When people talk about artificial intelligence and language, the focus usually defaults to English, a handful of European languages and perhaps a few from Asia. African languages – thousands of them, often tonal, hyper-local and deeply contextual – rarely make the roadmap. That blind spot is exactly where Nkenne is building a business and a developer platform, and arguably an economic on-ramp for an entire continent.
The communications industry is filled with vendors that once dominated one aspect of the “stack” but have been focused on building a unified platform that includes voice, video, meetings, contact center and much more. But the most interesting vendor in the market is Zoom Communications Inc.
Zoom Communications Inc. is a fascinating company in that it’s one of the few corporate technology brands that resonates with end users as well as information technology pros. I’m aware of many instances where the IT organization was considering an alternate communications product but the demand from the user community was so strong that Zoom was purchased. Zoom’s ease of use made it the product of choice during the stay-at-home period of the pandemic and user loyalty grew from there.
Contact-center-as-a-service leader NiCE Ltd. is holding its analyst event in Vienna, Austria, this week, and it’s the first one with Scott Russell as captain of the Starship NiCE. The chief executive isn’t the only new leader, as Michelle Cooper is now running marketing and Jeff Comstock takes over as the president of products and technology. Russell, Cooper and Comstock all succeeded some of the longest-tenured and successful executives in communications as Barak Eilam, Einat Weiss and Barry Cooper respectively, all stepped down within the last year.
Cloud communications provider RingCentral Inc. announced today announced it’s acquiring CommunityWFM, a workforce management provider. CommunityWFM will be integrated into RingCentral’s homegrown contact center solution, RingCX. No purchase price was given and CommunityWFM took in no funding, but its revenue is believed to be somewhere in the $5 million to $10 million range.