Software buying has evolved. The days of executives choosing software for their employees based on IT compatibility or KPIs are gone. Employees now tell their boss what to buy. This is why we’re seeing more and more SaaS companies — Datadog, Twilio, AWS, Snowflake and Stripe, to name a few — find success with a usage-based pricing model.
The usage-based model allows a customer to start at a low cost, while still preserving the ability to monetize a customer over time.
The usage-based model allows a customer to start at a low cost, minimizing friction to getting started while still preserving the ability to monetize a customer over time because the price is directly tied with the value a customer receives. Not limiting the number of users who can access the software, customers are able to find new use cases — which leads to more long-term success and higher lifetime value.
While we aren’t going 100% usage-based overnight, looking at some of the megatrends in software — automation, AI and APIs — the value of a product normally doesn’t scale with more logins. Usage-based pricing will be the key to successful monetization in the future. Here are four top tips to help companies scale to $100+ million ARR with this model.
1. Land-and-expand is real
Usage-based pricing is in all layers of the tech stack. Though it was pioneered in the infrastructure layer (think: AWS and Azure), it’s becoming increasingly popular for API-based products and application software — across infrastructure, middleware and applications.
Image Credits: Kyle Poyar / OpenView
Some fear that investors will hate usage-based pricing because customers aren’t locked into a subscription. But, investors actually see it as a sign that customers are seeing value from a product and there’s no shelf-ware.
In fact, investors are increasingly rewarding usage-based companies in the market. Usage-based companies are trading at a 50% revenue multiple premium over their peers.
Investors especially love how the usage-based pricing model pairs with the land-and-expand business model. And of the IPOs over the last three years, seven of the nine that had the best net dollar retention all have a usage-based model. Snowflake in particular is off the charts with a 158% net dollar retention.
Leading vendor of advanced communication solutions, AudioCodes, recently announced a collaboration with CPaaS leader, Twilio. The two companies will be joining forward to deliver more scalable direct routing solutions for Microsoft Teams users. The functionality will be enabled through the Twilio Elastic SIP service.
Already, the Microsoft-certified Mediant SBCs from AudioCodes have proven their interoperability with Twilio technology. This partnership will now allow Teams customers to link quickly to the Twilio Elastic SIP solution and benefit from low costs, global coverage, and flexibility.
The SBC portfolio from AudioCodes offers a range of resilient and scalable software-only applications capable of providing SIP-based connectivity over voice.
Simplifying Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams
The Mediant portfolio of Session Border Controllers offered by AudioCodes is built around a consistent software base. This ensures that teams can easily access comprehensive security, excellent SIP interoperability, and fantastic quality of service from any solution. Every model has also been certified by Microsoft as an approved solution for direct routing on Microsoft Teams.
The SBC technology is approved for local media optimisation, to ensure better voice quality for meetings, and reduced bandwidth demand too. AudioCodes helps users to deploy its virtualised SBCs in various public and private cloud environments. What’s more, it’s easy to deploy this technology with a rapid purchase from the Azure Marketplace.
Additionally, thanks to the AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams offering, consumers will be able to get hold of AudioCodes’ direct routing technology as a managed solution. This means companies can reduce costs with a per-month and per-user subscription.
A Joint Solution for Microsoft Teams
Nimrode Borovsky
According to the General Manager for Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking, Annie Benitez Pelaez, AudioCodes and Twilio are working together to develop an amazing solution for Microsoft Teams. Customers can deploy this offering globally, and access reliable PSTN connectivity in around 100 countries, with low calling rates and on-demand provisioning.
Nimrode Borovsky, the VP and General Manager of Enterprise at AudioCodes, said that he’s delighted to be collaborating with Twilio to deliver a more scalable solution for Microsoft Teams direct routing. As the Teams offering continues to gain popularity, not just as a collaboration platform, but a full UCaaS solution, the SIP trunking service offers a compelling solution for secure and reliable PSTN connectivity. Teams worldwide will now have a fantastic solution for a full PBX replacement through Teams.
While Zoom was originally created as a serious meeting application for businesses, it has since become one of the most-used services during the pandemic for anyone who wants to have a face-to-face virtual conversation. As a result, the company has been adding more fun stuff, such as weird backgrounds, to use for online family gatherings, friend chats, and well, for business meetings. And now, it’s come up with a feature called Studio Effects that gives you the ability to add a variety of eyebrows, facial hair, and lip color to your video image during Zoom sessions.
The prosumer market has traditionally tried to straddle professional and consumer markets, with inevitable compromises while attempting to meet a wide range of varied user needs. This specialised market served a subset of road warriors and senior executives but was hampered by budgetary constraints and enterprises’ focus on their in-office technology. Last year, the pandemic, changed all that.
Paul Clark
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dramatic change in our industry as I’ve seen in the last 12 months,” confirms Paul Clark, the Senior Vice President of EMEA at Poly, which is launching a new range of devices – the Poly Studio P Series – aimed at enabling hybrid workers and prosumers with high-quality video and audio solutions. “In the past, organisations would say remote or home working was not for them but that last year that changed. Enterprises have found it’s not only possible but it’s also productive and that is underpinning the shift to a global workforce of prosumers.”
The niche has become the mainstream. “Working from home is here to stay,” adds Clark. “By the year end of 2021 people should be able to return to traditional offices but 25-30% will work multiple days from home and 60% of Global 2000 companies have stated that, by the end of 2023, they will want to have parity of experience in offices, homes or a third place. For us, that means we have to be able to meet the diverse needs of organisations and individuals.”
Poly’s new family of personal video solutions has been designed with that diversity of user profiles in mind. The range includes the Poly Studio P5 webcam that offers high-quality video and audio in a simple configure device and comes as a standalone solution or bundled with Poly headsets or speakerphone. “When you work from home, you need plug and play capability so bundling the Poly Studio P5 webcam with everything users need to get up and running is an advantage,” Clark explains. “bundling up is something you don’t typically do in enterprise selling but people want the assurance of having it all arrive in one box with easy set up.”
Poly Studio P5
Prosumer Enablement
Clark also foresees waves of prosumer enablement as organisations make their transitions. Providing an attractive box with everything packaged in it and supported by Poly Lens software to manage that, is therefore a key element of the offering and core to enterprise’s goals of making homeworkers feel supported.
“You’re not a second-class citizen if you work from home with the Poly Studio P5 webcam,” says Clark. “You have enterprise-grade performance backed by the Poly Lens service.”
Poly Studio 21
Further products in the Poly Studio P Series, the Zoom and Microsoft Teams certified Poly Studio P15 personal video bar and the Poly Studio P21 personal meeting display, also add to the prosumer armoury for workers that need additional functionality and quality for specific tasks and activities. As before, the diverse functional and aesthetical demands of different types of prosumers need to be accommodated.
Poly Studio P15
“The prosumer market is not going to go away as people go into offices,” says Clark.
“They will take devices with them that are able to be used in multiple locations. People need to be agile and this technology enables that. What we’re seeing now and with the Poly Studio P Series in particular is that a new level of elegance is being introduced and this is a product estate that enterprises can standardise upon, supported by the Poly Lens desktop app”
Police in Minneapolis got a search warrant that ordered Google to provide account data on people who were near a protest that turned violent two days after the killing of George Floyd last year, TechCrunch reported.
The search warrant required Google to provide account data for anyone “within the geographical region” of an AutoZone store on May 27th, 2020, to police, according to TechCrunch. Photos of a protest outside that store two days after Floyd’s death showed a man in a mask smashing the store windows with an umbrella. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported at the time that police believed the so-called “Umbrella Man” was actually a white supremacist trying to spark violence at the protest.
Prodoscore, an employee visibility and productivity intelligence solution, recently announced a new integration with leading enterprise cloud communications provider, RingCentral. Leveraging the open APIs available from RingCentral, Prodoscore can support companies using RingCentral’s platform with analytics and data on their usage. The Prodoscore technology helps managers to provide better support, guidance, and feedback towards productivity and performance.
As employees continue working from home, companies are focused on finding ways to help them make the most of their time at work. The Prodoscore solution offers insights into how employees are using various capabilities within RingCentral, such as video meetings and team messaging, or the cloud phone system. This helps managers to see opportunities for a more productive meeting environment.
An Exciting Update to Workplace Analytics
Prodoscore and RingCentral customer, Marquis Who’s Who, recently commented on the integration between the two brands. Chief Marketing Officer, Leonard Cagno, said that since the company implemented RingCentral, they’ve loved using the technology. However, when they were able to start visualising the use of RingCentral factors and connect that data to other cloud tools with Prodoscore, things really started to click.
Leonard noted that if team members weren’t using apps the way that they expected, they could offer training and support. Managers looking for better performance predictions could also use data as a benchmark. The Prodoscore offering helps the company to keep their finger on the pulse on RingCentral adoption, and the value of the investment.
With one productivity score, leaders gain a better understanding of where and how employees are using cloud solutions. This boosts performance and training opportunities, while also increasing employee retention, strengthening the adoption of cloud tools, and streamlining employee experience.
Better Insights for Teams
Chief Strategy Officer for Prodoscore, Thomas Moran, noted that today’s customers require seamless integration of technology to boost employee experience. Collaboration and communication tools, combined with the right information at the right time can keep employees productive, engaged, and ready to reach the highest levels of performance. The integration between Prodoscore and RingCentral will help companies to track their digital transformation.
This new integration provides mutual customers of both companies with access to qualitative and quantitative insights, which help to improve employee performance. According to VP of Platform Products at RingCentral, David Lee, as RingCentral’s partner ecosystem continues to grow, it’s fantastic to see Prodoscore building apps with the available APIs.
Lee noted that with the open platforms available, RingCentral and Prodoscore can provide a more integrated workflow for today’s teams.
But for all that the world has lost in the last few years, the history of infectious disease has a grim message: It could have been even worse. That appalling death toll resulted even though the coronavirus kills only about 0.7 percent of the people it infects. Imagine instead that it killed 30 percent — and that it would take centuries, instead of months, to develop a vaccine against it. And imagine that instead of being deadliest in the elderly, it was deadliest for young children.
That’s smallpox.
AP
To encourage the public to vaccinate against smallpox in the 1940s, the New York State Board of Health used this photograph with the caption, “This man was never vaccinated against smallpox.”
The horrors of the past year have given us a brief glimpse into what it’s like to live in a world ravaged by infectious disease. It’s easy to take for granted now that very few babies in rich countries die of disease in infancy, that most infectious diseases are treatable, andthat there are vaccines available when we need them.But humanity only made the transition into that new world fairly recently.
Smallpox eradication was a major part of that. Over the course of the 20th century, country after country fought it back. The World Health Assembly declared on May 8th, 1980 that it was gone for good. Its gradual eradication meant ending the needless suffering and death of millions and millions of people every year.
It’s not minimizing the suffering wrought by the coronavirus pandemic — or forgiving the negligence that made the Covid-19 death toll so much higher than it neededto be — to take a step back and realizethat diseases can be much more contagious, and much deadlier, than this one. And there’s something reassuring about the fact that, at least in the case of smallpox, humanity eventually rose to the challenge.
With luck, aggressive vaccination, and ambitious international coordination, we made the toll of infectious disease lowerthan at any point in history, and though it won’t be easy, we can do it again. As we learn how to address current and future pandemics, it is worth understanding what we learned from the great infectious disease fights of the past.
Smallpox, explained
Smallpox has been around for a very long time. It’s believed that pharaohs died of it in ancient Egypt. It devastated the Americas in the early 1500s after being introduced through contact with Europe. It altered the course of the Revolutionary War, with outbreaks in New England that cost the Continental Army the Battle of Quebec.
Its toll throughout history is hard to measure, but in the 20th century alone it is estimated to have killed between 300 million and 500 million people. “In the contest of Smallpox versus War, War lost,” D.A. Henderson, former director of disease surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in his 2009 book Smallpox: The Death of a Disease, noting that even the most devastating wars of the 20th century — World War I and World War II — had a combined death toll much smaller than that of smallpox.
Smallpox was spread by a virus (technically, two viruses: Variola major andthe significantly less commonVariola minor). It caused fever, then a rash, which over the course of a few days developed into the skin-covering lumps that are the disease’s trademark. The more serious strain, Variola major, killed about 30 percent of people infected with it, with even higher death rates in infants. Death usually occurred within eight to 16 days.
Variola minor had similar symptoms but was much less deadly, with death rates around 1 percent. No effective treatments were discovered by the time the disease was eradicated.
Universal History Archive/Getty Images
An engraving from the London News of a smallpox ward in a hospital in England in the 1870s.
A year ago, most people were unaware of epidemiological statistics like a disease’s R0 (the number of people that an infected person will infect in a population without immunity), and a disease’s “case fatality rate” (the percentage of sick people who die). But the Covid-19 pandemic prompted an epidemiological crash course for many of us, which ought to give us a new perspective onthe horror of smallpox.
The disease, like Covid-19, was primarily transmitted through close contact, especially in indoor spaces. Our best estimate, though, is that it had an infectiousness between 5 and 7, putting it between that of Covid’s delta (4) and omicron variants (8). Due to smallpox’s high R0 and the devastating mortality rate, it was not uncommon for an outbreak of smallpox in an area without preexisting immunity to kill 30 percent of everyone in the community. In some contexts, such as when it spread through the Americas after being introduced by Europeans, the death rate is believed to have been even higher.
How we eradicated smallpox
Before modern vaccine development, humans had to get creative in slowing the spread of infectious disease. It was known that people who’d survived smallpox didn’t get sick again. In China, as early as the 15th century, healthy people deliberatelybreathed smallpox scabs through their noses and contracted a milder version of the disease. Between 0.5 percent and 2 percent died from such self-inoculation, but this represented a significant improvement on the 30 percent mortality rate of the disease itself.
In England, in 1796, doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated that contractingcowpox — a related but much milder virus —conferred immunity against smallpox, and shortly after that, immunization efforts began in earnest across Europe. By 1813, the US Congress passed legislation to ensure the availability of a smallpox vaccine that reducedsmallpox outbreaks in the country throughout the 1800s.
Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
An engraving entitled “The First Vaccination,” depicting Dr. Edward Jenner’s vaccination of James Phipps against smallpox in 1796.
Hulton Archive via Getty Images
British physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) discovered the vaccine against smallpox.
By 1900, smallpox was no longer quite as much of a scourge in the world’s richest countries.In the 1800s, about 1 in 13 deaths in London were caused bysmallpox; by 1900, smallpox caused only about 1 percent of deaths. Several countries in Northern Europe had alsodeclared the disease eradicated. Over the next few decades, more of Europe, and then the US and Canada, joined them.
Our World in Data
But as long as smallpox ravaged other parts of the globe, continual vaccination was necessary to make sure it wasn’t reintroduced, and millions of people continued to die of it. Data is spotty — this is before there was any international authority on infectious disease statistics worldwide — but it is estimated that 10 to 15 million people caught smallpox annually, with 5 million dying of it, during the first half of the 20th century.
It was not until the 1950s that a truly global eradication effort began to appear within reach, thanks to new postwar international institutions. The World Health Organization (WHO), founded in 1948, led the charge andprovided a framework for countries that were not always on friendly terms to collaborate on global health efforts.
Even then, there were skeptics. “One hurdle the Eradicators faced was skepticism within the scientific community,” Henderson writes, “about the feasibility and practicality of eradicating an infectious disease.”
After all, no disease had ever been eradicated before. There were billions of people in the world, under myriadgovernments, many of them in regions actively at war. Global coordination on the scale eradication would demand was unprecedented. Plus, there had already been a failed attempt to eradicate malaria.The goal of eliminating every smallpox case in the world, rather than just suppressing the virus, sounded implausibly lofty.
“There was no shortage of people telling [the people involved in the eradication effort] that their effort was futile and they were hurting their career chances,” former CDC director William Foege wrote in his 2011 book House on Fire about the smallpoxeradication effort.
But other advanceshad brought it within reach. Needle technology had improved, with new bifurcated needles making it possible to use less vaccine. Overseas travel improved, which made it easier to shipvaccines and getpublic health workers where they were most needed, and provided impetus for worldwide eradication as it made it more likely that a smallpox outbreak anywhere in the world could spread.
A 1947 outbreak in New York City, traced back to a traveler from Mexico, resulted in a frantic effort to vaccinate 6 million people in four weeks. Europe, Henderson says, repeatedly saw the virus reintroduced by travelers from Asia, with 23 distinct importations (different occasions of someone bringing smallpox into the country) in five years.
As we face down Covid-19, with effective vaccinations finally in hand, we’re encountering the same challenge that the world faced with smallpox in the 1950s: It doesn’t matter if a vaccine exists unless there also exists the international will and creativity to get it to all the people who need it, many of whom will be reluctant and skeptical.
Lynn Pelham/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
Costa Ricans are inoculated against smallpox, measles, and polio in 1967.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Hundreds of primary school children in England are vaccinated against smallpox in 1962.
Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
A woman is vaccinated during a serious smallpox epidemic in Pakistan in 1961.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Children in Cameroon show their vaccination certificates after being vaccinated against smallpox in 1975.
As Henderson and Foege detail in their books,there were extraordinary challenges that often looked utterly insurmountable in the quest to eradicate smallpox. In poor corners of the world, there were no roads or hospitals and no infrastructure to notify the WHO of a smallpox outbreak. Civil wars, famines, and refugee crises made disease surveillance and vaccinationvery difficult.
But other features of smallpox made it easier to eradicate than many other diseases. For one thing, it didn’thave animal reservoirs; that is, unlike diseases like Ebola, smallpox doesn’t live in animal populations that can reintroduce the disease in humans. That meant thatonce it was destroyed in humans, it would be gone forever. And, once a person has survived it, they are immune for life. Only one vaccine is needed for immunity in almost all cases.
Additionally, it largely doesn’t have asymptomatic transmission and has a fairly long incubation period of about a week. That made it possible for public health officials to stay on top of the disease with a strategy of “ring vaccination” — whenever a case was reported, vaccinating every single person who may have come into contact with the affected person, and ideally everyone in the community could keep the disease at bay.
Henderson calls the switch to ring vaccination a pivotal strategic change for the fight against smallpox. Instead of fighting for 100 percent vaccination, which was proving unachievable in low-income countries, it let public health teams focus their resources where they were needed most.
As large parts of the world were declared smallpox-free, resources could be more intensively focused in the areas where outbreaks were still happening. While in 1950 a smallpox outbreak in a developing country might attract little international interest, by 1970 it attracted the world’s best disease surveillance and response resources. Contact tracers tried to identify everyone exposed and figure out where the virus might have come from. Communities were swiftly vaccinated. Case numbers kept declining.
In 1975, the world marked the last wild Variola major case, in Bangladesh. In 1977, it marked the last wild Variola minor case, in Somalia. Doctors tracked down and vaccinated every potential contact of the case; none of them contracted the disease. Surveillance around the world found no more cases anywhere.
Humanity’s triumph over smallpox should stand out as one of our proudest moments. It called on scientists and researchers from around the world, including collaborations between rivalcountries in the middle of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, we’ve never replicated that success against another virus that affects humans. With some, such as polio, we’re drawing close. Wild polio has been eradicated in Africa and remains only in conflict-torn regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.“Ring vaccination,” as practiced in the smallpox battle, has been successfully used in public health efforts against other diseases, most recently with the new Ebola vaccine, used against outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But in other cases, like HIV and Covid-19, we’ve let new diseases grow to pandemic proportions. And while those diseases have had devastating effects, it’s worth keeping in mind that they could have been even worse. Some viruses with the potential to escape laboratories or make the jump from animals to humans are as deadly and transmissible as smallpox, and Covid-19 has made it clear that we’re not prepared to handle them.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, was over its ICU bed capacity and was forced to treat Covid-19 patients in makeshift ICUs.
Why has it been so hard to build on our success with smallpox? One part of it is that many diseases present all the challenges that smallpox did —plus some additional ones. Some, like malaria or Ebola, have animal reservoirs, which means that ensuring no humans are sick isn’t sufficient to stamp them out. Some, like HIV or Covid-19, have asymptomatic transmission, which makes disease surveillance trickier. (An important public health clarification: HIV can be transmitted by people who don’t feel sick, which is “asymptomatic transmission,” but it cannot be transmitted by people whose virus levels are undetectable through medication management.)
But as far as things that we can control, there are some takeaways. The first is that the smallpoxeradication program took both heroic efforts and a well-funded, well-supported public health system.People trying to do disease surveillance and vaccination in war-torn, dangerous, remote parts of the world are risking their lives in our current fight. They can only succeed if their efforts are matched by a commitment by governments of rich countries not to leave poor countries behind, to meet the funding needs of an eradication project, and not to undermine one with CIA spy operations that imitate vaccine campaigns.
“The coronavirus we are grappling with today is not smallpox,” Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, said in December 2020, but “those old enough to remember the story of smallpox eradication” will recognize many of the lessons we’re rapidly learning now, from the importance of vaccine distribution and infrastructure to the essential role of international coordination and leadership at the World Health Organization.
A global Covid-19 suppression effort — and a better response to future pandemics —requires a CDC and WHO that is well-funded, attracts top scientific talent, and isn’t subject to political manipulation that gets in the way of accurate disease surveillance.
Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A funeral director stands among cremation boxes containing the bodies of suspected Covid-19 patients, in Queens, New York, on April 29.
Another critical takeaway is that once the work has succeeded, we have to make sure never to undermine it. After tellingthe history of the eradication of smallpox, Henderson’s account switches to a different theme: the vials remaining in the hands of governments. He wants them destroyed lest some accident or malicious act unleash smallpox on the world again. There have already been a few close calls. A year after smallpox was declared eradicated, bad lab safety procedures led to another outbreak in Birmingham in the UK. Just a few years ago,improperly stored smallpox vials were found in a lab in the US. We need to take biosecurity and pathogen research much more seriously.
In the broader context of humanity’s fight against infectious disease, it’s fair tothink of the coronavirus as a close call. As bad as it has been, it could have been much worse. It could have been more transmissible; it could have been deadlier. Diseases far worse than Covid-19 have appeared throughout human history, and there’s every reason to believe we may someday face one again.
The devastation of Covid-19 has hopefully made us aware of the work public health experts and epidemiologists do, the crucial role of worldwide coordination and disease surveillance programs (which are still underfunded), and the horrors that diseases can wreak when we can’t control them.
We haveto do better. The history of the fight against smallpox proves that we’re capable of it.
Microsoft has announced that it will suspend all donations for the upcoming 2022 election cycle for any members of Congress, state officials, and organizations that voted to object to the certification of electors in the 2020 election or supported attempting to overturn the election.
The company temporarily suspended all political contributions after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, with Microsoft taking the time to decide “whether to suspend further donations to individuals who voted against certification of the Electoral College.” Today’s announcement makes that decision a permanent one for the coming election cycle, but only for politicians who attempted to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. (Other...
Cloud communications provider is recognized for creating a comfortable, collaborative, healthy and secure workplace both in the office and while working from home
BLUE BELL, PA – February 3, 2021 –CoreDial, LLC, a leading provider of cloud communications, video collaboration and contact center solutions, has been named a winner of the 2021 Top Workplaces USA Award by Energage, a purpose-driven organization that evaluates and improves work environments. Top Workplaces USA Award winners were determined based solely on employee feedback gathered through a national survey Energage conducted, which compared responses against major benchmarks.
Headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, CoreDial has earned an outstanding reputation for providing its over 160 employees with programs, resources, and facilities that promote professional development, health and wellness, and community involvement. As the company transitioned from its on-premises programs to remote working during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, CoreDial also shifted many of its employee support and outreach initiatives online, ensuring that key programs can be accessed from any location.
“CoreDial has always believed that building a strong culture is critical for keeping our team engaged, happy, and productive,” said Alan Rihm, CoreDial’s Chief Executive Officer. “During the pandemic we made a purposeful effort to provide as many virtual activities and opportunities to stay connected as possible, including ongoing and readily available support from our HR, management and Leadership teams. While ours is a very positive, and success-oriented culture, we stayed grounded in the potential negative aspects that come from social distancing, quarantining and being isolated from one another. We made it our priority to do whatever we could to ensure our employees’ health and well-being, both professionally and personally. We knew that to maintain the awesome culture we’ve built, it was more important than ever to come together as one team, united and connected in meaningful ways that enable us to continue growing and thriving. The outcome of this focus on culture has been incredible; our team is stronger than ever, extremely engaged, and more innovative and productive than ever. We’re proud that CoreDial was selected as one of the best workplaces in America, and we’re thrilled that this recognition is based entirely on employee feedback. It’s an award that truly validates our emphasis on creating a culture that enables everyone in the company to want more, give more and get it done.”
According to Eric Rubino, chief executive officer of Energage, the Top Workplaces program has been beneficial to help companies understand how employees value their professional environments.
“When companies give employees a voice, organizations come together to navigate challenges and find a path forward,” explained Rubino. “This is precisely the impetus behind the Top Workplaces initiative. It draws on real-time insights into what works best for their respective organizations so they can make informed decisions for their people and companies.”
About CoreDial
CoreDial is a leading provider of high-quality and scalable cloud communications, contact center, and video collaboration to more than 35,000 businesses. The company’s solutions are quickly and easily auto-provisioned through its CoreNexa platform, which seamlessly integrates with other essential business applications. For small- to medium-size businesses and larger enterprises, CoreDial offers comprehensive, cost-effective, and future-proof communications solutions customers demand. Backed by an industry-leading 99.999% SLA and supported locally by 800+ trained partners, CoreNexa is uniquely positioned to help businesses unleash the power of the modern workforce.
The cloud infrastructure market in 2020 reflected society itself, with the richest companies getting richer and the ones at the bottom of the market getting poorer. It grew to $129 billion for the year, according to data from Synergy Research Group. That’s up from around $97 billion in 2019.
Synergy also reported that the cloud infra market reached $37 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $33 billion in the third quarter, and 35% from a year ago.
I’ve heard from every founder under the sun for the last nine months that the pandemic was accelerating digital transformation, and that a big part of that was an expedited shift to the cloud. These numbers would seem to bear that out.
As usual the big three were Amazon, Microsoft and Google, with Alibaba now firmly entrenched in fourth place and IBM falling back to fifth. But Microsoft grew more quickly than rival Amazon, reaching 20% market share at the end of 2020 for the first time. Keep in mind that the Redmond-based software giant has now doubled its share since 2017. That’s remarkably rapid rapid growth. Meanwhile Google and Alibaba took home 9% and 6%, respectively.
Here’s what that all looks like in chart form:
Image Credits: Synergy Research
Amazon is an interesting case in that it has plateaued at around 33% for four straight years of Synergy data, but because it’s one-third share of an increasingly growing market, that means that it has kept growing its public cloud revenues as the category itself has expanded.
Amazon closed out the year with $12.74 billion in Q4 AWS revenue, putting it on a run rate of just over $50 billion for the first time. That was up from $11.6 billion the prior quarter. While Microsoft’s numbers are always difficult to parse from its earning’s reports, doing the math of 20% of $37 billion, it came in with $7.4 billion up from $5.9 billion last quarter.
Google brought in $3.3 billion, up from $2.98 billion in Q3 2020, and Alibaba pulled in $2.22 billion, up from $1.65 billion over the same time frame.
John Dinsdale, principal analyst at Synergy, says the leaders are pretty firmly entrenched at this point with huge absolute market numbers and also huge gaps between the cloud providers. “AWS has been a great success story for over 10 years now and it remains in an extremely strong market position despite increasing competition from a broad swathe of strong IT industry companies. That is a great testament both to Amazon and to the AWS leadership team and you’d have to suspect that will not change with the new regime,” he told me.
He sees Microsoft as a worthy rival, but one that is bound to hit a growth wall at some point. “It is certainly feasible that Microsoft will continue to narrow the gap between itself and Amazon, but the bigger Microsoft Azure becomes the tougher it is to maintain really high growth rates. That is just the law of large numbers.”
Meanwhile, market share at the bottom of the cloud infrastructure space continued to decline even while the number of dollars at stake have continued to expand dramatically. “The market share losers have been the large group of smaller cloud providers, who collectively have lost 13 percentage points of market share over the last 16 quarters,” Synergy wrote in a statement.
Dinsdale says all is not lost for these players, however. “Regarding the smaller players (or the big companies that have only a small market share), they can either focus on specific market niches (can be based around geography, service type or customer vertical) or they can try to offer a broad range of cloud services to a broad range of customers. Companies doing the former can do quite well, while companies doing the latter will find it extremely tough,” Dinsdale told me.
It’s worth noting that Canalys has slightly different numbers with a total market of around $142 billion and almost $40 billion for the quarter, but the percentages are in line with Synergy’s:
Image Credits: Canalys
At some point the numbers get so big they almost cease to have meaning, but as large as the public cloud revenue numbers become, they remain a relatively small percentage of overall worldwide IT spend. According to Gartner estimates, worldwide IT spend in 2020 was $3.6 trillion (with a T). That means that the cloud infrastructure market accounted for just 3.85% of total spend in 2020.
Think about that for a moment: less than 4% of IT spend currently is on cloud infrastructure, leaving so much room for growth and for those billions to grow ever bigger in the coming years.
It would certainly make it more interesting if someone could come in and disrupt the leaders, but for now at least they are going to be hard to push out of the way unless something unforeseen and dramatic happens to the way we think about computing.
Logitech sold enough keyboards, mice, and PC webcams during the pandemic that it can afford its first-ever Super Bowl commercial. The 60-second spot, titled “Defy Logic,” will air during the first quarter of the game on February 7th and feature rapper and songwriter Lil Nas X.
The documentary-style ad spotlights how artists and other creative types use Logitech products for their work. It shows Lil Nas X writing and recording a song, along with graphic and visual artists; streamers; musicians; and climate, gender equality, and education reform activists demonstrating their Logitech items.
In May, Logitech reported sales of its products were booming as the pandemic kept millions of people working and schooling from home. Sales of its...
The unusual LG Wing is one of only a few devices approved to use C-band 5G so far. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge
LG Wing and Pixel 5 owners have something to look forward to: the Federal Communications Commission has approved these devices to use faster C-band 5G frequencies, according to a PCMag tipster. The two phones have joined an exclusive company made up of some of the first devices approved to use the new frequencies. Samsung’s Galaxy S21 phones and the iPhone 12 lineup are the only others that currently offer support for these frequencies in the US.
C-band will deliver a much-needed speed boost to 5G in the US, particularly for Verizon and AT&T customers. Currently, their nationwide networks rely mostly on slower low-band spectrum. This swath of so-called mid-band frequencies went up for auction at the end of 2020, and US carriers bid a...
Companies join forces to provide remote, enterprise employees a secure, reliable connection to their corporate networks
February 2, 2021 – Comcast Business today announced it is joining forces with Cisco Meraki to expand the Comcast Business Teleworker VPN solution. Comcast Business Teleworker VPN is specifically engineered to help enterprise customers provide their rapidly expanding remote workforces with a secure, reliable, high-performance connection to their corporate network just as they enjoy when physically in their office.
Securing their rapidly expanding remote workforces has quickly become a critical priority for today’s enterprises. According to Gartner, “Securing your remote workforce has now become the single most existential imperative for all organizations in the wake of COVID-19.”
Comcast Business Teleworker VPN offers a centrally managed remote access VPN solution that enables enterprises to provide remote employees the same corporate network experience and service they have in the office. When combined with Comcast Business’s Teleworker Broadband solution, Comcast Business Teleworker VPN provides employees a secure, reliable connection to primary business systems, applications and files – all backed by the nation’s largest gig-speed network.
“The global pandemic has fast-tracked secure, remote workforce connectivity to the top of the priority list for today’s enterprise IT decision makers,” said Amit Verma, Vice President Solution Engineering and Technology, Comcast Business. ”When combined with our Teleworker Broadband solution, the Comcast Business Teleworker VPN solution with Cisco Meraki allows enterprises to gain peace of mind while providing their employees with a secure, independent Internet connection that does not interfere or compete with their at-home Internet – freeing up home bandwidth for remote learning, entertainment and more.”
Comcast Business Teleworker VPN with Cisco Meraki is an enterprise-class, cloud-native platform, which can be paried with Comcast’s Managed VPN Aggregation service to provide an enterprise-grade VPN gateway at business locations or hosted in our Secure Gateway Service centers. These are paired with remote, all-in-one devices, that provide cloud security and wireless and wired connectivity options at home locations – all centrally managed on the Cisco Meraki cloud platform. With these components in place, enterprises can securely connect home-based devices, including laptops, desktops, VoIP phones, printers and more to the corporate network. With Comcast Business Teleworker VPN with Cisco Meraki, enterprises will also benefit from:
Simple, centralized cloud management and optimization to help reduce the burden on IT
24/7 support provided by Comcast Business to supplement the customer’s IT teams
Policy-based access controls and traffic segmentation
A hybrid work environment featuring a consistent experience between home and office locations
The ability to add 4G LTE back up for business continuity for remote employees
“As businesses continue to rethink their offices altogether, IT leaders must develop strategies that have the ability to securely extend the enterprise network to employees anywhere, without compromising the protection, governance and performance that users have come to expect in the office,” said Lawrence Huang, VP of Product Management, Cisco Meraki. “Our partnership with Comcast Business continues our commitment in working with innovative leaders to enable secure, enterprise-grade user experiences so that our customers can not only adapt but thrive both now and in the future.”
About Comcast Business
Comcast Business offers Ethernet, Internet, Wi-Fi, Voice, TV and Managed Enterprise Solutions to help organizations of all sizes transform their business. Powered by an advanced network, and backed by 24/7 customer support, Comcast Business is one of the largest contributors to the growth of Comcast Cable. Comcast Business is the nation’s largest cable provider to small and mid-size businesses and has emerged as a force in the Enterprise market; recognized over the last two years by leading industry associations as one of the fastest growing providers of Ethernet services. For more information, call 866-429-3085. Follow on Twitter @ComcastBusiness and on other social media networks at http://business.comcast.com/social.
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. Cisco inspires new possibilities by reimagining your applications, securing your data, transforming your infrastructure, and empowering your teams for a global and inclusive future. Discover more on The Network.
AUSTIN, TX – February 2, 2021 – Today, Telestax, the leading provider of CPaaS enablement, announces the release of Campaign Manager, a new CPaaS turnkey application designed for global communications companies and their enterprise customers. With Campaign Manager, any organization can create large-scale message blasts to launch far-reaching campaigns quickly and efficiently without complex development or coding resources. Campaign Manager supports high-volume SMS, voice, and email in one straightforward application.
While email sending applications are ubiquitous, building SMS and voice campaigns are more nuanced. For example, SMS blasts require understanding of telecommunication provider throttling limits and parameters around message lengths. Managing all three channels, Campaign Manager facilitates hundreds of use cases across multiple verticals. Campaign Manager can also create large-scale voice calls for sending announcements, conducting polls, or gathering feedback. By linking Campaign Manager with the Telestax Visual Designer application, the system can even automate bi-directional voice conversations to deliver personalized experiences to a wide array of customers.
To expand their engagement channels, Arizona-based Broadband Dynamics partners with Telestax to provide Campaign Manager to businesses across the United States.
“All businesses desire the ability to reach their customers on the digital channel that matters most for them,” said Andy Day, Vice President of Carrier Services at Broadband Dynamics. “Telestax Campaign Manager is a simple yet highly effective tool that can be adapted for a number of different uses. Whether it’s for small business, enterprise, virtual learning, or Covid-19 vaccine announcements, Campaign Manager can enhance nearly any organization by tapping into the power of SMS, voice, and email. If our customer combines Campaign Manager with the Telestax Visual Designer they unleash unlimited call flow possibilities. For example, they can now create wide-reaching surveys or queries and ensure the respondent can be efficiently routed to the right customer team in real time. With Telestax, we are helping our customers expand their digital reach and improve their business.”
Campaign Manager offers critical features to communications providers such as:
Omnichannel Capability – With one application, set up SMS, voice, or email campaigns.
No Coding Required – Minimize the reliance on development resources or time needed to create, schedule, and send a campaign.
High-Volume Capacity – Supports millions of simultaneous SMS, voice, or email blasts.
Control for Volume and Budgets – Organizations can set limits on the number of messages sent in a given timeframe to ensure they stay within budget. Communications providers can set throttle values to ensure networks are not over tasked, or charge a premium for different blast packages.
Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) – All Telestax turnkey applications are part of the Restcomm platform which supports BYOC. This ensures traffic flows on the provider’s network retaining that revenue stream.
White-Label Support – Communications providers can white label the application to fit their branding and to deliver to customers a seamless one-brand experience.
Voice Support Including IVR Capability – Campaign Manager links with the Telestax Visual Designer application to effortlessly create a variety of bi-directional call flows. This is ideal for collecting customer feedback, conducting polls, and seamlessly routing respondents to the right customer support group.
Multiple Encoding Support – A global communications solution, Campaign Manager supports common encoding types including GSM-7 and UCS-2.
Long and Short Code Support – Campaign Manager supports both 10-digit phone numbers used in person-to-person communications and 5-6-digit numbers used in authentication messages.
Campaign Manager’s simple creation and control interface can blast millions of messages or initiate millions of voice calls to notify customers or prospects of important announcements, promotions, or critical messages. The application can be utilized by most anyone in an organization and does not require developer skills.
“There is no doubt that large companies have access to campaign blast products,” said Paul Doscher, Chief Executive Officer of Telestax. “They have full-scale marketing departments focused on scheduling and fine tuning these operations. Now, smaller companies without robust marketing resources can create large-volume sends with efficiency. Our partners, the communications providers, have hands-on relationships with all types of enterprise accounts. By combining the provider’s own high-quality network with Telestax Campaign Manager, they are able to go beyond phone numbers and provide programmable cloud communications to their business customers.”
Campaign Manager is a versatile solution that supports multiple industries and use cases, including:
Marketing – Blast offers, promotions, sales, and store locations with trackable links to gain insights on conversion.
Education – Notify parents and students via SMS on school closures, changes in virtual school procedures, snow day adjustments, even send voice surveys on virtual learning effectiveness.
Government – Alert residents to changes in government services such as trash or recycling pickup.
Services – Send company performance surveys via voice or SMS, text coupons and promotions to generate more revenue.
Campaign Manager is another turnkey application for the Telestax partner network. Telestax brings service providers and global communications companies Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) technology to better compete with traditional over-the-top CPaaS players offering similar functionality and taking market share away from the provider.
“Our turnkey applications work on top of the Telestax Restcomm CPaaS platform, exclusively designed for global communications companies and service providers.” said Paul Doscher, CEO of Telestax. “These providers desire the capability to bring programmable communications to their enterprise customers and keep traffic on the provider’s network to retain maximum account value. All Telestax applications are turnkey, meaning they are simple to deploy and require no code or development work by the end user. This ensures the application can work for any business, whether it’s a flower shop sending a text message about a Mother’s Day promotion, or a school district announcing virtual class changes to parents and students. Campaign Manager benefits both communications companies and their customers. We are thrilled to add another feather in our cap when it comes to expanding the global reach for CPaaS.”
Campaign Manager is available now through Telestax Partners. To become a Telestax partner, email info@telestax.com.
About Telestax
Telestax is the leading CPaaS enabler for communications service providers and creator of the award-winning Restcomm API platform. Originating in the largest industry open source community, managed by Telestax, Restcomm has been tested by over 10,000 telecom developers and contains over 6 million lines of code. As a trusted partner in real-time communications, Telestax delivers Restcomm Cloud to innovative companies around the world. When service providers join with Telestax, their customers gain the advantage of a superior network and full CPaaS capabilities such as programmable SMS and voice. With bring your own carrier options, white labeling, and a complete suite of voice and messaging APIs, service providers benefit from new revenue streams and a competitive edge in the evolving digital transformation marketplace. Restcomm Cloud removes the friction in application development and business workflow integration with user-friendly tools like the Visual Designer. The Telestax RESTful API gives experienced developers control to create robust omnichannel applications alongside technologies such as advanced IVR and intelligent chatbots. Learn more about Telestax, Restcomm Cloud, and CPaaS enablement at www.telestax.com today.
RingCentral cloud-based communications platform now has over 50,000 developers and 5,000 custom integrations
BELMONT, CA – – RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions, is today announcing a range of new innovations designed to help developers bring improved communications capabilities to their business apps. These include:
RingCentral Embeddable for RingCentral Video: RingCentral Video is now available via RingCentral Embeddable enabling developers to quickly integrate video meeting capabilities such as scheduling, joining, and hosting directly from their custom enterprise workflows.
Call Supervision, Monitoring, and Streaming API: This new Application Programming Interface (API) enables developers to add real-time transcription of a call or use Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist supervisors and agents to assess performance and resolve issues quickly, respectively.
“Our vision is to bring the benefits of cloud-based communications to people anywhere on any device,” said Sangeeta Walsh, Head of Platform marketing. “Central to that is giving developers a reliable and trusted open communications platform that they can easily connect with their apps and services. These latest innovations on our Open Platform will give organizations the tools and solutions they need to transform business communications across their companies and for their customers.”
RingCentral Embeddable for RingCentral Video
RingCentral Embeddable enables developers to embed RingCentral Video in addition to voice and team messaging, into business applications in minutes. Key benefits of RingCentral Embeddable include:
The ability to start, join, or schedule a RingCentral Video meeting within RingCentral Embeddable
The ability to integrate communications and collaboration capabilities into enterprise application workflows within minutes
A seamless experience that eliminates the need for employees to toggle between various business and communications applications to get their work done
Chexout, a contact tracing company, being used by the State of West Virginia and other locations in the U.S., has been using RingCentral Embeddable.
Joe Paulini, CEO, Chexout, said, “The current RingCentral Embeddable product has been working quite well and we’re looking forward to continuing to partner with RingCentral and expand our offering to include RingCentral Video.”
Call Supervision, Monitoring, and Streaming API
With real-time transcription, the call supervision, monitoring, and streaming API can be leveraged by developers to build an integration that enhances customer service and the enterprise sales function. Through the integration, users can listen in on a call, with access to separate channels including the active speaker and listener for each party on the call, thereby assisting customer facing agents in resolving issues quickly and monitoring performance, which ultimately enhances the overall customer experience.
Dedicated voice specialist, Red Box, enables customers to analyze data from recorded voice conversations in order to maximize its business value. Now with RingCentral’s real-time call streaming API, joint customers of Red Box and RingCentral can access and analyze real-time transcription of conversations to enhance customer service and employee productivity.
“As the number of mobile and dispersed workforces continue to rise, it is more important than ever to provide them with the tools they need to be productive, effective, and efficient,” said Pete Ellis, chief product officer, at Red Box. “With the introduction of this latest API from RingCentral, we’re able to seamlessly integrate AI and voice analytics to capture conversations — all in real-time. Customers then have the ability to leverage the data to drive compliance and strategic business outcomes from a conversation. The API is easy to use due to its comprehensive developer documentation and we’ve received a great deal of support from the RingCentral team.”
RingCentral App Gallery
Lastly, RingCentral also made enhancements to its RingCentral App Gallery, providing users with app collections and easy access to industry-leading integrations that work with a variety of RingCentral products and themes such as ‘Glip® by RingCentral’ and ‘Work from Anywhere.’
In addition to the above innovations, RingCentral continues to receive accolades for its developer resources, recently winning an award for Best Developer Dashboard in the 2020 DevPortal Awards. The DevPortal Awards brings together the API community to recognize, celebrate and learn from the world’s greatest developer portals and their API documentation.
Leading provider of collaboration endpoint solutions, Konftel, recently announced a new partnership with Barco Clickshare Conference for wireless meeting offerings. The Barco brand is responsible for incredible wireless video conferencing opportunities, already certified and compatible with the Barco series of Clickshare products.
Konftel and Barco are sharing a missing to develop flexible and simple room options for video conferencing, so companies can enjoy restriction-free access to familiar cloud services and apps. The service, which the company refers to as “Bring your Own Meeting” or BYOM, means that the person leading the meeting can take their own laptop into the meeting room, and connect to an audio, camera, or display system via USB.
The combined solution using Clickshare Conference and Konftel products means that the connection between the laptop and conference camera, display, and speakerphone is completely wireless.
The Wireless Meeting Room Experience
According to CMO of Konftel, Stefan Eriksson, the company knows from experience how strong the demand can be for reliable wireless products. Konftel is impressed by the Clickshare conference solutions and believes that joining forces with Barco will lead to the delivery of clear added value for Konftel sales channels and customers.
All Konftel’s conference cameras, video packages, and speakerphones now come with the Certified for ClickShare conference label from Barco. This ensures that all the models in the CX series for ClickShare are tested to ensure ongoing compatibility with the Konftel technology, including models like the Konftel Cam20 and Cam50.
The joins solution empowers companies to enjoy wireless and platform-independent video conferences to be conducted in meeting rooms of any size. Teaming up with Konftel, according to VP of Global Alliances at Barco, David Fitzgerald, is a fantastic step forward. Premium video and audio come together with simple conferencing solutions to create an incredible meeting room.
As an added benefit, the combined solution is also environmentally friendly for a more sustainable world. The Konftel company became the first in 2020 to obtain the Climate Neutral certification, which means customers choosing a Konftel solution will have a carbon footprint of zero to replace business trips with video. Barco’s product and design team also has an impressive Eco score for Clickshare conferencing products.
Konftel Also Offers Enhanced Mobile Conferencing
Konftel’s decision to partner with Barco builds on the increasing demand for collaboration products that cater to the latest needs of the wireless and hybrid workforce. To further this strategy, the company also recently launched an enhanced version of the world’s leading mobile conference phone.
According to Konftel, the solution is a gamechanger, with 4G connectivity that makes it a perfect fit for the world of work right now. Konftel 300Mx 4G now also comes with up to 30 hours of call time on a single charge, and cable-free meetings anywhere.
Jeff May
According to Konftel’s UK sales chief, Jeff May, users will just need to insert a SIM card to start the conference call without using a fixed telephony network. This could be crucial in an environment where flexible and agile working is becoming increasingly common.
Notably, the additional freedom offered by Konftel’s 300Mx 4G has made it extremely easy to carry around. You can even bring additional microphones into the mix to adhere to physical distancing guidelines.
The 300Mx 4G from Konftel also includes OmniSound, the renowned audio technology from Konftel, and it offers HD voice support on mobile networks. Konftel’s Unite adapter ensures you can manage meetings and call functions through a simple smartphone app.
Simple Mobile Conferencing
According to May, the mobile solution comes with a convenient charging cradle and support for up to 30 hours of call time with a single charge. There’s also a USB socket included so that users can use their own laptop and run Microsoft Teams, as well as Zoom or other services for video conferencing. The Konftel 300Mx 4G works well with the Konftel Cam50 and OOC hub, meaning all that users need to get started is a single USB cable.
One of the biggest reasons for Konftel upgrading the phone is that the 3G network is beginning to be phased out in various parts of the global Just like many Konftel products, the 4G is certified as climate neutral, and ready to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
Poly’s P21 display has a built in webcam, microphone, speakers, and lighting. | Image: Poly
Poly, the brand launched after headset-manufacturer Plantronics bought video conferencing company Polycom back in 2018, is announcing a new lineup of office gear for the work-from-home era. There’s the $129 Poly Studio P5 webcam, the $599 Poly Studio P15 Personal Video Bar, and the $815 Poly Studio P21 Personal Meeting Display.
The P21 display is particularly interesting. Although it’s fundamentally a 21-inch monitor, it’s designed to make the most of video calls. It’s got a built in webcam with a physical privacy shutter, microphone, and integrated stereo speakers. There’s even a pair of ambient lights on its left and right sides to keep your face well-illuminated on video calls. Its stand doubles as a wireless charger, and there are...
RingCentral has added a new API that is designed to allow developers to better manage real-time voice and video analysis and transcription. The new Call Supervision, Monitoring, and Streaming API leverages Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for enhanced audio analysis.
Audiocodes’ Chief Exec has lauded the firm for its continued momentum in the enterprise space, claiming this now makes up almost 80 per cent of total revenue.
Shabtai Adlersberg was speaking as AudioCodes revealed that sales in FY20 climbed 10.2 per cent year on year to $220.8m.
The CEO highlighted two areas as key to the growth: the “evolution” of the firm’s enterprise business, and new growth engines, namely Microsoft Teams, contact centre and conversational AI.
“Enterprise business consisting mainly of UCaaS and contact centre, grow 17 per cent in 2020 and now provides for about 78 per cent of the overall company revenue,” he said.
“We expect this annual growth rate to continue well into 2021 and beyond.
“On top of this, we have substantially moved our focus in sales to the recurring revenue model as compared to the previous years, where the majority of sales was done as CapEx transaction”
Adlersberg said that Teams revenue, in particular, has driven UCaaS growth, with sales in the Teams space quadrupling year on year in Q4.
This was in contrast to the start of 2020 when on-prem Skype for Business was the firm’s biggest growth driver.
Back then sales stood at $84m annually, $70m of which was derived from Skype with just $13m coming from Teams.
Adlersberg said he expects Skype revenue to decline in 2021. AudioCodes had previously been bringing in around $18m per quarter in Skype revenue but this has dropped to around $10m.
Shabtai Adlersberg
The CEO added that he expects more companies to move their voice capabilities to Microsoft over the coming years – adding that this hasn’t been a focus for Microsoft but will likely become one soon.
“We know for a fact that as Microsoft tries to become the dominant player in the market, the intention was put really more into collaboration, chats and meetings,” he said.
“Voice was not a requirement; companies could stay with their PBX, but still get on board with Teams using the collaboration and meetings.
“We believe that, as time goes by, the benefit of using an integrated solution, all coming from Microsoft, will basically drive the migration of those into Microsoft telephony solution as well”
“We have heard that customers who have standardised on Microsoft Teams are really not looking back. The product is working well and has become an important part of their daily work…”
Eighteen months ago, we announced the July 31, 2021 retirement of Skype for Business Online. With six months until the service ends, we’re focused on helping each of our customers upgrade to Microsoft Teams and enabling more ways to come together and get things done.
Skype for Business Online has been a critical communications tool for millions of organizations across the globe. Once customers experience the way Teams brings together chat, calling, meetings and more, they realize the amazing potential to collaborate seamlessly and simplify work in a secure and compliant way.
Regardless of where you are on the journey from Skype for Business to Teams, this is an important checkpoint to make sure your organization is on track to upgrade to Teams before Skype for Business Online retires and access to the service ends.
“We’ve got a plan, and we’re working the plan.”
Most Skype for Business Online customers have deployed Teams, either with Overlapping Capabilities (aka “Islands Mode”) or Select Capabilities, and are gradually moving users and workloads as their organization is ready. Chances are if you’re in this camp, your finish line is in sight. You still have time to double-check your technical and organizational readiness before changing the coexistence and upgrade settings as you move users or your tenant to Teams Only.
“Uh oh, we’re not ready.”
Some organizations may not be far along in the Teams upgrade planning process. It’s understandable as the events of the past year have impacted strategies, priorities, and resources for so many. Don’t worry, you still have time. In fact, there are numerous examples of organizations that have made the upgrade from Skype for Business Online, or hybrid deployments or Skype for Business Server to Teams in a matter of months. With six months until retirement, we encourage you to begin planning today to accommodate the technical, process, and user scenarios that may be unique to your organization. But rest assured, there are resources to guide you step-by-step.
If you’re not sure where to start, we recommend the following:
Teams upgrade planning workshops take you through a proven framework for planning and implementing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Teams.
Microsoft Chalk Talks workshops teach best practices and practical guidance around some of the most popular and compelling scenarios in Teams.
FastTrack assistance is available for eligible subscriptions, or you may choose to engage a Microsoft Partner to help plan or execute your upgrade from Skype for Business to Teams.
Automated upgrades to Teams Some Skype for Business Online customers will be eligible for automated upgrades to Microsoft Teams. This program was designed to assist customers with the technical elements of upgrading a Skype for Business Online tenant to Teams Only. Customers scheduled for automated upgrades will receive notifications in both the Teams admin center, as well as the Microsoft 365 Message Center, at least three months before their upgrade date to allow time for technical and user readiness. To learn more about eligibility and more details about the experience, read Automated Upgrades from Skype for Business Online to Microsoft Teams.
More engaging and efficient meetings. Improved collaboration. Easy app and workflow integration. There’s so much to love about Teams. In six months, access to Skype for Business Online will end. Though we’re getting a bit nostalgic about what’s going away, it’s easy to see how much more organizations can do with Teams – staying connected and accomplishing more together across work, school, and life. And that has us excited about what’s ahead.
Please note the retirement of Skype for Business Online does not affect the Skype consumer service, Skype for Business Server products and Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet (China Sovereign Clouds Instance)
Apple is rolling out new privacy protections that could affect Facebook’s data-driven ad business. | Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Angry CEOs, operating system updates, and maybe even a lawsuit — the feud continues.
Facebook and Apple’s fight over your data is heating up. Apple’s tracking-optional mobile operating system update is coming to iPhones this spring, and the new privacy-preserving features will give users the ability to opt out of being followed around the internet via trackers in their apps. Facebook — which makes the vast majority of its money from data collected through those trackers — really doesn’t like Apple’s new features. Now Facebook is considering suing Apple, and Apple is digging in its heels.
Late January saw the latest exchange of words between the two companies in a standoff that’s been going on for months. On January 27, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a quarterly earnings call that “we increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” accusing Apple of using its “dominant platform position” to push its own apps while interfering with Facebook’s. Zuck added that Apple may frame this as a privacy service to its customers, but it’s really only in Apple’s own best anti-competitive interests. The following morning, the Information reported that Facebook was preparing an antitrust suit against Apple over its App Store rules (which, if filed, will joinseveralothers).
Apple is not backing down. The day after Facebook’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference. In his keynote address, Cook never mentioned Facebook by name, but the target of his pointed remarks about data and advertising was obvious.
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed,” Cook said. “Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom. If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”
The reform Cook is talking about would look like a mobile operating system that prevents companies from accumulating said vast troves of personal data, and Apple’s latest efforts bring its own mobile operating system, iOS, pretty close to that ideal. The iPhone maker has incorporated several privacy protections into its products and services over the years. In iOS 14, apps will have to tell users what information they collect and get their permission to do it. Some of these features are already live, including the so-called privacy nutrition labels, which are supposed to tell users if their data is being collected, how, and why (though, as the Washington Post points out, the labels appear to be operating on the honor system).
A potentially bigger deal, for users and developers alike, is the upcoming App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, which will require apps to get users’ permission to track them across other apps and websites. If users say no — and it’s likely that most of them will, given that people generally don’t like being tracked — companies that use targeted advertising will lose a major source of data, and, therefore, revenue. So Apple’s move could significantly harm the very mobile app ecosystem its iPhone helped to create.
Facebook, a company that has not historically been a major proponent of user privacy, is one of the biggest data collectors of all. Its trackers are buried in tons of mobile apps and on websites, and Facebook uses the data they collect for ads on its platforms and its Audience Network mobile app ad service. So you can imagine that the social media giant/data vacuum was somewhat alarmed to find out that potentially millions of iPhones would soon have a way to cut off some of those data streams. Facebook certainly isn’t the only company to balk at Apple’s new rules, but it is one of the biggest.
It has responded by framing Apple’s move as an attack on the small businesses that use Facebook ads to target potential customers. In a PR campaign last December, Facebook said that non-personalized ads would generate 60 percent fewer sales than personalized ones — while these businesses were struggling to stay afloat during a pandemic, no less. Apple shrugged and continued with its ATT rollout plans. On February 1, Facebook announced that Apple’s required tracking permission prompt would be accompanied by one from Facebook that “will provide more information” about how and why Facebook uses targeted ads. It will point out that the money those ads take in helps to keep apps free and gives the businesses that use them a better return on their investment than non-targeted ads do (according to Facebook, which might be a little biased).
Facebook and Apple are two of the biggest companies in the world, with very different points of view about user privacy. Apple has made user privacy part of its business strategy, even engaging in public spats with the Department of Justice to protect it. That’s because it deals in products and services — not data — and positions itself as the more private and secure alternative to Google, which very much does deal in data. Facebook was also built on user data, so its fights with the Department of Justice have been over user privacy violations.
But as Facebook (and several other companies) have pointed out, Apple has an incredible amount of control over every aspect of its devices. Apple mobile devices are only manufactured by Apple and can only use Apple’s operating system. Apple hardware must also use apps obtained through Apple’s App Store, and those apps have to meet Apple’s requirements, use Apple’s in-app features, pay Apple’s commissions, and compete against Apple’s own apps, which sometimes look a whole lot like their own. So Apple can make privacy part of its selling point for its customers, and it can also mandate it from any apps that want access to iPhone users. Even when those apps are made by companies as big and powerful as Facebook.
As for what all of this means to you, the user? Other than having some more privacy options when Apple’s update finally arrives this spring, probably not much for the time being. The ads won’t go away; they just won’t have as much access to your data to target them. Facebook has already said it will comply with Apple’s ATT requirements, so it won’t be pulling its apps from the App Store over this, nor will Apple be kicking them out.
This is good for both companies because Apple’s users want Facebook’s apps (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) on their iPhones, and Facebook wants their apps in front of as many people as possible. They may be feuding publicly — as they’ve done for years — but their mutually beneficial relationship is still very much intact.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
According to analysts, Chromebooks had an incredible 2020, with the last quarter being the strongest ever for Google’s laptops (via 9to5Google). According to research firms Gartner and Canalys, over 30 million of the devices shipped last year, with somewhere between 11 and 11.7 million shipping in Q4 alone. Canalys says that’s a staggering 287 percentmore than were shipped in Q4 2019.
The firms disagree on how much growth this is when compared to 2019, but both estimate that it’s a lot: Gartner estimates that Chromebooks are up 80 percent, while Canalys says it’s 109 percent. For comparison, PC sales were up by 11 percent this year, which is the biggest growth the category had seen in a decade. This isn’t to give the impression that...
It’s no secret that the US is struggling to distribute coronavirus vaccines; some states haven’t received enough doses, and finding an appointment on sign-up websites has been a chaotic experience. A new report in MIT Technology Review looks at why, almost a year into the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemed totally unprepared for actually getting shots into people’s arms.
According to Technology Review, the agency knew it needed a robust, one-stop shop that could be used by patients, clinics, employers, and government officials. But instead, the CDC spent $44 million on something called the Vaccine Administration Management System —-VAMS— built by consulting firm Deloitte (via no-bid contracts) which was so...
California’s Otay Mesa Energy Center, a natural gas-fired power plant. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Courts struck down Trump-era rules on ozone and what data can be used to make policy.
Former President Donald Trump’s environmental agenda suffered two significant losses in court this week, as federal judges struck down rules that would have made regulating pollution more difficult.
On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a rule passed in the final days of the Trump administration that would have limited the use of so-called “secret science,” a term used by conservatives to refer to data kept confidential due to patient privacy concerns, in the regulation of pollutants by the Environmental Protection Agency.
And on Friday, a panel of three judges in Washington, DC’s circuit court abolished rules that loosened the EPA’s implementation of ozone standards under the Clean Air Act, as the panel found that the Trump-era policy “contravene[s] the statute’s unambiguous language,” and “rests on an unreasonable interpretation of the statute.”
The first case hinged on the timing of the rule change — it was put in place on January 6 under former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist. Wheeler argued that the rule would increase transparency by ensuring public health policy was grounded in data reviewable by all.
But critics of the rule said that it would limit the power of agencies like the EPA to protect public health, as much of the agency’s science relies on work that includes confidential patient data that cannot legally be made publicly available.
For example, a landmark Harvard study from 1993, which found direct links between exposure to pollutants and mortality rates, has for years formed the basis of the EPA’s regulation of fine particulate matter. But because that study used anonymized health data, the Trump rule would have barred it, and any similar studies, from being used to create regulations.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Brian Morris, an Obama appointee in Montana, sided with the rule’s critics, saying that the Trump administration’s decision to pass the rule two weeks before Trump left office was “capricious.”
He ordered that the rule’s implementation be delayed until February 5 so that President Joe Biden’s administration can assess whether to go forward with the rule or not.
In the Friday case, three judges on the United States Court of Appeals for Washington, DC — Judges Harry Edwards, David Tatel, and Gregory Katsas, appointed by former Presidents Carter, Clinton and Trump respectively — found that parts of rules relaxing ozone regulations were not lawful.
The rules, adopted in 2015 and 2018, allowed polluters and officials flexibility in meeting ozone regulations under the federal Clean Air Act. One key rule change gave polluters leeway in the production of compounds that serve as precursors to ozone, which can be toxic. This rule allowed polluters to swap the emission of a given ozone precursor with another known ozone precursor. Two other rules allowed states flexibility in meeting ozone requirements, and a fourth gave areas that failed to meet ozone mitigation thresholds cover from consequences if they showed that they’d had a plan to meet those targets.
Environmental groups that brought challenges to each of these provisions, which included the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, called those changes “loopholes.”
Biden has pledged to undo Trump’s environmental policy
The Trump administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental protections in just four years. On the campaign trail, Biden promised to reverse many of these actions, and has spent part of his first days in office doing so, using executive orders.
On Wednesday, Biden signed a set of executive actions meant to begin making this plan a reality. In them, he directed his administration to take a “whole-of-government approach” to combat climate change, which includes — among other initiatives — ordering federal agencies to purchase electricity that is pollution-free, as well as zero emission vehicles, and directing the US Department of Interior to pause entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore.
Biden has signaled that climate policy will be a centerpiece of his economic agenda, too.
“Biden’s economic agenda is his climate agenda; his climate agenda is his economic agenda,” Sam Ricketts — co-founder of the climate policy group Evergreen, and a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress think tank — told Nilsen.
In the short term, this means finding ways to create new jobs, according to the president. And that focus was on display in one of the executive orders he signed Wednesday, which, among other initiatives, directed his administration to investigate ways to convert fossil fuel hubs into communities centered on renewable energy.
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