Author: Gregg Willsky

Principal Analyst, Unified Communications & Collaboration, Enterprise Networking, Conferencing Solutions

Google is Keeping Workspace on the Cutting Edge

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Big Data, Communicate
A close-up portrait of a smiling man wearing glasses, with a neutral background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• Three voice-activated features coming to Google Workspace reflect a broader trend of AI becoming incorporated into everyday workflows.

• The features also mirror how vendors are opening their team collaboration platforms to support the multi-platform environment in which their users operate.

Google recently announced three voice-activated AI features coming soon to Google Workspace. ‘Gmail Live’ lets users ask conversational questions to retrieve information from their Gmail inbox such as “What’s my flight’s gate number?”. Users can talk to ‘Keep Live’ to capture ideas that cross their mind and turn them into organized, actionable notes. With ‘Docs Live’ users can engage in real-time conversation to create documents on the fly. Although Workspace users cannot avail themselves of the features quite yet, ‘Gmail Live’ and ‘Keep Live’ are available to Google AI subscribers on the Plus, Pro, and Ultra plans while ‘Docs Live’ is reserved for Pro and Ultra subscribers.

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Zoom Continues to Flourish

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable
A smiling man with glasses, wearing a light-colored shirt, against a blurred background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• New features from Zoom reinforce its recently reconstituted platform vision, extend its ongoing transformation, and support an important, contemporary trend in the team collaboration space.

• This latest batch of improvements underscores Zoom’s place among the top team collaboration and contact center vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Google.

Earlier this month, Zoom held the latest installment of an ongoing series of customer webinars highlighting new platform features. In keeping with tradition at Zoom, the enhancements were wide-ranging, covering various tracts of its platform.

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Salesforce Expands the Value of Slackbot with the Introduction of Slackforce Surfaces

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a smiling man wearing glasses.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• Slackforce Surfaces are front doors into data and context that enable users to grasp a deeper understanding of their business and make more informed decisions.

• Slackforce Surfaces represent the latest chapter in the renaissance of Slackbot, advancing Slack as a key part of the Salesforce organization.

Salesforce has deepened its investment in Slackbot, the AI-driven personal work agent built into Slack, with the debut of Slackforce Surfaces. The introduction will raise the utility of the Slack platform and further cement the starring role Slack has come to play at Salesforce.

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Zoom Has Upped the Ante in Supporting Sales Teams

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • The Zoom Revenue Accelerator updates combined with the pending acquisition of the Common Room platform will provide Zoom with complete coverage of the sales cycle.
  • Providing support for the sales process represents a ‘new frontier’ that vendors are exploring and one that should ripen quickly.

Zoom announced general availability of three updates to its Zoom Revenue Accelerator (ZRA) feature, which helps sales teams close deals by analyzing customer interactions using AI. The updates consist of ‘Sales Roleplay,’ which provides practice simulations of customer conversations; ‘Sales Assist,’ which includes real-time deal guidance to keep reps focused as they engage the customer; and ‘Ask ZRA,’ which allows both reps and managers to perform natural language queries on conversation data post-discussion with the customer.

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8×8 AI Routing Takes a Sad Song and Makes It Better

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Big Data
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• 8×8 AI Routing identifies the right expert anywhere in an organization that can resolve a customer’s inquiry, not just the contact center.

• While 8×8 AI Routing is marginally better than legacy systems it still merits a try out.

We’ve probably all found ourselves reciting this famous opening line to a classic song when trying to connect with someone in customer support: “Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. Help! You know I need someone. Help!”

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Slackbot Spreads Its Wings but Questions Remain

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• Salesforce has integrated Slackbot more deeply into its platform, providing access purportedly to the entire Salesforce ecosystem.

• Despite positives the announcement generates concerns, the most pressing regarding security.

Salesforce has greatly extended the scope of Slackbot, the AI-driven personal work agent built into Slack, claiming it now spans the entire Salesforce platform. The change will add substantial value, keep Slack – the company – competitive with rivals, and cement the starring role Slack has come to play at Salesforce.

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Zoom Enhancements Help Move Work Forward but Fall Short in Other Areas

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a man smiling, wearing glasses and a suit.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • Zoom hopes that this latest round of capabilities will help drive greater platform adoption and distinguish itself from rivals.
  • With respect to achieving those goals, the capabilities deliver Zoom a mixed report card.

Zoom announced a mix of capabilities encompassing mobile access for Zoom My Notes, improved agentic search for Zoom AI Companion and upgrades to Zoom MCP Server. Through the new capabilities, Zoom intends to achieve two implicit goals: to drive platform adoption by adding appealing functionality that aligns with recent market trends and to distinguish itself in a competitively dense field.

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RingCentral’s Expanded Partnerships with Cox and Spectrum Position Each for Growth in the Contact Center Space and Beyond

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a smiling man with glasses, wearing a light-colored suit.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • RingCentral has expanded its partnerships with Cox Business and Spectrum Business by augmenting existing unified communications offers with contact center capabilities.
  • Now is an especially opportune time to expand the partnerships as organizations are under more pressure than ever from customers to forge deeper connections.

RingCentral has recently expanded its partnership with two service providers by supplying contact center capabilities for their portfolios. ‘Cox Business Contact Center with RingCentral’ and ‘Unified Customer Experience (UCX) with RingCentral’ from Spectrum Business both leverage RingCentral’s ‘RingCX’ platform, which is AI-driven and omnichannel capable. Both offers complement existing unified communications (UC) offers brought to market in conjunction with RingCentral based on its ‘RingEX’ platform namely, ‘Cox Business Connect with RingCentral’ and from Spectrum Business, ‘Unified Communications (UC) with RingCentral’. Spectrum Business sweetens the deal by blending in a sales-oriented add-on from RingCentral to its UC offer called AI Conversation Expert (ACE), which transcribes and analyzes sales calls and meetings to help close more opportunities.

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RingCentral AIR Pro Is a Meaningful Addition to the Company’s Contact Center Portfolio but Suffers from a Foggy Roadmap

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a man wearing glasses, smiling against a blurred background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• RingCentral AIR Pro is the latest member of RingCentral’s agentic AI ecosystem.

• The offer keeps RingCentral neck-and-neck with rivals, but the omission of launch details dilutes its appeal to the market.

Today, organizations are under more pressure than ever from customers to forge deeper connections. To meet that demand, contact centers have been undergoing a profound transformation, with the concept of a ‘contact center’ yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience’ (CX). Contact centers are converting from featuring live agents to also including AI agents; from reactive to proactive; from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented; and from generic to deeply personalized.

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8×8’s New Customer Experience Capabilities are Contemporary but Confusing

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Communicate, IT Leader
A smiling man wearing glasses, with short dark hair, against a blurred background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• 8×8’s latest capabilities reflect an ongoing pivot from collaboration occupying its core to customer experience (CX) assuming its central identity.

• While 8×8 is generating market momentum with the new capabilities, the offer structure is confusing.

A few years ago, 8×8 undertook a fundamental pivot, shifting from a company with communication and collaboration at its core to one with CX making up its central identity. Concurrently, 8×8’s ‘XCaaS’ platform – housing an integrated mix of unified communication, customer experience, and CPaaS capabilities – is now known as the 8×8 Platform for CX.

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