Enterprise Connect 2019: AWS, Google Challenge Incumbents Cisco and Microsoft

I attended Enterprise Connect again this year; this was my fourth time attending and probably the busiest ever. I had the opportunity to meet with many vendors including Poly (formerly Polycom/Plantronics), Dolby Labs, PGi, LogMeIn, Voiceimplant, Ribbon Communications, Bandwidth, Twilio, Google Cloud, RingCentral, Cisco ... too many to list here.

In the past I have been critical of the event which in many ways reflects its near 30-year legacy rather than looking at the future. However EC has experienced a major turnaround in the last 2-3 years; it also continues to be an important event for education and technical training.

Check out the excerpt below from my EC '19 report. The full report was made publicly available by 451 Research at: http://go.451research.com/mi-enterprise-connect-2019-aws-google-cisco.html

Enterprise Connect is one of the largest events for business communications and enterprise networking, gathering 6,500 attendees and more than 200 exhibitors this year. It has experienced many challenges in its long history, mirroring in many ways the travails of the industry. We've previously noted how the event has been late to acknowledge emerging trends such as team collaboration and communications PaaS (CPaaS). Slack did not participate as a speaker or exhibitor until last year; however, for at least two years before that, whenever messaging came up in keynote sessions and panel discussions, the conversation invariably led to Slack. Similarly, vendors like Atlassian, Facebook and Twilio were notably absent from the event until recent years.