Principal
Consultant, Collaboration / Multimedia / Video / AV
Dimension Data
Director of
Emerging Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail:
David.Danto@DimensionData.com Follow Industry
News: @NJDavidD
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A View From The Road Volume 8, Number 2
-2014 Enterprise Connect
As
this year’s Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando comes to a close I frankly
find myself stunned. I’ve always felt
myself to be something of a cynic – with my favorite explanation being that the
optimist sees the glass half full, the pessimist sees it half empty and the
cynic sees a glass manufactured twice as big as was necessary. It seems this year the organizers of this
conference have pitched a tent in my back yard.
The years of rose-colored-glasses were chucked-aside, as the comments
from Fred Knight and team were shockingly blunt – calling out industry leaders
for failing to provide solutions that actually fit the “unified” description of
Unified Communications.
“Please
don’t tell me about user democratization when your technology just doesn’t work
together” Mr. Knight told the opening panel of leaders from Cisco, Microsoft,
Mitel, NEC, Unify and Avaya – and that was one of the milder statements from
this group. As I listened to the
panelists I was stunned how all of them tacitly admitted that all of the
solutions on the market to date have essentially been failures – unable to
unify anything other than products within their own portfolios and rarely
working with the ease and/or quality that enterprise users demand. This emboldened position – that some of the
emperors have no clothes – was refreshingly visible throughout the conference,
in both the words of speakers and attendees - commenting on social media and
Enterprise Connect’s own smartphone app chat
feature. (I’ll include some of those
comments throughout this conference wrap-up.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No
matter if you love or hate Cisco, everyone agreed they were the star of this
conference. Rowan Trollope’s Keynote
address on Tuesday just outshined every other presentation and
announcement. If you’ve been to Cisco
keynote / demos before then understand this was nothing like any of the
past.
Rowan
just blew-away the audience in a number of ways. Firstly, he introduced Cisco’s new SX-10
videoconference endpoint. At a
street price (in his words) of $1.5K US it is a standards-based, simple
appliance complete with a PTZ camera, meant to mount on top of or stand under
any standard flat panel. Instead of
bringing on the Cisco demo guy he unboxed one from scratch, plugged in the
needed two cables (HDMI to display, network with POE), attached it to the
display, powered it on and started using it.
He grabbed the included remote control, said he hated using it, then
showed a smartphone app it comes with that found the unit by itself (part of a
suite of features Cisco calls Intelligent Proximity) and initiated the call
from that. In the face of this demo and
product at this price I can’t imagine even the staunchest “software only for
video” person continuing to advocate for any of the recent webcam based room
systems that have recently hit the market.
Amazingly,
he didn’t stop there. He demonstrated
some beautiful and feature rich new video systems, detailed how going forward
ease of use will be his primary concern and then explained how Cisco is
dropping the price of all video systems more than 40%. And then, if the SX10 itself wasn’t enough to
kill the recently introduced Google
Chromebox for Meetings he brought Google’s Rajen Sheth to the stage to
demonstrate WebEx running natively on a Google Chromebook. (With WebEx enabled TelePresence
already rolling out, this means that every Chromebook
is natively interoperable with the entire range of Cisco room endpoints. Yes, that thud you heard Tuesday was the
collapsing of the Chromebox for Meetings business
plan and the hopes that Vidyo had for selling their H2O
services.) Cisco’s bold “boardroom
to browser” vision and this aggressive keynote set the bar very high for the
rest of the conference. The other
keynotes were ridiculed in contrast. In
fairness, Cisco’s fantastic performance didn’t take anything away from
attendee’s disappointment with their lack of vision or progress on the
infrastructure side of video. A number
of firms that are run by former Tandberg/Cisco employees have embarrassingly
outshined Cisco here. Everyone hoped
Rowan would address that as well as he did on the endpoint side, but it didn’t
happen (in public or private.) There’s
still much work for them to do.
As for
the other keynotes. Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy (who went next) was criticized on the
social platforms for “trying to tell a story of simplicity using overly complex
slides,” for “dwelling too much on stories of Sochi successes”, and then
ridiculed for bringing on The
Cake Boss to discuss cupcakes. Microsoft’s Gurdeep
Singh Pall - who recently rejoined their Lync/Skype team – also gave a widely
criticized presentation that was nearly identical to the keynote he presented
at the Microsoft Lync Conference a few weeks earlier. He told a story that reflects how
communication is used today (to an audience that already knew); bragged about
how Lync is in over 60% of enterprises; promised (again) that Lync / Skype will
work together really, really soon;
restated that “Unified Communications” should become “Universal
Communications”; and in the most bizarre moment, said that we should point
people to Skype when Microsoft Lync is criticized for not being compatible /
open with iOS or Android (ignoring the fact that
Microsoft pulled all Skype compatibility APIs from the market in January.) All the comments I saw and heard were
unfavorable, having expected some more actual substance from the
presentation. The best comment on twitter
was “……I want a cupcake…” pointing out that even Avaya’s somewhat disappointing
effort was better than this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
panel discussions I attended, heard about and spoke at were just as honestly
cynical as the main sessions. WebRTC was (as always) a hugely popular topic, but was
finally being called out for its failed promises to date.
For
the second year in a row the WebRTC opening mini
conference had to have its room’s moveable walls expanded to fit the attendees.
(I was skeptical about this last year,
but am downright insulted this year. The
organizers know there is nothing else on the conference program at this time. To put the session in a room too small to fit
all the attendees is either the worst of poor planning or a disingenuous effort
to make the topic seem more popular than it is.) The various WebRTC
sessions were filled with either firms hawking their products, or analysts
(finally) calling out the facts.
Distinguished Industry Analyst Dave
Michaels said that WebRTC has “failed on all of
its promises” such as ubiquity, cost-free, quality, etc. He liked using the term “allegedly free” to
describe it. What good is a ubiquitous
browser API that doesn’t work with the most commonly used enterprise browsers
and requires the agreement of over 300 firms that almost never agree on anything.
In the
“Rise and Fall of Conference Room Video” I was on the panel that discussed the
recent trends of personal video over room video and low priced room video
systems.
Here I
am showing the audience why webcams work well when close to the user (like how
they could see my expressions on my smartphone) but are terrible ideas for use
at a distance in conference rooms (when I switched to the smartphone front
camera and they could not see their own facial expressions). It illustrated why
the recently introduced webcam based conference room video systems are a poor
solution for anything other than rooms that hold one or two people. The only way to have a successful video
ecosystem is to blend the various tools needed for each job. This includes top end systems, room systems
and personal systems.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There
were a few interesting products and announcements at the conference that I
found worthy of being called-out.
·
Acano showed their MCU / gateway solution
transcoding video from multiple different sources simultaneously. Sources including the typically incompatible
Lync 2010, H.265 video, browser video, etc.
Acano’s appliance (and Pexip’s Infinity
software solution – both firms made-up of ex Tandberg / Cisco employees) are
focusing on their ability to act as the glue between Microsoft Lync and Cisco
VOIP/Video/Control infrastructure – a best in breed solution many firms desire
today.
·
Crestron
has doubled-down on UC, adding a Cisco based room system to their already
announced Microsoft Lync based RL system.
Crestron
Smart Space allows enterprises to install integrated videoconference rooms (in
the few cases where those are still needed) using a standard GUI. End users no longer have to pay upwards of
$10K US for “custom programming” performed by the high school kid many old
school AV integrators hire and pay about $60 an hour to. As long as users stick
to the approved equipment on Crestron’s website this wasteful spend can finally
be a thing of the past.
·
The
firm I work for (Dimension Data)
announced that we will be providing Cisco’s Hosted Cloud Services (HCS) as part
of our portfolio of public, private and hybrid cloud services. We support multiple consumption models
including both dedicated and multi-tenant usage-based environments. Dimension
Data’s UC services for cloud will complement our existing UC services for
voice, pervasive video, contact center, instant messaging and presence. You can read the detailed
announcement here.
·
Logitech
showed their new Conference Cam CC3000e.
It was a big hit.
It is
a high quality PTZ camera based conference system complete with speakerphone
and control (but no codec) all terminating in a standard USB connector. Now you can take your PC/Mac application based
collaboration software and have it perform much closer to the experience of a
full videoconference room. You may not
get the monitoring or QoS capabilities of a
videoconference appliance, but you gain the ability to have your choice of
applications at any time. Skype at 1pm,
Jabber at 2pm, Lync at 3pm, etc. At a
$1K US list price for the system it works right alongside the Cisco SX10 as
products that should convince you that there is never a good reason to put a
fixed webcam (meant for desktop use) into a conference room again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally,
we have a tie for most interesting image of the conference. I really couldn’t decide so I leave it up to
you to let me know which you find to be the winner. Our first contender is BlueJeans - who
brought out a real life version of their “Roominator”
(see the video here):
This
was their way of letting you know good mobile collaboration solutions are like
carrying your office on your back.
Everybody who saw it wanted one.
The
second contender was Microsoft. Well,
not actually Microsoft but the person they had hosting their meeting table at
the conference.
I
think I captured a shot of an unreleased, next generation of the Microsoft
Surface in use. It clearly doesn’t have
the cool kickstand of the Surface – and there’s no click-on keyboard. In fact, if I didn’t know it was impossible
I’d swear that was an Apple iPad in use.
But since that has to be impossible I’m sticking with my story that it’s
the next generation of the Surface….and you heard it here first!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s
it for this edition of A View From The Road. I’m on the road again on April 1st,
heading to this year’s Interop conference in Las Vegas. My Dimension Data colleagues and I are
presenting the Emerging
Video and Collaboration Technologies session on Friday April 4th. I promise that it will not be any
manufacturer’s sales pitch or product demonstration. We’ll talk about the trends in technology and
infrastructure and what we have been recommending to our clients. More details about
this panel and my colleagues here.
==========================================================
This
article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own,
personal opinions. David has over three decades of experience providing problem
solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications
technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic
worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman
Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works with Dimension Data as their Principal
Consultant for the collaboration, multimedia, video and AV disciplines. He is
also the IMCCA’s Director of
Emerging Technology. David can be reached at David.Danto@Dimensiondata.com
or DDanto@imcca.org and his full bio and other
blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info. Please reach-out to David if you would like
to discuss how he can help your organization solve problems or develop a
future-proof collaboration strategy.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.