BroadSoft, Operators and Technology Adoptions
The week of October 14th I had opportunity to participate in BroadSoft's Connections event in San Diego, CA where they brought together operators, systems integrators and technology partners to discuss the future of communications (increasingly video and increasingly cloud-based). Over 1k people were in attendance and widely discussed the challenges of moving enterprise services to the cloud.
One particular insight that was quite revealing to me from listening to BroadSoft customers such as Telstra (Australian Carrier), The Red Cross and University of Michigan, discuss their challenges in moving from legacy systems to cloud-based offerings is the immense resistance to change and adoption of new technologies.
Video is a case in point. There seems to be a bifurcation of video as an entertainment medium (lots of people watching passively on their mobile and table devices) but not so many people using it during business and every day communications.
The CTO of The Red Cross was very clear that many of his users are not interested in video conferencing and prefer to only use audio conferencing. Are we forcing the use of video for conferencing where it is really not needed?
A second insight that was relevant was how much the requirements of different organizations differ. The CTO for The University of Michigan touched on this and cited the lack of understanding of technology and the app economy by brilliant researchers too busy and focused on their next discovery to be concerned with downloading a communication app on their smart-phones. The Telstra speaker spoke about the unique requirements of his customer which was Australia's Department of Defense, where persistent availability in the 5 9's is a requirement.
The point remains, but deserves to be mentioned once again, that the adoption of new technologies by humans will continue to be delayed by our attachments to old legacy systems and technologies. And, that only those with the most optimized ability to reduce complexity and adoption processes will be the ones to win the game.
One particular insight that was quite revealing to me from listening to BroadSoft customers such as Telstra (Australian Carrier), The Red Cross and University of Michigan, discuss their challenges in moving from legacy systems to cloud-based offerings is the immense resistance to change and adoption of new technologies.
Video is a case in point. There seems to be a bifurcation of video as an entertainment medium (lots of people watching passively on their mobile and table devices) but not so many people using it during business and every day communications.
The CTO of The Red Cross was very clear that many of his users are not interested in video conferencing and prefer to only use audio conferencing. Are we forcing the use of video for conferencing where it is really not needed?
A second insight that was relevant was how much the requirements of different organizations differ. The CTO for The University of Michigan touched on this and cited the lack of understanding of technology and the app economy by brilliant researchers too busy and focused on their next discovery to be concerned with downloading a communication app on their smart-phones. The Telstra speaker spoke about the unique requirements of his customer which was Australia's Department of Defense, where persistent availability in the 5 9's is a requirement.
The point remains, but deserves to be mentioned once again, that the adoption of new technologies by humans will continue to be delayed by our attachments to old legacy systems and technologies. And, that only those with the most optimized ability to reduce complexity and adoption processes will be the ones to win the game.
Comments