The business model of Communication Service Providers (CSP), traditionally known as telcos, is under attack on multiple fronts. For decades, the telco business model has been one-sided: telcos provide services to consumers in a completely unidirectional paradigm where they define the offering and consumers can take it or try and find another one-sided competing offer.

Living in New York City you become programmed to optimize your fastest route from one location to another choosing in real-time between taking a cab, the subway, or walking.

2015 was incredible, but I am super excited to kick off a new year on so many great notes. My team and I have already been hard at work planning for a busy 2016 for GENBAND.

I can’t believe we are already approaching the month of August.  The first seven months of 2015 sure went by quickly, but have been filled with a ton of great activities and milestones for GENBAND, Kandy and the fring Alliance. 

I can’t believe it has already been two years since I took over as CEO of GENBAND.

A lot has happened in the past 24 months and while I always try to look forward and ensure that we as a company are well positioned for the future, in this case I think it is worth a retrospective look back to acknowledge some of the milestones that my team has been instrumental in helping us achieve during this period.

Over the past half-decade we’ve finally started to make some real progress simplifying deployment of Unified Communications (UC) and Collaboration.  First virtualization and now Cloud technologies have abstracted away much of the complexity of UC server deployments.  In the case of the Cloud, the burden has been shifted to third parties that focus on these tools so every organization is not forced to employ UC experts.

It’s no secret we are in the middle of a mobile revolution. There’s a mobile app we can download to our smartphones designed to make just about any activity in our modern lives more convenient, more productive or more organized. Or more connected to our friends, family, colleagues … and the world in general!

In the past, the audiences and market challenges of two significant industry events – Mobile World Congress (MWC) and Enterprise Connect (EC) – rarely intersected.

Huge communications service providers (CSPs) like Verizon, BT, and others have all announced plans to transform their massive core and edge networks to all IP over the next five years, as TDM takes more than just a back seat. TDM will be a buggy whip by 2020, as the enormous value of IP networking converging with IP applications truly takes hold.

Have we moved on from the idea of “Unified Communications” to “Optimized Real-Time Communications?” There’s a lot of chatter going on about the death of “UC” and the rise of “RTC” for businesses, and the notion that the desktop phone and PBX as we knew them are being systematically, if slowly, decommissioned in favor of the more sophisticated mobile devices now available. But it’s not just the devices, it’s the applications including security applications, and the movement toward embedding RTC into everyday workflow and platforms, including CRM.