David J. Danto
Principal
Consultant, Collaboration/ AV / Multimedia / Video / UC
Dimension Data
Director of
Emerging Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail:
David.Danto@DimensionData.com Follow Video &
Technology Industry News: @NJDavidD
(Read David’s Bio) (See
David’s CV) (Read David’s Other Blogs & Articles)
Danto’s
Top 10 Disruptors - January 2014
My
opinions on Trends, Unwarranted Hype, Start-Ups, and People on the Move. What you need to know in the Collaboration
and Multimedia Technology Industries
With
another CES behind us and the collaboration conference season just beginning
here’s what I’m recommending we all keep an eye on.
1.
Almost Smart: More collaboration
systems will be speaking with each other.
Whether discussing Polycom’s “Smart
Pairing” or Cisco’s “Intelligent
Proximity,” it’s clear that the
next battlefield is going to involve how much your devices are aware of and
speak with each other. On the horizon and announced include Cisco’s ability to
detect a tablet in a videoconference room and send the shared content to it for
the viewers’ personal control. Not
announced are a number of firms working on Bluetooth “beacon” technologies that
can identify you as soon as your smartphone enters a room and automatically
set-up your meeting’s technology. Expect
announcements / demos late this year.
2.
WebRTC – Where’s The Beef: Don’t get on board this hype engine to
nowhere. While industry conferences
about WebRTC sell out the moment they’re announced and many hail these APIs as
the next savior (just like SIP trunking before it) - don’t be fooled. The last
meeting of the IETF’s working group was described as “testy” and
accomplished nothing. Cisco’s gesture to
pay the royalty fees for H.264 moved no one.
Google pushed for their new VP9 codec at CES. None of the nearly 400 organizations in the
W3C are any closer on agreeing to anything that isn’t solely in their best
interest. Don’t hold your breath for
anything to be accomplished this year…or next year for that matter. All WebRTC will be for the foreseeable future
is an extension on a browser you probably don’t use that has cool potential.
3.
Beware the Useless Robot Invasion: Dozens of firms selling mobile video
solutions that almost no one needs.
Telepresence robots – videoconference devices mounted on motorized
pedestals remotely controlled from another location – have been hyped-up as the
next generation of mobility. They’re
not. There are a few legitimate uses for
them – like helping homebound students participate in school – but there are
already enough prototypes and demo units built to cover all of that need in its
entirety. There are little or no other
use-cases where this technology actually helps.
The CBS-TV program The
Good Wife appropriately pointed out the uselessness of this naked
emperor earlier this season (see timecode 5:20, 8:05, 9:15 & 26:30.) Even their outtakes make the point.
4.
Connecting Lync to TelePresence: Look for
Third Parties to Bridge the MS Lync / Cisco Gap. The enterprise collaboration market has
spoken and nearly everyone believes Lync at the desktop and Cisco for IP
telephony infrastructure represents best-in-breed. Making the two work together is a boat both
Microsoft and Cisco have missed - out of a combination of both obstinance and
simply being too big to move quickly.
Third parties are entering the space to fill the gap and meet this need
- successfully glueing the two systems together. Keep an eye on Acano (which might as well be
called “The New Tandberg” with the involvement of Fredrik Halvorsen,
OJ Winge and a few dozen other ex-Tandberg
stars.) It also doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to realize that firms successfully doing this in the cloud (like BlueJeans)
could quickly come-up with a secure, on-premises version if they desired. This opportunity will exist as long as Cisco
and Microsoft refuse to work together on closing the gap. Both will eventually lose some market share
by giving third parties this foot in the door.
5.
Remote Collaboration Part 1: Follow the
money. While the concept labeled Smarter
Working, Teleconferencing and/or just Remote Working has been
around for a while, there has always been organizational resistance to letting
employees work from home. In fact,
struggling organizations like Yahoo and HP still choose to scapegoat this process to distract
the public from the real problems there.
Despite those very public statements, the tide has finally turned for
collaboration technology. Firms are
realizing that less workers in the office means significantly smaller
real-estate footprints, much lower costs for power, HVAC, port density,
etc. Interestingly, according to a Stanford University study,
the time added back to an employee’s day not spent commuting is often being
used for the employer - increasing productivity. Add to that the benefits to the employee
(often called work-life balance), the benefits to the environment (with less
commute-produced CO2) and the simple fact that stogy senior managers
are ageing out to boomers, and you have an equation for a significant upswing
in remote workers. Analysts
and news
media have identified this benefit and will continue to report about
it. In 2014 many more firms will begin
to recognize this and get on board the trend.
6.
Remote Collaboration Part 2: Collaboration
plus Social equals a “better than a traditional office” equation. Remote workers have been around for a long
time – but were usually comprised of the most tech-savvy amongst us. Many workers still wanted to go to the office
to be around other people – socializing, sharing courtesies, etc. Three interesting phenomena have converged
that change the game. Firstly, remote
collaboration tools are more prevalent and better than ever before. The technology works. Secondly, the idea of integrating personal
and professional lives – once anathema in the business world, is now
becoming a model that is accepted and admired. Finally, as the teenagers
of the world abandon Facebook, and their parents and other, more mature people
more than take their place, social media is
filling the need for that office socialization in a dispersed workforce. Co-workers see what each-other have been
doing in their personal lives and use social platforms and remote collaboration
tools to discuss it. Many remote workers
in dispersed locations are reporting better relationships with co-workers than
they ever had with colleagues in the same office. This trend will continue, also contributing
to a significant upswing in remote workers as above.
7.
Improving the In-Room Experience During
Videoconferences: See
each participant on a life-size, independent display. A new start-up has taken the
videoconferencing on a tablet experience and mounted it onto a stand that tilts
and swivels. RevolveRobotics Kubi device allows each
remote person to control their view in a physical room where they are not
present. The big difference here is that
the people in the room can now see each remote participant face on an
independent display – and these displays (tablets) can be laid-out to simulate
the normal, human spatial relationships in a regular meeting. RevolveRobotics has
a few additional technology challenges to overcome, but this is the first
really different experience in room videoconferencing I’ve seen in years. Keep an eye on them.
8.
How Much of the Pie Makes
Economic Viability: Don’t get
caught-up in the flood of web-based collaboration platforms that vie for
crumbs. The reality in the
collaboration industry is that Microsoft (Lync) and Cisco (TelePresence, WebEx,
Jabber) have a huge part of the market locked-up. Add a few of the players in the next tier –
like Avaya, Polycom, BlueJeans and maybe a couple of others - and most of the
pie is gone. That’s why I shake my head
when the dozens of web based collaboration firms remain and compete for the
miniscule remaining market share – and new firms launch every day. Start-ups email me to let me know of their
services in this space all the time. I
just don’t get it. People must be too close
to their own hype to think there is an opportunity to develop a successful
business plan when the opportunity for customers just isn’t there. With Enterprise
Connect coming up in a bit more than a month expect more of these
new firms to be touted as up-and-comers. Oh-boy, I can’t wait to hear about
these new players fighting for the chance to win .0001% of the market.
9.
Curved is the new Flat: Expect the freight-train of consumizeration
to continue with these new displays.
Samsung, LG and others put a huge push behind curved, large
format displays at this year’s CES.
Expect it to only be a matter of time before organizations begin
adopting them for enterprise use. I
can’t wait to see my first “immersive room” that uses curved displays. I’d be stunned if that doesn’t happen this
year.
10. How Important
is Knowing Your Industry: Changes at Polycom
follow Cisco’s lead reaching outside of the industry. Late last year the Polycom Board of Directors
mercifully ended the Andy Miller era (the end
of an error as some analysts called it.) Under Miller, Polycom’s stock shot-up like a
rocket and plummeted back down just as dramatically. Products were announced that weren’t
available and/or didn’t work yet.
Industry knowledge in their people was shoved aside as unimportant. (We
were told “good salespeople can sell anything.”) In December their board named a
new CEO – following Cisco’s
lead in reaching outside the collaboration industry to get
someone to lead collaboration efforts.
While these are both fine, brilliant gentlemen, I just have to shrug. Everyone asks why collaboration industry
hardware sales are down and incorrectly point to the growth of software
systems. The glaringly obvious reason
sales are down is that there are fewer people dedicated to the sales of this
specific, unique technology at both companies.
In addition, many of the ones that are there (all the way up to the top)
are no longer the kind of product experts that can become trusted advisors in
the eyes of their clients. Here’s hoping
that understanding the unique value of collaboration tools once again rises to
be valued in the industry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This
is the first edition of Danto’s Top 10 Disruptors. I hope my insights prove valuable to
you. I will be producing this list
quarterly, but will only be sending it by email going forward. If you want to be added to the distribution
list make sure you email me, specifically asking me to be added to the Top 10
distribution list. The email address is
below.
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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 images and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.