Comms Vision 2015 – let’s get digital
Comms Vision 2015 – digital disruption in a disruptive industry?
Comms Vision is always a high quality event with a mix of excellent presentations, panel debates and networking opportunities. This year was Comms Vision’s 10th anniversary and it is always held at the world famous and world class Gleneagles Hotel. The Gleneagles Hotel staff always provide an excellent Customer Experience making the hotel the ideal venue for Comms Vision.
My main reason for attending Comms Vision by far is to see the presentations from the industry expert speakers. The presentations always comprise a mix of topical and thought provoking content delivered by guest speakers at the top of their field. This year was no exception where the main theme for the event was the impact of digital on our industry.
Andrew Lippman, Associate Director of MIT Media Lab was the first main speaker on stage. Andrew brought home just how powerful and disruptive modern digital organisations could be. Uber and AirBnB for example are huge faceless organisations that challenge the traditional business approach such as ‘people buy from people’. In the case of Uber, AirBnB and others, people are placing their trust in total faceless organisations and complete strangers based on reviews and star ratings submitted by strangers.
“…BitCoin which has also grown incredibly fast even though it is totally distributed with no owner. A faceless currency with $1.6B in circulation.”
Andrew also pointed out the very interesting point that an industry that has lost the ability to lead will attack any new threat to traditional values. But this may well be at their peril. Young people (e.g. Millennials) are challenging traditional business methods and values across many industries. Andrew referred to the music industry being totally disrupted by Napster and more recently the taxi industry disruption caused by Uber.
Even the financial industry is under threat with the rise of BitCoin which has also grown incredibly fast even though it is totally distributed with no owner. A faceless currency with $1.6B in circulation.
Andrew stressed that the majority of these recent big disruptions came without an invention. These innovations are solutions to social problems but there is no invention as such. It is the idea that causes widespread disruption especially when the idea solves a problem common to the mass population.
Andrew Lippman was one of the most interesting speakers I have heard at any industry event. It was a real shame he didn’t have more time. His presentation was certainly thought provoking, hard hitting and very real backed by facts and examples.
“The Comms Vision organisers do a great job by bringing in a number of expert presenters to provide us with a reasonably accurate glimpse into the future…”
In addition to the expert guest speakers, the main sponsors do a very good job of delivering educational and entertaining content while subtly delivering their pitch. One or two of the sponsors delivered what I perceived to be a thinly disguised sales pitch for their presentation. But that is their prerogative given they are the financiers of the event. I did feel they came across as being out of alignment with the Comms Vision digital theme, in particular in relation to delivering a great customer experience by creating value. This has nothing to do with the actual product. I believe these sponsors could have made more of their opportunity to engage with me and other members of the audience.
I thought maybe I was being too critical but this was certainly the consensus during discussions I had over meals and in the bar with other delegates. The products may be the best best on the market, but the information was not presented in a way the audience were expecting or wanted. Potentially, the opportunity to engage new customers or re-energise past relationships was lost. The importance of touch-points was raised several times in two or three presentations at Comms Vision and this in my opinion was a missed brand touch-point opportunity. I couldn’t tell you anything about the content of those presentations because I lost interest early on.
Some years ago presentations like this would not have been out of place, in fact they would have been expected. And herein lies the excellent value in Comms Vision. The event organisers do a great job of researching what lies ahead in our industry and then provide experts to present and debate the potential threats and opportunities. I come out of this with a reasonably accurate glimpse into the future to prepare my business for the year ahead. Being in such a prestigious venue helps me to anchor the content making it easier to contextualise and recall the information.
” It would be very arrogant to believe otherwise, after all, we are in the high tech industry and we have been disrupting other industries for many years.”
Who knows where the next Uber or AirBnB will emerge, it could well be our industry. We would be facing a major disruption striking at the core of our industry sometime soon. It would be very arrogant to believe otherwise, after all, we are in the high tech industry and we have been disrupting other industries for many years. Matt Griffin – CEO, 311 Institute, one of the Comms Vision expert presenters raised some interesting points. He said disruption is three times faster now than five years ago and that there will 20,000 years of technical progress over the next ten years. By the simple law of averages this must have an impact on our industry.
There have already been many major disruptions in the IT industry. In the past these may have required an organisation to completely refresh its technical skills – such as with Voice over IP. But the more recent disruptions have far greater disruptive consequences. Microsoft Office 365 being a prime example. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Microsoft resellers would own the relationship with their customers. They would typically have a fair amount of on-site presence from day one when they sat at each machine with a box of floppy disks loading the application. Microsoft now have a direct relationship with the customer through their Cloud services. Telephony is just another application that can be enabled with minimal mouse clicks. I hasten to add that any delegates paying attention to the speakers at Comms Vision a few years ago would have been prepared for this and similar disruptions.
“…the lead time is anything from weeks to months. If your business is in a rural or coastal location the wait could go into years.”
High speed connectivity enables apps to be delivered effectively and these direct relationships to develop. Cloud services in general have caused a connectivity land grab in recent years because service providers delivering the connectivity are well placed for delivering Cloud or hosted services. And here lies another problem that has been crying out for a solution. When we want or need a new application for our business, provided we have the appropriate connectivity we can spin up a virtual machine, load the application and be operational on demand. But, if we want to upgrade our connectivity or add optimisation or security features such as WAN acceleration or firewall features, the lead time is anything from weeks to months. If your business is in a rural or coastal location the wait could go into years. I was discussing this with some delegates at Comms Vision and several mentioned their frustration with one particular vendor. They complained of having to wait more than two weeks for every new line or upgrade quote. Is this a vendor that Andrew Lippman would refer to as being tired of leading? I hasten to add, this vendor was not a sponsor of Comms Vision and nor were they present at the event.
“Rather than debating ‘what if’ our industry is disrupted we should taking a tip from Andrew Lippman and asking ourselves ‘how deep’ will this penetrate our industry.”
Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Features Virtualisation (NFV) address these issues very effectively for businesses in areas with good connectivity. SDN and NFV will speed up the ordering process, delivery of network upgrades and features to the point where they could be turned on and off on demand by the customer. Going a step further with the introduction of the Internet of Things it is feasible that bandwidth and feature adjustments could be configured by automated processes within applications. Some of the vendors were discussing SDN and NFV at Comms Vision 2015 and I believe the jury is still out as to whether vendors should continue to work through a reseller or just deal direct with the customer.
We are in the early days of SDN and NFV just as we are with the IoT. Rather than debating ‘what if’ our industry will be disrupted by these developments, we should take a tip from Andrew Lippman and ask ourselves ‘how deep’ this will impact our industry.
Useful links…
Comms Vision 2015 full conference report
McKinsey & Company – What ‘digital’ really means
SDX Central article on NFV and SDN
Gleneagles Hotel