LinkedIn/Twitter), the new GM of Cisco Collaboration. In this discussion we talk about organizational changes, Sri's priorities, Webex in March, and what Sri learned from Microsoft. Prior to recent promotion, Sri was responsible for Webex including Meetings, Teams, Calling, and room hardware. 

Sri has broad software experience across platforms and products. His career has spanned numerous roles including software development, development lead, architect, performance & scale engineering, program management and engineering general management. Sri has been a hands-on technical architect with deep domain understanding of business applications across ERP, CRM, and cloud communications. 

He arrived at Cisco collaboration over two years ago. Prior to his arrival, he spent over 12 years at Microsoft developing (conceptualizing) ERP. Prior to Microsoft he worked at Claremont and Peoplesoft. 

Dave and Evan chat with Mary T. McDowell, CEO of Mitel. In October 2019, Mary McDowell was named the CEO of Mitel. Many industry professionals first met McDowell during her term as CEO of Polycom. She exited Polycom when it was acquired by Plantronics (now known as Poly) in 2018. 

Prior to Polycom, McDowell was an EVP at Nokia, where she was in charge of the company’s $15B global feature phone business and oversaw Nokia’s developer and app store organization. She also previously held senior positions at Compaq Computer and Hewlett Packard. 

Mary is known to be a pragmatic and effective problem solver with extensive experience, in emerging markets, M&A, and operations, and turnarounds. In 2012 she was described as one of ten "disruptive individuals" reshaping the mobile phone industry. In 2018, she was recognized as one of the top 10 women in telecommunications. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Engineering.

@davemichels and @evankirstel discuss the TalkingPointz Insider Report for March News - our discussion features celebrity voicemails. Subscribe to TalkingPointz Insider Reports https://talkingpointz.com/pricing
Insider reports are accessible to non subscribers after 100 days.
https://talkingpointz.com/category/insider/

Dave and Evan chat with Murali Sitaram, GM of Microsoft Yammer and Office 365 Groups. 

Yammer is an enterprise social networking service used for internal communications within organizations. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012, but hasn't done that much with it - until recently. Yammer got a whole new look. Although Yammer and Teams offer a lot of the same functionality, the two apps are positioned as complementary rather than competitive. Yammer and Teams are both included in all Office 365 and Microsoft 365 enterprise plans.

Sitaram is the GM of Yammer and O365 Groups, accountable for the product strategy and
development and service delivery for both these products as part of the O365 suite. Before joining Microsoft, Murali Sitaram was most recently the Managing Director of  global Partnerships and Alliances with Google serving Google Cloud’s portfolio. Prior to Google, Murali was the VP/GM of WebEx at Cisco, where he helped grow WebEx to over a $1B business. 

Prior to this, Murali lead the development of WebEx Social an Enterprise Social Platform after successfully helping to turn around Cisco's Call Center business
as GM. Earlier in his career, Murali has held various product leadership positions at companies such as Avaya and Aspect Communications.

In this TalkingHeadz podcast, Dave and Evan discuss the news and events of February, with special guests via voicemail.

We discuss the February Insider Report, published the first week of March on TalkingPointz. Insider Reports summarize and analyze the major news and events from the prior month. You can subscribe to Insider Reports at https://talkingpointz.com/pricing/

Dave and Evan chat with Craig Walker, the CEO of Dialpad.

Craig Walker is the co-founder and CEO of Dialpad, a born-in-the-cloud UCaaS provider. Previously he led Dialpad Communications Inc., (acquired by Yahoo! for $50 million), a pioneer in VoIP services, and later co-founded GrandCentral (acquired by Google for $100 million). Dialpad has raised $120 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Felicis Ventures, SoftBank, and Iconiq Capital. 

Craig was a technology venture investor at Sterling Payot Capital and TeleSoft Partners and was also a corporate attorney at top tier law firms in Silicon Valley, where he represented companies ranging from early stage start-ups to Cisco Systems. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley (BA), Georgetown University (MBA) and Boalt Hall School of Law (JD). Member of the Telecommunications and E-Commerce Committee for the US Chamber of Commerce.

In this podcast we discuss how Switch.co got Dialpad back as its name. How Craig can't escape Telecom, and why the restaurant business needs more disruption. 

Dave and Evan chat with John Hernandez, the CEO of Selligent.

John Hernandez is well known in the communications industry as a contact center pro.  In August of 2017, he took those skills to Selligent, a marketing cloud. Selligent leverages automation and AI to improve the customer experience. Selligent's marketing platform provides a cohesive, flexible platform designed for agile, marketers. Seligent's services are complementary to both CRM and contact center initiatives.

While there are indeed other marketing clouds, and while some contact center solutions understand rudimentary marketing, Selligent offers a powerful integrated solution. Under Hernandez's leadership, Selligent has created alliances with Cisco, Genesys, Five9, and NICE.

Prior to Selligent, Hernandez was the COO and SVP, Service Cloud at Salesforce. He has the experience and vision to navigate Selligent thru its rapid growth. Before Salesforce, John served as VP and GM of IBM's collaboration business. Prior, Hernandez served as a VP and GM within Cisco's Collaboration business, where he created the Customer Collaboration Strategy.

You can follow John on Twitter. 

Dave and Evan chat with Jeff Lawson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Twilio. 

Jeff Lawson realized that communications are essential to every business. He got the idea as a result of his experiences as an entrepreneur and developer during a time when the API model for technology services was emerging. Lawson and co-founder Evan Cooke created Twilio, and effectively created a new enterprise communications category: Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS). 

Twilio has enabled small, medium, and large enterprises to create powerful communications enabled applications. It also spawned numerous other providers that leverage Twilio's services and Super Network under the covers. Twilio’s platform serves people in over 180 countries. The company’s revenue has grown from $88.8 million in 2014 to over a billion in 2019.

In this podcast we ask Jeff to explain why it makes sense to target budget developers, hwo live coding became a thing, and several other topics including why customers pay for services with their shoes. 

Dave and Evan chat with Brian Day the newly named CEO of Fuze.

Last month, Fuze named Brian Day its new CEO. Actually, Brian announced it himself in a blog post that also reemphasized Fuze's commitment to enterprise customers. 

Fuze was among the first UCaaS providers (under it's original brand Thinking Phones) to penetrate larger customers. While most providers started small and are working their way up, Fuze started big and has been (until recently) working its way to smaller accounts. 

Brain explains the differences in targeting enterprises vs. small and medium businesses, and why Fuze is taking deliberate actions to primarily focus on large accounts.  

Prior to being CEO, Brian was the CFO at Fuze. He has 25 years as a successful financial leader and operator at high-growth companies, most recently at Apperian where he also served first as CFO, and then CEO through its sale in 2016.

Brian has a B.A. in Economics from the University of New Hampshire, and also accidentally got a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School.