Refresh Coming for my Blog and Website

UPDATE, JULY 22

MY NEW SITE IS NOW IN EFFECT - MY BLOG IS NOW INTEGRATED THERE, AND WENT LIVE ON JULY 20.

THIS BLOG SITE IS STILL DRAWING A LOT OF TRAFFIC, AND TO KEEP THINGS MOVING FORWARD, HERE'S THE DIRECT LINK TO MY NEW BLOG:

JAA'S ANALYST BLOG

HERE'S THE BODY OF MY FINAL BLOG POST HERE, WITH MORE DETAIL ABOUT MY NEW SITE, WHICH RAN JUNE 30:

I've been working on this do-over for some time, and it's getting real close. The blog you're seeing now has been running here since 2005, and the same is true for my website.

Not only is all of this getting a full updating - am working with a great web design team, and referrals are welcome! - but both entities are getting combined. So, my blog will now be folded into my website, just like how the rest of the world seems to do things. I'm still old school, and have resisted this for a long time, but it's futile, so onward we go.

This may very well be my last blog post at this location and using the format you see here. We're doing a cutover this weekend, and if things go to plan, my regular blog traffic will redirect automatically.

You'll end up on my new website, which remains unchanged: www.jarnoldassociates.com

I know this will cause some hiccups for some people to find me, but if you stay with me, I think you'll like what's coming - and if you do, please let me know!

If this is the last post on this blog site, then I'll  go full circle and exit at my point of entry - my first post here from March 29, 2005.

I don't re-read old posts, but if you check this out, I think you'd agree I've stayed true to my focus when I started out back then as an indie analyst. I'm still here, so I must be doing something right!

Is Interactive Intelligence an Exponential Organization?

Unless you saw Salim Ismail speak at the recent Interactions 2016 conference, this title may sound cryptic. Previously, I didn't know what an exponential organization was either, but now I do. After hearing Salim, I began wondering how well his ideas - which I really like - apply to the host company, Interactive Intelligence.

The event itself was great as usual, and I posted briefly about that here. This bigger question - not quite exponentially bigger, but still worth asking - needed a different forum, and to address it, I put on my UC Expert hat. My writeup is running now on our UCStrategies portal, and tomorrow I'll be moderating our next podcast where I'll get my fellow UC Experts to weigh in on this as well. Your comments, as always, are welcome!

Interactions 2016 - Reimagine the Future

How do you reimagine the future if it hasn't happened yet?

Hmm. Sounds like an oxymoron, but if you listen closely to what's been on tap during this week's Interactions 2016, it's not. The present is changing so quickly, that whatever notions we have about the future are very likely based outmoded thinking. Some of that thinking is outmoded by generations - but it still persists - but other thinking is outmoded by only a few years. The latter is kinda scary, but just look at our kids - what's cool to them right now probably wasn't even invented six months ago.

Interactive Intelligence definitely gets this, and that's the messaging they're trying to impart to the roughly 2,000 people here in Indy. Both customers and channel partners need to reimagine the future, and ININ provided us with a pretty good glimpse about the future they want to take the contact center market into.

Hold that thought for now, as time is short with this being my getaway day. Several of us at UCStrategies were here, and we'll be doing a podcast about our takeaways next week, plus, I'll be doing my own writeup on what that future just might look like, so stick around.

Until then, here are some photos from the conference, with highlights from a few different stages, both non-musical and musical. :-)

Head of Whoopass Marketing, Dan Rood - these guys know how to have fun, and it's great to see such a youthful team at Interactive - I think that's a big part of why they're doing so well.

Keynoter Salim Ismail - way too many big ideas to absorb about the future and disruption, so run out and buy his book. Better yet, order it from Amazon and have a drone deliver it in ten minutes. Or, before long, you can just download it to a chip that ultrasound waves will gently implant into your brain. Yeah, he's that kind of guy - loved it!

I know, they just had the Indy 500 here, and this car isn't going to set any land speed records. However, it's a great example of exactly what Salim was talking about. On demand driving - another form of car rental - just like with bikes - and it's ideal for cities. You pay at the kiosk, get authenticated to drive the car - it's all charged up, this one at post 01, and you're off. Just drop it off when done at any Blue Indy spot downtown and walk away. We talk about ease of use as a driver for getting people to adopt new technology like UC - same thing here - what could be easier?

PureCloud demo time - yes, it works as advertised

If you don't believe those guys, here are real customers talking about it with Dan Rood

Mr. Interactive, CEO Don Brown - great as always

Ed Omland of Amazon Web Services - explaining why the cloud is so powerful and why their partnership with ININ is so strong - agreed.

Fun time - Canadian Music Night at Tastings wine bar - I'm on the left playing guitar. Thanks to Lynn McCready for the photo!

More fun - Open Mic at the Slippery Noodle last night. We came out in big numbers, and our steady rolling SIPTones man, Steve Leaden sat in on drums for bit - he was great. The SIPTones didn't get to play at ININ this year, but hopefully next year. If you want us back, make some noise and let 'em know. If you didn't see us play last year at Interactions, here's the highlight video of our show.

NEC Advantage 2016 - Quick Take

Just have time for quick getaway post before flying home.

This was my first NEC Advantage event, and I was one of just a handful of analysts there. It's mostly for partners and consultants, and this is where a lot of the business comes from, so it was a great opportunity to learn more about how NEC goes to market in this space.

I'll have more to say on that later, along with two other themes.

1. With so many UC offerings, it's really hard to differentiate, and that matters for everyone in the food chain. NEC is not a household name in this space - at least in North America, and they're very focused on changing that. The main differentiation message for me was how they focus on the integration between IT and UC for their value proposition. Other vendors do this to varying degrees, and given how strong NEC is with network infrastructure, this pairing makes sense.

2. Their SDN story is becoming a dominant theme for going to market. It's still evolving, but the virtualization story is resonating with enterprises, and NEC is pushing to become a market leader. This also ties into their IT/UC integration focus, and not many vendors can take things to this level. Most are going to market with a standalone UC solution, but NEC is surrounding this with a deeper play that can solve a lot of problems for IT.

That's it for now, but I'll have a recap post coming soon on UCStrategies, and as I get further along with their SDN story, look for more analysis on that as well.

Until then, here are some pix from the showcase, and a couple from our SIPTones gig last night. We had a blast, and when the dancing gets going, you know it's working. More to come on that as well, and if the video turns out half decent, the highlights will turn up on YouTube. I'll keep you posted, and if you like what we do, we'd love to play again soon!

 We're not internationally known yet, but it's nice to see our name at the top of the list here at the rehearsal studio on Tuesday.

 Hope to get photos soon from the NEC photographers at the gig, but this one comes via my analyst colleague, Rob Arnold, who posted this shot on twitter last night. Thanks bro!

Hot off the press from breakfast this morning - band shot, along with our patron saint of all things fun, Larry Kollie. 

More ETS Thought Leadership - GIS and Smart Grid

I blogged yesterday about a session I hosted at the Energy Thought Summit in Austin. It included a video of the full session that Zpryme has posted on YouTube, and am glad to see that my post is getting a lot of readership. So, to keep the ETS vibe going, here's more content.

As Community Advocate for the summit, another hat I've been wearing is doing a series of thought leader interviews. Many of these were posted prior to the event, and can be accessed from the News section of the ETS16 site. Other interviews were done later, so I have a series of those coming soon. One was published while I was away last week, and am sharing it here now.

This one was done with Bill Meehan of Esri, a company that has been pioneering the use of GIS since the 1970s. The applications go well beyond energy, so my UC/collaboration followers will also find this of interest. Bill explains this quite well in the interview, and you can see him in action on the above-mentioned video from my session - he gave a very colorful presentation!

So, here's the interview, and will update the blog as the remaining interviews get posted.

Energy Thought Summit Redux - Video of my Open Mic Session

Zpryme's Energy Thought Summit - ETS16 - was just over a month ago, but there's still good content being posted, and will share here for those interested in the smart grid/smart cities/smart home/smart car space. Our event was a great success and you'll be hard pressed to find richer, more diverse insights about what the future holds for the energy economy.

By now you should know this is another hat that I wear, and as Community Advocate for ETS16, I contributed in a few ways. If that's news to you, my recap post for the summit is a good starting point for my involvement there.

During the summit, I hosted the Open Mic event, where three energy thought leaders each had 10 minutes to talk about an energy challenge - with props - and persuade the audience theirs was the best. The game show format was fun, but don't let that fool you. Each had a timely and relevant message to share that causes you to re-think what energy means in 2016.

My role was to MC the session and keep things moving along to the end where the audience cast their ballots to choose a winner. Being ETS - and being in Austin - we did things a bit differently. As you'll see in the video clip, the speakers had to write the title of their talk on a chalkboard - can't get more old school than that. In keeping with the creative/artsy vibe of Austin, my new piano friend, Adam Lozoya was plucked off the busker-lined streets the night before and provided great ad lib accompaniment throughout the session. On top of that, we held the session in an improv theater space at the back of a nearby cafe.

You won't see this at other conferences, and it was a lot of fun. It's part of what makes ETS unique, and am glad to be part of it. So, explore at your leisure - the whole session is captured below - it runs about 45 minutes, and I won't give the winner away here. Hopefully, you'll watch the whole thing, and if you do, I'd love to hear who you think was the best. You up for that?