COMMENT COMMENT
Seeing is believing
enough, the announcements coming out of Zoomtopia should be enough for anyone to work out that embracing these technologies is a good idea. Even throughout the features in this issue, AI is a theme that runs through the pieces we have put together. Tracking within conferencing devices, sentiment analysis, and customer communications are all examples of AI being applied to good effect. On top of these features we have a profile with Zoho Communications who talked about their place in the UC industry, a review of how bolt on software is improving video conferencing solutions, as well as a look at how the haulage industry stays on track.
I’m writing this sat in the middle of Microsoft Envision, the Tech Giant’s AI event focussing on Business technologies. My headphones are blaring Counting Crows and I’m waiting for Satya Nadella to come on stage and share his view of the enterprise technology landscape from his ivory tower before writing up a report for our sister magazine News in the Channel . Naturally, the sessions today have been dominated by artificial intelligence and the different facets of business that generative AI models can be applied to. Fair play to Microsoft though, the suite of solutions that they have built around CoPilot and the plethora of enterprise applications, from Teams, to Dynamics, to Microsoft 365 will make a lot of jobs easier. Broadly speaking I find these events are always searching for a headline. Whether Cloud, Collaboration, or industry-specific events, the innovations or figures that act as the foundation on which a day of keynotes and sessions are built on can often feel confected or over embellished. Particularly thinking back to pre-pandemic presentations that reached for Big Data, Blockchain and Extended Reality in an attempt to rejuvenate an environment that was torn between the early adopters of Teams and Zoom and the nine-to-five traditionalists. So as the range of generative AI solutions started to come to the floor, I was hesitant to praise it immediately. Call it journalistic scepticism, natural wariness, or just being a misery guts, after emotionally investing in ideas like blockchain it’s hard to be excited about the next big thing when the typical hype-cycles are repeating themselves over Generative AI. All this being said, it’s clear to see that this big thing isn’t going anywhere. If the innovation coming out of Microsoft wasn’t
Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne Editor
2024
And that will draw a line under 2023 for UC Advanced. A slightly earlier Christmas break for us as we prepare for an extremely busy 2024. Hopefully I’ll see lots of you in the new year and at the Stockies before then! As always, get in touch with stories, thoughts, and submissions. (elliot@ucadvanced.com) I wouldn’t be able to put together
this magazine half the time if it wasn’t for the great content that has been sent my way this year and I can’t wait to get back to it in the new year!
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