Communications is moving to the cloud. That should be obvious to everyone at this time. What’s less obvious is that the definition of cloud is changing.

In reality, cloud has been constantly evolving since the early 2000s. The first wave of cloud was akin to a hosted service where cloud providers did a “lift and shift” of a big PBX and moved it into a hosting center. There were only two cloud-like things about these UCaaS and CCaaS providers: their infrastructure on the company premises and customers could shift to a subscription model.

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Distributed Clouds Will Be the Next “Big Shift” in Communications

The pandemic has had a profound impact in almost all aspects of our lives. One of the biggest changes is how we communicate with one another. Prior to COVID-19, collaboration tools were used by primarily knowledge workers when we were in the office and had to communicate with people outside of our walls. But then the world changed, and we all had to rely on collaboration tools to work, learn, socialize, and even be entertained. These applications allowed us to maintain social proximity even though we were socially distant.

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Composable Communications: A Key Theme at Enterprise Connect 2022

This week, Zoom announced results for its fiscal year 2022 fourth-quarter, which ended January 31, 2022. Total revenue for the quarter was $1.071 billion, which was above the Streets expectations of $1.054 billion, equating to 21.4% year-over-year growth. The gross margin was also better than expected coming in at 78.3%, compared to the expected 74.9%, and up from 71.3% from the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021. The boost in gross margins came from platform optimization and lower usage during the holiday season. The current quarter numbers painted a rosy-looking picture.

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Zoom at the Crossroads: 5 Areas It Should Prioritize Next

This week, Zoom announced Zoom Contact Center, its own cloud-native, omnichannel contact center solution, putting to rest the question surrounding Zoom of: “to contact center or not contact center?”

Zoom’s Road to Contact Center

In the past, the company has hinted at a contact center play and most recently announced Video Engagement Center, a specialized contact center that can be thought of as a specialized customer-care tool. Then, Zoom attempted to acquire Five9, which seemed like a strange move for a company that typically builds features in-house. After all that, the company announced its only product.

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Zoom’s CCaaS Play: Conversational AI Might be Key to Success

This week, conversational AI vendor Uniphore announced a massive series E funding round of $400 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion, bringing its total funding to $610 million. This is, by far, the largest round of funding for the company. In its press release, the company stated it would use the money to “extend Uniphore’s technology and market leadership with advancements in voice AI, computer vision and tonal emotion, as well as to expand its business operations globally, specifically in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.”

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Uniphore Funding Signals Conversational AI on Verge of Massive Shift