Today we look toward the end of the year with our first installment of predictions for 2020.
Yes, that’s right. For the past few weeks I’ve been shaking-down my colleagues and other friends in the industry, asking each to make their bold prediction for the coming year. After applying fewer headlocks than I thought might be necessary, I now present AVANT’s first installment of Predictions 2020 to my loyal readers, as well as to my non-loyal readers who were intrigued enough by the headline to click on the link.
More predictions will be coming as we countdown towards the drop of that oversized disco ball. So, if you want to get in the game, send me your best prediction at [email protected]. Be bold. Take a stand. I’ll publish as many as I can.
Okay, here we go:
Microservices get kicked-up a couple of notches.
“Microservices are super interesting. AWS and Azure seem to pump out a new microservice every day. If we were building an application, we could either build all these features from scratch, like if you want single sign-on, for example. 2019 was the year for microservices, and I think 2020 will continue to be the year for microservices. Given how competitive the digital market is, speed to delivery is everything. Not being behind your competitors with feature sets is really important. You can’t build these things from scratch and stay competitive in the market. So microservices is a faster way to do business in a means that is reliable and high quality.” – Ben Ferguson, Vice President & Network Architect, Shamrock Consulting
Look at the “holistic journey.”
“One thing that I see really taking off is Experience Design, which is looking at a product as an entire journey rather than a single offering.” The players that do this really well are the ones that are thinking about the customer’s journey holistically, and those companies tend to be really laser-focused on one or two solutions that they can knock out of the park. These companies are usually then rewarded with Net Promoter scores that are among the most loved brands in the world. I see that becoming a major differentiator for those companies, as well as for AVANT in 2020. We are going to be doing a ton of stuff that really drives user experience and I’m very excited about that.” – JP Tucker, Director of Product, AVANT Communications
Data gets “Democratized”
“Companies will increasingly take tools and resources that used to be available mostly to data scientists and expand them to a much wider variety of people within the organizations, enabling them to make better decisions. This has been around for a few years, but I think we are really seeing it come to fruition. By democratizing not just the data, but all the tools in general, they get passed through the organization enabling companies to reduce their research spend. But this can also cause additional problems because the data can be misinterpreted. if it’s not used correctly.” – Natalia Botti, National Channel Manager, CloudGenix
New Powerhouses in UCaaS?
I’m quite confident that Microsoft Teams and Zoom are going to become key competitors in the UCaaS space, rivaling the likes of RingCentral, 8×8 and others. There are tons of end users who have access to Microsoft Teams and, as it becomes more baked out as a telephony platform, I think Microsoft is going to become a lot more dominant. Also, now that Zoom is getting more deeply involved in the UCaaS space and expanding internationally, I see them becoming a dominant player in this space as well.” – John Paullin, Senior Cloud Sales Engineer, AVANT Communications
What’s your bold prediction for 2020? Send it to me at [email protected]