In the past, and some would say in the present, the better-known IP-PBX and Unified Communications (UC) vendors focused on large enterprises. The real profit was in obtaining the most significant number of subscribers per business.

Machine learning (ML) is a type of Artificial intelligence (AI) that allows software applications to become more accurate in predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed. In other words, machine learning receives input data and uses statistical analysis to predict an output value.

At the recent CCA in Fort Worth, I attended a session moderated by Margaret McKoin of the Time Group that consisted of a series of presentations and a panel discussion on marketing to Millennials. The discussion was geared towards the preferences and buying patterns of Millennial consumers for telecommunications services, and several interesting points were brought up.

Does blockchain have real value in Unified Communications or is it like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole? Blockchain technology is disruptive in its ability to provide the creation of a distributed ledger eliminating the need for a centralized or third-party participant acting as a middle man to broker transactions.

“In Many Cases, Media Servers Make or Break the Real-Time Video Application.”  

So it says in the beginning of the white paper “Building Real-Time Video Apps that Scale” written by BlogGeek.Me. I couldn’t agree more considering media servers are at the heart of real-time communication applications.

Both enterprise and service provider networks, whether PSTN-based, cellular or mobile-based, or IP-based, provide monitoring ability to the administrators of the network.  Most of the network monitoring involves providing analytic information so the network administrators know how the network is behaving.  Some monitoring involves line tapping, both for “lawful intercept,” and in the case of call centers, to help (or hopefully) improve your experience.  Let’s take a further look at some specific monitoring applications.

Video is one of the all-time “killer apps” – allowing users to use their acute sense of vision to see hidden emotion on people’s faces, detect danger, and provide comfort when needed.   Video is quickly becoming the norm for the millennial generation, a feature in many of the social and communications applications.

The evolution from on-premise PBX to a Unified Communications cloud application is taking some interesting turns - and the latest one is changing how we define productivity in the enterprise world. If we think about it, most of our daily tasks involve a mix of real time communications, either using text, voice or video, and our software tools that enable us to complete our tasks. Quite often, both of them combine and we find ourselves using both simultaneously to achieve what we need, but that does not mean they interop seamlessly and save us precious time in this hyperactive and hyper-connected world.