UC Today

We have launched our inaugural UC Awards 2018. The awards will be recognising the most disruptive and innovative companies and solutions across the Unified Communications and Collaboration industries. An industry esteemed judging panel will evaluate the applications and crown the winners in each of the seven categories. The winners, and those deserving of a special mention will be announced in November. As part of the submissions we spoke to award nominee Five9 about their year so far, the main industry trends impacting them, and their plans for 2019. 

Call analytics and reporting can provide huge benefits to customers around the world who want to better understand and enhance their service provision. But often this information is in a format that is difficult for customers to understand and interpret. Node4 the UK based managed service provider are aiming to change that with the launch of their call reporting and analytics feature.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are two technology areas that raise questions about the legitimacy of various human jobs roles moving into the future. Many people have postulated that developments in AI and ML will lead to the redundancy of humans across many industries in job roles that can be easily assimilated by machines. But is this the case and will machines be taking our jobs? In this episode of Out Loud we hear from an expert in the field who explains more about this very topic. 

With modern networks transforming at such a rapid speed it is critical for enterprise organisations and service providers to be able to ensure security throughout every network layer. What are the most useful tools that enable companies to do this? In this episode we are joined by Ribbon Communications and Nectar who have partnered to offer a centrally located unified communications diagnostics (UCD) system to monitor multiple, geographically dispersed SBCs and identify network issues affecting communication systems.

As the financial year draws to an end at Cisco we review all of the latest news and updates from the summer in their world of collaboration. Next month Cisco have their annual sales conference GSX and we examine all the features that will be discussed during the event. Normally the FY year end brings some restructuring so it will be interesting to see what will unfold. We look at updates to the Webex meeting platform including expanded device support and democratised meetings. 

We are living in the age of technological revolution. There are a number of new innovations that are affecting organisations tech strategies around the globe. What are these different megatrends and how can the world, and industry utilise their innovations to transform? Century Link join the podcast today to examine the trends, such as the rise of IoT, Cloud and Big Data, and try to understand how enterprise organisations are reacting. 

Collaboration is one of the biggest rising trends through the technology world, enabling organisations to work together more efficiently across geographical locations and internal departments. Have the established players taken the best approach to enable the most effective collaboration? Unify have a fresh approach with their collaboration tool, Circuit. Circuit has a number of unique features that differentiate it within the market. In this episode we hear all about it and how effective collaboration is needed to create a self-service culture. 

Everyone who has worked in an office knows that the way in which different people use technology varies dramatically according to their personality. Leading hardware solutions provider, Plantronics, have looked at this in depth with their research into the effect of personas. Would you work best with a desk phone or maybe just with a headset that is compatible with a mobile device? Plantronics have mapped seven different personality types and examined how technology can best be used to enhance each users working efficiency. 

Collaboration platforms are one of the hottest areas of technology that we examine at UC Today. Enabling effective communication and teamwork the platforms are becoming a vital business system within industry and professional environments. With the enormous rise in their uptake, the security of the platforms appears to have taken a back seat. Shadow IT is another aspect of business communication that organisations need to address to combat the use of consumer collaboration and communication tools. In this episode we discuss security with Wire who are arguably the world's most secure collaboration platform. 

Omnichannel communication now forms the basis of customer to business interactions across the globe with the days of single communication paths behind us. But why is omnichannel communication so important and is it getting harder for organisations to offer viable omnichannel customer experiences? Zendesk are one of the world's leading providers of customer service and support software and they examined why companies are looking to omnichannel to improve their CX provision. Their benchmark report analysed data from more than 45,000 of their customers in 140 countries and today we talk to them about the findings in detail.