This Month in Telecom: May 2018
This Month in Telecom is a monthly news round-up on VoipReview.org that aims to give our readers a fast and easy way to catch up on the latest news and top stories that are trending in the voice and telecommunications space. Check in every month to find out more about stories you may have missed in regards to new companies, mergers, trends, and other telecom advancements.
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest stories in telecom for the month of May:
Genesys Launches AI-Powered Predictive Routing Engine
Genesys, a leading global provider of omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions, continues to takes its customer experience leadership up a notch with the launch of its revolutionary Predictive Routing engine.
Announced during its annual CX18 customer conference in Nashville, Genesys’ latest innovation is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and uses historical and real-time data to achieve the sales, marketing and service outcomes they want.
Merijn te Booij, the Chief Marketing Officer at Genesys, expressed his enthusiasm with their latest innovation, saying "The Genesys routing engine has been the gold standard in the industry for years, and with this announcement we've further enhanced those capabilities. We're looking forward to helping customers enable the most predictive experiences yet for every step of their customer journeys— even from the first moment they land on a businesses' website."
Predictive Routing is now available for Genesys PureEngage™ and works across every channel, including voice, text, webchat and social. The company is looking to introduce the capability to the PureConnect™ and PureCloud® platforms later this year.
Fuze Rolls Out Fuze 5.0, Grabs $150M in Additional Funding
May was a jam-packed month for cloud communications provider Fuze. In addition to unveiling its latest release, 5.0, of the Fuze platform, the company also announced a recent financing round of $150 million.
Fuze 5.0 is designed to improve communications and collaboration for the extended team ecosystems in modern companies. It enables users to communicate across all channels, such as voice, group interaction, face-to-face video, and content collaboration. Derek Yoo, the Chief Product Officer at Fuze, said “Fuze 5.0 significantly expands our collaboration functionality to include these external users in rich voice, video and messaging interactions, which will help our customers streamline their workflows.”
Fuze’s latest financing round, meanwhile, marks another milestone for the company, as it brings Fuze's total funding to $484.8 million.
Led by Boston-based Summit Partners, the investment will enable Fuze to continue its global expansion and accelerate product innovation. “Our investment will help to accelerate continued growth and innovation of the Fuze platform and expansion of the company’s business operations globally,” said Bruce R. Evans, the Fuze board member from Summit Partners. “We are confident Fuze is positioned to continue to lead the enterprise cloud communications market.”
Polycom Announces New Cloud Services
San Jose based multinational company Polycom is moving more aggressively to get their piece of the cloud communications pie. This month the provider launched its unified cloud solutions strategy, Polycom Cloud Services, and Polycom Device Management Services (PDMS), an operations tool for managing Polycom audio devices, including desk phones and conference room phones, from a single cloud portal.
“Employees are solving problems together more than ever before by connecting from meeting spaces of all sizes from all over the world. As meeting technology innovation accelerates, so does the complexity,” said Mary McDowell, CEO of Polycom. “Polycom Cloud Services offer customers unique, informative, and actionable data that empowers IT professionals to understand the value of their meeting rooms and make smart technology decisions that create exciting, productive, and fun meeting experiences for their employees.”
PDMS is available for enterprises to provision, update, and secure their audio devices. PDMS for service providers, meanwhile, is expected to be release in Q3 of 2018. The company also looks to adding support to enterprise customers for video conference devices by the end of the year.
Yealink Unveils New Huddle Room Video Conferencing Solution
To cap off the month, Yealink, the global leading unified communication (UC) terminal solution provider, introduced its new VC200 video conferencing solution built specifically for small conference areas. With the launch of its VC200 solution, Yealink completes its video conferencing offerings for every size environment, from huddle rooms to large rooms.
The Yealink VC200 includes an integrated codec, camera, microphone, and bracket. It can also fit televisions from 6mm to 50mm thick and boasts a quick, one-minute deployment for minimum effort.
Yealink's latest solution also features an ultra HD, 4K camera with powerful zoom functionality plus a horizontal field of view that can capture up to six people at a time, six built-in microphone arrays, and the ability to connect to wireless applications via Bluetooth or WiFi.
Ribbon Adds New Features to Smart Office UC Solution
In order to enhance the end-user communications and collaboration experience, Ribbon Communications, a trusted provider of secure and intelligent cloud communications solutions, has added new features to its award-winning Smart Office Unified Communications (UC) solution.
The latest enhancements include Call Boost, an innovative feature that lets users move an active call from 3/4G or Wi-Fi data services to their cellular voice provider in case the voice quality or the data network bandwidth decreases. The Call Boost uses Ribbon's patented Call Grabber technology to improve the call experience and enable a seamless active call transfer process.
In addition to offering Call Boost, Ribbon is also tapping Vidyo’s best-in-class video technology technology to deliver the best possible video quality for Smart Office’s Collaboration Rooms.
“Our customers want the latest in technological and collaboration advancements, including one-number access to all communications devices, the ability to have the same office connectivity capabilities regardless of where they are working and the option to include co-workers, customers, friends and guests in multiple collaboration environments,” said Sacha Gera, Senior Vice President of Cloud Products at Ribbon. “Smart Office is designed to deliver all of these capabilities and more, while providing anywhere access to UC. With great new features such as Call Boost and enhanced HD quality voice and video, we are delivering on our continued commitment to make staying connected easy and convenient.”