The 10 Most Innovative Unified Communication

Vol.2/ Issue-4

www.insightssuccess.com February 2019

The

10

Most Innovative

Solution providers 2019

A Comprehensive UniďŹ ed Communications Solutions Provider

Company of the Month

Tech-Trend EMBEDDED SYSTEMS POPULARITY ARE GAINING ACROSS ALL DOMAINS

Haim Senior CEO & Co-Founder Knowmail

Into the 'clouds' The Emerging Cloud Security Solutions and Challenges Ahead

E Unified Communications is Here to Stay

B

usiness communication is one of the most significant aspects of an organization. Enterprises require good communication throughout the departments as it leads to effective growth. Business communication can be considered as the back bone of an organization as it keeps all the departments connected and well-coordinated. It is impossible for businesses to track its direction without effective communication.

An effective communication regime can evidently increase the productivity of an enterprise. This also helps in growing the customer base as consumers have more trust in companies that communicate well. Moreover, business partnerships such as vendors and other contemporaries build stronger relationships with companies with great communications.

However, now that there are numerous methods of communication, the process of transmitting information has become more complicated than ever. Given the fact that we are cluttered with options such as e-mails, SMS, video conferencing and telephony, there has been an issue of managing and optimizing these tools. And it seems to be resolved with the help of Unified communications.

Unified Communications (UC) has received a lot of attention in the IT space because of the benefits it provides. This is especially the case because the competition has grown fierce and every company wants to be efficient amid the same. UC integrates all the aspects of communications and enables companies to use them in a simpler fashion. Hence the productivity!

UC enables businesses to grow by helping them smoothly indulge in activities that will increase their overall performance.

Collaboration is one such activity in which enterprises come together to fulfill a common purpose and excel together. It becomes simpler for them to operate on various levels when there is a proper system of communicating among both internal and external departments. Additionally this helps the employees learn new methods of doing their job, inspires them to put new ideas on the table, and encourages businesses to grow their network.

UC also helps companies offer better customer services. There is no denying in the fact that real time resolution of customer’s issues makes the enterprise a popular choice among them. This directly improves the goodwill of the company.

However, it requires proactive response from the service team and that is only possible when “the message is loud and clear.”

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“

Excellence is achieved when the message is loud and clear.

Shubham Khampariya

Moreover, a hassle free working environment boosts the morale of employees and makes them efficient in their jobs.

Currently, the unified communications industry is leveraging new technologies in order to upgrade its services. As per the trends, it is growing towards a mobile centric experience as the world is rapidly shrinking in a 5-6 inches screen. With the increase in app based platforms and introduction of 5g, interaction and communication tools are only going to become more mobile friendly.

Implementing Artificial Intelligence (smart bots) for assisting customers has recently gained massive popularity among businesses. Instrumenting such technologies help the companies to response faster, understand the issues better, and find solutions in real time.

As we are tapping the era of consumer centric business approach, it is very important for enterprises to survive the competition. And for that it is necessary for them to strengthen their core functions including communication. With that in mind, the demand for UC solutions has already grown. And with all the possible outcomes it promises using technology, it will not be over emphasizing to say that unified communication is here to stay.

There are various companies that have helped the industry blossom and reach to the heights where it is today. Therefore in order to acknowledge some of the greatest contributors of excellence in the unified communication solution space, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Most Innovative Unified Communication Solution Providers 2019.”

Also, make sure to flip through articles, written by our in-house editorial team as well as CXO standpoints of notable industry personalities to have a brief taste of the sector.

Let’s start reading!

Contents 08

Cover Story

A Comprehensive UniďŹ ed Communications Solutions Provider

14 Knowmail

Company of the Month

16

Reinventing Work Communication with Personalized AI

26 Knowledge Keys

Human Capital Management: AI Can't Replace the Human Side of Recruiting

38 Tech Evolution

How VideoAmp Evolved The Company Culture And Process To Increase The Number Of Engineers EmployedBy Dave Gullo, Co-Founder & CTO, VideoAmp

Editor's Pick

Digital Transformation is a Business Requirement: Hype or Reality?

Articles

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42

Tech-Trend

Into the 'clouds'

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS POPULARITY ARE GAINING ACROSS ALL DOMAINS

The Emerging Cloud Security Solutions and Challenges Ahead

24

SilexPro

Optimizing the Experience of Visual Communication

SureCall

30

Improving Cell Service for Better Coverage

36

Optimizing Project Management Processes

VivifyScrum

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Cover Story

A Comprehensive UniďŹ ed Communications Solutions Provider

Everything Connects When You Connect with Sangoma!

1 The

Most Innovative

Unied Communication Solution providers 2019

B

e it collaborating with team members, or presenting any product or service to customers, communication plays a crucial role for business success. Considering this unwavering fact, a trusted leader, Sangoma Technologies is redefining the way businesses communicate and market content to their customers through a comprehensive Unified Communications solution.

Sangoma is the leading full service, global, value-based Unified Communications provider.

Founded in 1984, Sangoma is a leading voice and Unified Communications (UC) provider for SMBs, enterprises, OEMs, carriers, and other service providers. It offers onpremises and cloud-based UC/PBX systems as well as phones, gateways, and session border controllers, providing a comprehensive solution for its customers. Sangoma leads the market in the enterprise, value-based communications segment, which includes small businesses to large enterprises who are looking for all the advantages of UC at a fair price.

Sangoma’s UC solutions meet the needs of this segment with advanced features, such as presence/chat, conferencing, mobility, fax, and more, built into the base platform. This enables businesses to truly communicate better with their customers through a high-quality solution with a low total cost of ownership. This is true value.

Tailor-made Solutions Sangoma thoroughly understand SMBs, and this is what has made it the leader in value-based communications. It makes upgrading from a legacy phone system easy, because it offers businesses deployment options that fit their needs, whether they are looking for an on-premise, virtualized, or cloudbased UC system. The company also includes call center functionality in its base system, without requiring SMBs to purchase expensive add-ons or packages. Most of all, it provides value, which is exactly what SMBs really want from their UC system.

Additionally, Sangoma is also expert at providing a small business a Unified Communications solution that is tailored to their needs. Its small business customers fall into four broad categories when considering UC, which includes upgrading a legacy phone system, obtaining more call center capabilities, increasing employee productivity / combining disparate communication systems into one, and wanting to move to a cloud-based architecture.

At Sangoma, the UC features are included in the basic phone system one is buying.

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his means that a small business may not want the entire suite of capabilities that typically comes with a UC system. However, the company can make sure that they only pay for what they need, and they know how to use what they have. They also

typically will upgrade to utilize other features later on. They would simply need to unlock this functionality a no cost later.

An Exemplary Leader Bill Wignall, as the President and CEO of Sangoma, leads the company in the execution of its growth strategy. His deep operational and strategic skills are major assets to the corporation. Bill brings to Sangoma his personal style of working closely with existing customers and valued channel partners. As a technology industry veteran, Bill held the role of President and CEO at Truition Inc., a

developer and marketer of e-Commerce software. Prior to that, he worked as the President and CEO of Electronics Workbench and has served in senior management roles throughout his career at companies ranging in size from start-ups to Northern Telecom, BNI and Telezone.

Under Bill’s leadership, Sangoma has dramatically expanded its product portfolio and is targeting new markets and territories to further accelerate growth. In 2018, Sangoma has successfully completed the acquisition of Digium and the Dialogic Converged

Businesses can achieve enhanced levels of collaboration, productivity, and ROI with Sangoma.

Sangoma, the UC features are included in the basic phone system one is buying. The company wants its customers to obtain exceptional value at their price points.

Communications Division. Prior to that, Sangoma purchased VoIP Supply and Schmooze, among others. Bill has transformed Sangoma both through M&A and organically.

Enabling Customers Obtain Exceptional Value According to Sangoma, there is misinformation about Unified Communications in the Industry.

There are suppliers that claim to provide UC, but in reality simply have a basic phone system. So it’s important to understand what UC is.

UC is basic telephony and voicemail capabilities, but also includes other forms of communication, such as presence, instant messaging,

collaboration, fax, video, and file sharing. It also enables one’s smartphone to be tied to the primary business phone system, essentially extending people’s office phone numbers beyond the physical boundary of the office. It’s important to note that more modern phone systems, whether they have UC capabilities or not, are also increasingly including some basic call center features, such as IVR, call transfer, and call monitoring and analytics, as part of the phone system.

Secondly, customers assume that the additional UC features will come at price points they can’t afford. At

Ahead of Competition Sangoma’s PBX/UC platforms include UC functionality as part of the base platform. This means UC is part of the PBX and a business doesn’t have to pay extra for this functionality. Sangoma’s platforms are also engineered to be flexible so that it can be configured easily by any user. Sangoma also offers customers both an on-premise and a cloud based UC solution. This means Sangoma can discuss the pros and cons of each offering for the specific business in question, and as such, is in a truly unique position to be a trusted advisor to its customers.

Contribution in Industry Sangoma Technologies is the world’s largest provider of open source communications solutions, and is the primary developer and sponsor of the Asterisk project, the world’s most widely used open source communications software, and the FreePBX project, the world’s most widely used open source PBX software.

Our scalable o erings provide seamless connectivity between traditional infrastructure and new technologies.

Sangoma’s globally scalable offerings include SIP trunking, IP phones, gateways, session border controllers and telecom interface cards. Together, these provide seamless connectivity between traditional infrastructure and new technologies.

Company’s Prospective Sangoma will continue to support both the Asterisk and FreePBX open source communities and will continue to drive its UC platforms forward by continuing to add new features, such as a mobile client, and ever increasing scalability and robustness.

Mark of Excellence “We found PBXact has the best value we saw compared to some of the other solutions we looked at.” – Joseph D. O’Brien Jr, Founder, O’Brien Automotive, USA “It was an honor to work with the PMC Bank – one of the biggest co-operative banks in India. We are happy

that we could provide them the solution to fit their needs.

The Sangoma solution was effective in enhancing the voice quality, a critical factor for any contact center. We have been using the Sangoma hardware for all our customers. It helps us to provide a robust and scalable solution with the highest quality to our customers.” – Mehul Shah, CEO, Elision Technolab LLP, India “ANTlabs has seen dramatic improvement in the quality of our service to the customers following the new installation of Sangoma solutions. We have benefited from reduced monthly telephony overheads, and expansion at the client device level has brought much ease to operations. Our remote staffs are able to communicate with each other seamlessly. The advanced features of the Sangoma telephony are positively impacting both our staff and customers.” – Troy Tan, Operations Manager at ANTlabs, Singapore

Knowmail: Reinventing Work Communication with Personalized AI

W

e seek technology to be utilized as an instrument to optimize the way businesses run, therefore it does not make sense when instead of yielding productivity, the instrument instead hinders the process.

With the emergence of data and content-oriented operations, companies often stumble upon the overload of information and struggle to retrieve important data or let alone understand what requires appropriate attention at any given time. Knowmail acknowledged this issue and came up with the solution by offering an on-device/cloud Artificial Intelligence platform for personalized email experiences.

In an interview with Insights Success, the CEO and Co-founder of Knowmail, Haim Senior, shares his key insights on unified communications and the significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implementation along with other technologies in order to enhance employee efficiency, engagement, and well-being while making sure operations run productively and targets are met. Below are highlights from the interview conducted between Haim and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of Knowmail and its vision.

Knowmail is a personalized Artificial Intelligence (P.A.I) platform for email, providing Unified Communication businesses, vendors, and service providers an easy-tointegrate API/SDK to enhance office productivity, engagement, and contextual relevancy for its own users.

The P.A.I platform benefits include automatic email prioritization to urgent, important, and other, estimated time-to-completion, predicted next-best-actions to save time, stay organized, and get things done, and more valuable uses across meetings and tasks to help knowledge workers become more productive and get more done with less effort and stress.

How do you differ Unified Communication services, so they will benefit your customers?

With Knowmail, Unified Communication providers can truly unify various office solutions such as email, meetings, and tasks, so they can work in unison to better manage time and deadlines, priority and relevancy, and make sure to complete the most urgent tasks according to their own targets and goals, as well as the organization’s.

This AI layer provides a very personalized approach to available and upcoming UC devices and solutions, by

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granting each employee a tailored experience for their use, based on their own patterns, behaviors, preferences, contacts, and usability. Moreover, the entire learning process is done using a unique architecture, so data remains private and secured, with the model itself only available to the user, on its own device/s.

Describe the experiences, achievements, or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

We were previously corporate employees who felt the pain of information overload first hand, with the constant need to be always on and use any available second (or meeting) to go through and clean our inboxes. We’ve spent tremendous time just trying to manage our time, calendar, and tasks efficiently, and we ended up continuing to do so even out of the office.

Our experience was not unique; most information workers were (and still are) going through the same at their place of work, with personal life taking second place. A solution is absolutely needed, yet we’re all personally unique, hence a one-size-fits-all type of solution isn’t right, nor would it be effective; This is why Artificial Intelligence is the only fitting solution, helping learn each person by their own individual use and need, and create a unique prediction model for each…which continually improves with use. In short, something to learn you as if you truly had a personal assistant understanding your needs, schedule, and priorities.

In addition, we’ve always listened to our users, contacts, and organizations we work with to further understand how the solution should be provided, along with the major areas and values required. This helped us adapt, customize, and fine-tune our offering so it may be integrated into a variety of solutions such as Unified Communication devices, digital assistants, and mobile apps.

Along with our own attention to detail, our platform technology proved itself, and we’ve been able to collaborate with major giants such as becoming a Microsoft AI partner who also integrated Knowmail in Cortana for Windows 10 and its mobile app. Furthermore, we’ve been able to work alongside leading UC provider Avaya for an enterprise solution in this arena.

What are the evident challenges in the unified communication services industry?

I believe Unified Communication can become more holistic, allowing individuals to communicate across February 2019|

Company of the Month

“

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Knowmail is using Personalized Articial Intelligence to reinvent messaging in Unied Communications.

various platforms, thus become a much broader unified channel, rather than an aggregation of channels. A universal approach is needed, so in turn the user gets a much more organic experience that adapts continuously to dynamic use and need, no matter the location, device, time-of-day, state-of-mind, and more. With this, a user can always be in focus and on top of their game.

How does the Knowmail contribute towards making the industry better?

We provide a valuable solution as an easy-to-integrate platform, so available (and upcoming) UC solutions and devices can easily and quickly upgrade their offerings and provide a personalized AI model for each of their users and clients. This can only benefit their users by keeping them engaged and productive within their own device, without the need to hop around channels, apps, and software just to keep up…rather move ahead and get things done.

Considering the rising number of unified communication solution providers, how does Knowmail stand out from its competitors?

Our solution is an AI platform to enhance providers/devices user’s engagement, experience, and usability, so we kind of stand-alone. We do not compete with the other solutions, rather are able to help upgrade them to provide even more value to their own users and clients.

A few words from Knowmail’s partners “We’re working with companies like Knowmail for value-added applications that help predict and prioritize critical email communications that are directly applicable to the typical employee.” – Jon Alperin, Director of partnerships and alliances for DevConnect and A.I.Connect at Avaya “We find in Knowmail’s technology elements that perfectly fit into Avaya’s vision of the Future Workplace experience. Knowmail’s application provides greater value to our smart devices by adding relevant, personalized context to the collaboration experience.” – Guy Gadnir, Director of Business Development and Avaya Israel Director

February 2019|

Haim Senior CEO & Co-founder

About the Company Knowmail was founded by Haim Senior, Oded Avital, and Avi Mandelberg. As executives working in a big corporate firm, Oded and Haim were disappointed by the constant need to monitor their emails in order to stay on top of their game. They both understood the fact that they were investing excessive amounts of potentially productive time reading often unproductive and irrelevant messages. Together, they realized that if they cannot stop the message flood, they should be able to apply a personalized filter that would allow only relevant and important messages through. From this realization, the idea for Knowmail was born.

With their personal experience, both Haim and Oded believe that a solution for this problem is a must, and the current situation in the workplace cannot continue, neither for the employee nor the organization, in terms of progress, innovation, and growth.

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Human Capital Management: AI Can’t Replace the Human Side of Recruiting

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hat happened to coal miners is not going to happen to recruiters.

Automated and autonomous technologies have forever changed mining globally, and no amount of tariffs or corporate handouts will alter the reality that coal extraction requires fewer and fewer people. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign blamed the sharp decline in coal mining jobs on Democrats and coastal liberals, yet overlooked technology’s role in eliminating them for good.

Recruiting is another industry in which the introduction and adoption of new technologies has become commonplace. An important difference is that recruiters are not—despite working in an industry hungry for efficiency gains—facing the same fate as miners or those who used in work in offices such as bookkeepers, accountants, secretaries and admin staff. The demise of those positions was due to software and hardware innovation; QuickBooks eliminated hundreds of thousands of bookkeeping jobs, while word processing and other desktop software apps made secretaries almost extinct.

Recruiting is Different The principal reason why recruiting will avoid the same fate as the West Virginia coal miner or Southern California bookkeeper is because it’s fundamentally different. Recruiting isn’t just a sequence of tasks; it’s a

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sequence of tasks with a necessarily heavy human component. Recruiting comprises engagement and communication with other HR team members, hiring managers, executives, other employees on hiring teams, along with external contacts such as job sources and agencies. To that list we can also add the most important cohorts, prospective employees, applicants and candidates.

The Rise of the Machines that Learn In referring to technology, I’m not referring to software programs like Applicant Tracking Systems that have existed for over 20 years. I’m referring instead to advances in Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning algorithms that are both promising to some and frightening to others. For reference, Machine Learning is the idea that we can feed large amounts of data into a computer that will identify patterns and uristics almost by itself. Once identified, it will apply the “conclusions” to new sets of data. AI is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a manner that we consider to be “smart.”

Much of the promise of AI/Machine Learning lies with introducing more objectivity into recruiting, handling more data and automating as many processes as possible.

AI and Machine Learning are great for all of those. What they’re not great at, and will not become so in the foreseeable future, is replacing face-to-face human interaction.

February 2019|

Knowledge Keys

About the Author Omer Tadjer is the CEO and Cofounder of Comeet. He has been involved in high-tech companies for more than 15 years, a decade of which was devoted to software development and managing development teams. A technologist and philosopher by training, he is a business entrepreneur at heart. He is passionate about applying his practical IT and management experience to creating valuable products and transforming the way the HR industry operates.

Let’s face it, most candidates want personal interaction when seeking a new opportunity. New employees are not just filling an anonymous opening on an org chart; they’re seeking opportunity, challenge and a work environment where it’s not all about work. There’s a selection process on both sides before it leads to buy-in, and there’s only so much application of technology you can make when candidate courting becomes conversations across tables in boardrooms and restaurants.

February 2019|

Omer Tadjer CEO & Co-founder Comeet

Improving a Recruiter’s Favorite Metric - Time-toHire I think it’s important to understand that adoption of AI in recruiting is not an either/or reality; It’s still early days but recruiters are already benefiting. By observing how managers and recruiters make screening decisions, AIbased systems can predict the match between a job, a candidate, and a team: Submitting an application will become much easier for candidates. Ÿ Recruiters can evaluate resumes and candidates faster. Ÿ

Ÿ

Ensuring position fit is more precise.

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Identifying the best candidates in a candidate pool takes less time.

The cumulative effect of AI in these areas is that time-tohire is significantly reduced. Recruiting teams can make internal decisions, close job requisitions faster and reduce the potentiality of poor hiring decisions, all of which happens in a manner that fully respects candidates.

Enhancing the Candidate Experience The other side of AI-enabled recruiting is the candidate experience. From seeing what our customers are doing, we know that a great candidate experience equals an 80% greater chance that the candidate will accept an offer. What’s the secret of delivering this kind of experience? Respect the candidate, be transparent and don’t keep them in the dark. For example, don’t ask candidates the same questions multiple times in interviews. Keep recruiting stages short, precise and respectful. Our customer data show that these characteristics increase job acceptance.

Driving Improvement Using AI and Machine Learning Whether you have a lot of AI and Machine Learning experience or your education is starting with this article, here are a few specific source-to-hire applications where smart systems deliver empirical value: Ÿ

Helping you optimize your marketing budget and how you allocate the money and collect resumes.

Analyzing your and other companies’ data will allow smart systems to understand where and when the budget should be invested, significantly reducing the cost-per-hire and increasing candidate quality in your pipeline.

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Ensuring that candidates who are not a fit are treated respectfully and receive professional and courteous notifications about their candidate status.

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Matching an application to a job description, a candidate to the company culture, or a hiring manager preference to an existing profile in your candidate database can deliver huge value.

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Making these promising matches, pushing the right candidate to the top of the list, and automatically handling interview scheduling deliver important topof-funnel returns.

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Enabling interviewers to become more professional by surfacing the right type of questions according to the position and job. Process-driven interviewing like this will enable companies to avoid expensive hiring mistakes.

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Following the process and suggesting follow-up actions to the hiring team.

These applications and others will make AI tremendously useful to recruiters in the next several years. From collecting applications, evaluating resumes and making decisions, its impact will be massive. By applying automation and semi-automation to so many different recruiting tasks, recruiters will gain many more hours for the kind of human-to-human interaction that reveals the type of information and learnings that software and data can’t discover. And, depending on the region where they’re working, recruiters may be able to help ex-coal miners find new career paths with more long-term upside.

February 2019|

EMBEDDED

SYSTEMS POPULARITY

ARE GAINING

ACROSS ALL DOMAINS

I

n today’s emerging world, systems have bought an ease of work due to its inherent advancements and features. The embedded system is one of the most imperative subjects in the digital world. Thinking about technology, daily lifestyle essential devices like mobile phones, tablets and laptops come to our mind, but the internal features is not known to most of us.

The presence of these devices is almost inevitable in all facades of the human endeavor. In order to understand more about the operations, functions and features of embedded systems, it is defined here ahead.

Embedded Systems -It is an electronic system incorporating hardware integrated circuit with software programming techniques for delivering various projects solutions.

The main advantage of using an

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embedded system is it helps to reduce the complexity of the circuits which becomes expedient. It also offers a cost effective and an appropriate size which is suitable for the system. This electronic system can perform single or multiple tasks based on the application. An embedded system consist of hardware such as power supply kit, central processing unit, memory devices, timers, output circuits, serial communication ports and system application specific circuit components and circuits.

Types of Embedded Systems The Embedded systems are classified into categories such as · Based on its performance and functional requirements · Performance of the Microcontroller

The category- based on its performance and functional requirements are classified into four types that are Stand alone, Real time, Networked, and Mobile embedded systems. Further, the categoryperformance of the microcontroller is classified into three types that are small scale, medium scale and sophisticated embedded systems.

An Excellent Application Provider The embedded systems are highly applicable as it is a special-purpose system due to its unique characteristics. It is used in a diversified area of things as its components and functions of hardware and software are different for each system. It is applicable in areas like communication, space, transportation, robotic systems, and home appliances and many more.

February 2019|

Tech-Trend

Real Time Applications of Embedded Systems Ø As it has a vast variety of application domains it differs from high expense to low, consumer electronics to industrial equipment, academic equipment to entertainment devices and from weapons to medical instruments and aerospace control systems. Here goes some of the categories embedded systems are used: Ø Consumer electronics- Mobile phones, videogame consoles, digital camera Ø Household appliances- Washing machines, microwave ovens, refrigerators Ø Medical Equipment- CT Scanners,

February 2019|

Ø

Ø Ø

heartbeat monitors, electrocardiogram Automobiles- Antilock braking systems, air-conditioner controls, electronic fuel injection systems Industrial Applications- Assembly lines, multiple parameter monitoring systems, data collection systems Aerospace- Navigation systems, guidance systems, GPS Communications- Routers, network hubs, satellite phones

Progression of Embedded Systems over the Decade With changing times, inventions have become a routine in the world of technology; the embedded systems have also undergone some salient modifications. In the existing times,

the embedded technologies are responsible for the intellectual capabilities of utmost modern devices, for both consumers as well as industrial. To present this in a simpler manner, the embedded systems not just control the lifestyle devices like microwaves, smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics but also directs the telecommunication systems, submarines, ATMs, and many more.

The upper echelons in the field of embedded technologies have created some innovative technologies over the last decade which is highly admired.

Multi-core processors, virtualization, the expansion of devices with improved security requirements, 64-bit processors and new chip manufacturing processes are some of the innovative achievements.

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Embracing such innovative technologies addresses the scale of the market and the number of its players which include companies like semiconductor suppliers, system software development, and mechanical components suppliers, system software development companies, and mechanical components suppliers. The embedded systems market leaders include national and international renowned companies.

Advancing with Multifunctional Features With the advent of multi-functional engineering, the next age of wireless communication systems is encouraging a new level of technology integration. Incorporating effective measures like progressive data rates, great connectivity for systems such as the Internet of Things (IoT), less power consumption, and other striving goals can be achieved by joining advanced digital, RF, and antenna technologies.

An embedded system which performs multiple applications is known as a multi-mode embedded system as it dynamically recomposes the system functionality. Moreover, an embedded system which additionally assists multiple tasks to be executed in a mode is known as a multi-mode multi-task embedded system. The multi-material additive manufacturing processes offer the potential for multi-functional parts to be manufactured in a single procedure. To utilize the potential beneďŹ ts of the developing technology, analysis, new designs, and optimization methods are needed. Such methods are facilitated in the optimization of a multifunctional part by pairing both the structural design aspects and system. An application development platform known as Multifunctional Embedded Application Platform (MEAP) is used to create customized applications.

Trends to Watch Developers should constantly keep an eye on the trends and make appropriate use of the latest advances in techniques and technologies. Some of the trends include Internet of Things (IoT), processor technology, storage, artiďŹ cial intelligence and, virtual and augmented reality. Also, there are several trends like embedded security, realtime visualization; cloud connectivity and Bluetooth mesh networking, low power consumption and optimization that will help developers working with microcontroller-based solutions.

Elevating with Time Over the years, embedded systems have come a long way and contributed to every aspect of the industrial sector. All the devices or appliances used in our daily lives are designed in such a way that can be used without creating difďŹ culties using the embedded systems. Taking this into account, in coming times every object around will consist of a either a small processor or sensor embedded within itself. Even though it is invisible to the naked eye it still connects with multiple other devices to make the lives more allied and accessible than ever before. Using embedded systems, wonders like driverless cars, fully automated factories, adaptive home appliances and many more devices have successfully been created.

In the upcoming times, the embedded systems are looking forward to evolve with technologies that will assist large data storage dimensions, faster communication and highly linked connections among the devices.

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February 2019|

1 The

Most Innovative

Unied Communication Solution providers 2019

SilexPro: Optimizing the Experience of Visual Communication ilexPro is a technology innovator in the field of visual communication and group collaboration. It offers a unique Center of Table (CoT) concept that makes the group collaboration experience feel more natural.

The company is actively promoting the Silex PTE series which is agnostic all-in-one Center of Table (CoT) visual collaboration systems.

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room from the center of the table; central speakerphone for radially symmetrical coverage; intelligent 360 degrees voice tracking; wireless presentation system based on market standards like Miracast, Airplay, ChromeCast; one button session recording and facial recognition. The Silex PTE systems leverage group collaboration experience on any platform and add the following advantages:

SilexPro’s vision is to merge Innovation, Technology and Elegance to create a unique engaging meeting experience, virtually involving all senses with the mission to allow its customers to enjoy a better meeting experience. The company has designed the Silex PTE which are unique allin-one group collaboration systems to be used in the center of the table. The Silex PTE video agnostic systems offer a single hardware for all platforms and are currently the only devices that provide a truly natural group collaboration experience while leveraging the video client of user’s choice.

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All Encompassing Solutions SilexPro attracts its clients with its innovative solutions, their unique designs and the advantages they offer. Its products offer solutions to traditional problems encountered in regular meeting room setups such as the eye contact and the ‘tiny head’ problem. Customers who are associated with the company, like the innovation they are getting and the cutting-edge advantages SilexPro can offer, be it with the Silex PTE Center of Table solutions or with the customized room solutions. Long story short, the maintenance of a Silex PTE system is as simple as the maintenance of any PC nowadays.

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The Silex PTE new generation endpoints were designed from scratch to include multiple interactive touch screens providing a seamless multi-sided white boarding experience, and an exceptional viewing experience; multiple cameras (3 or 4) for a 360 degrees coverage of the

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Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

Agnostic videoconferencing (gives greater compatibility) Zero installation required Win 10 based (allows an intuitive usage) Excellent room coverage from the center of the table with a perfect framing of participants (up to 360 degrees – no more partial coverage problems) Perfect Eye contact People perfectly framed by the cameras (and they all look the same size on video) Intelligent 360 degrees voice tracking from the centre of the table (covering all directions of the rooms) Effective Center of Table collaboration and annotation without leaving your seat

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Innovator Beyond Imagination Ronald Hajj is the CEO and Founder of SilexPro. He invented and patented the Center of Table concept for natural collaboration. He believes that his mission is to enhance the way people communicate and collaborate remotely over video, and to make group video meetings more natural and more enjoyable and certainly more productive. According to Ronald, one should dream and stretch ones imagination and creativity beyond traditional boundaries to create the required positive force to drive innovation. To which he asserts “With my great team at SilexPro we created the Silex PTE revolutionary products to serve this purpose. ‘Innovation beyond imagination’ is the mindset by which we will positively disrupt and change the way people collaborate!”

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“Innovation beyond imagination.”

Ronald Hajj CEO & Founder

SilexPro

Getting Ahead of The Curve SilexPro had a proven experience in designing and integrating customized complex full-fledged smart conference rooms. Then with the change and evolution of the market trends, it saw the need to create a new generation of visual collaboration endpoints. The experience it has, gives SilexPro an edge to create advanced solutions combining the technologies already available in the market and the ones it already owns. Thus, the company invested its ability to integrateadvanced personalized features into large complex environments in creating its unique Silex PTE Center of Table video collaboration products.

Offering Compatibility According to SilexPro, the current trends in video space are enabling huddle rooms for group collaboration. New technologies such as WebRTC and standard wireless display protocols are emerging and are expected to be very widely used soon. Soft / web / cloud based video clients are taking over legacy video conferencing systems, and customers are looking for easy all-in-one solutions to deploy.

Natural Experience is The Key One of the many factors that differentiate SilexPro from the competition is natural experience. SilexPro is the first company in the market which dared to defy the traditional ways of conducting video meetings by introducing its disruptive true all-in-one Center of Table concept. SilexPro believes that meetings can be conducted more naturally, and people can be much more engaged during video meetings when the remote participant appears in the center of gravity of the meeting (which is the center of the table). It’s a complete mindset shift and the company didn’t see any other competitor enter the market this way so far.

Aspiring Global Expansion SilexPro’s main goal is to enhance and promote the most natural video collaboration practices and experiences. It aims to become the leading company in video collaboration across the world. The company is aspiring to spread its new collaboration concepts and technologies and to conquer the 40+ million huddle rooms and smart spaces across the globe.

To align with this market transformation, SilexPro has created a new generation of Uniquely Designed Center of Table endpoints; the Silex PTE Trio and Silex PTE Quattro that not only fits the new market trends but also fixes some of the inherited discomfort and challenges it faces in traditional meeting rooms.

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Dave Gullo

Co-founder & CTO VideoAmp

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February 2019|

Tech Evolution

How VideoAmp Evolved the Company Culture and Process to Increase the Number of Engineers Employed

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ideoAmp turns 4 years old this month. So many memories, and so much growth. Let’s reflect on some of the worst decisions and associated learnings that have been fundamental to our growth. Why the worst you say? Because when you accelerate your learning rate in a fail-fast environment, it then allows you to make fast decisions vs. the analysis paralysis predicament.

Ref lection One of my favorite wildcard interview questions for managers is: “Describe the failure you’re most proud of.”

This sometimes catches people off guard, so I’ll share mine first to get the conversation going. Inevitably it comes down to choosing because there are so many.

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“Promoting out of hand” is another variation of this where you don’t put someone through the normal due diligence because they already present. In our case, individual contributor (IC) engineers don’t go through the rigorous reference checks that new managers do.

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“Hiring under duress”, or lowering your bar simply to meet headcount goals. I strongly advise to hire fewer “full-full stack” senior engineers vs. a bunch of junior or mid-level career developers who require more time, nurturing and precious attention units from your senior staff.

Process You can’t talk about growth and success without talking about these failures. Unless you’re some kind of hybrid AIrobot-space-alien who’s absolutely perfect, there’s going to be mistakes. What’s important is that as a leader you own your mistakes and be transparent about them.

This is a moving target, and one which has definitely been an ongoing series of blogs. In the early stage, we “over prescribed scrum.” Something that a very early stage company can do, along with too much agile processes too soon.

Hiring Finding the right people is the single most important aspect of growing a startup. The biggest mistakes in hiring have been: Ÿ

“Hiring out of hand”, or short cutting the normal processes because the candidate is well known by other engineers in the group.

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For example, prototypes and proof of concepts should not have a rigorous definition of done, with endless unit, functional, and end-to-end tests because the product’s requirements will probably zig-zag wildly.

Conversely, having too little process when you are supporting enterprise customers can also be a problem. I spent my prior days as an IC and

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contractor retrofitting and scaling CI/CD pipelines and training engineers how to write better tests.

The challenge is right-sizing this all along the way, and the trigger points on when to change may not be obvious. I say this because we grew headcount by 22 engineers from Oct 2017 to Feb 2018, and in the process we did not modify our simplified Kanban approach to a prescribed Scrum process quickly enough. Growing pains emerged, to say the least.

Now we’re in a spot where we can withstand a magnitude scale of growth with roughly the same squad and tribe-level process.

Management Riffing off rapid growth of Brains in engineering, we didn’t scale management fast enough. Almost all startup engineering orgs start very flat, with all ICs and no management. You have “tech leads” who may split their time doing light managerial functions, but they all write code and dive into the operations.

are looking because their current management does not have their growth and career pathing in mind. In extreme cases, they can do a day’s work in four hours, feel like they are under-challenged, and have not learned anything in years. They work in an environment like the movie Office Space.

Taking an opposite approach is to engage in the growth and pathing of every individual. We do this by: Ÿ

aligning the growth of the individual with the company’s growth.

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having management check in frequently on the success of this, and

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setting up formal quarterly check-ins on measuring these goals. Google adopted this early on from John Doerr in the form of OKRs, and there are great platforms out there which can formally measure and track these objectives.

The biggest fail here in scaling the ICs was not scaling the org and management structure to follow. At ~44 engineers and data scientists, we have a duty to deliver on our mission to provide an environment where they have the opportunity to do the best work of their lives and be worth more in the marketplace.

Career pathing is a longer-term concern. I ask candidates from the start “so what’s the next job after VideoAmp?” This often catches them off guard, then after careful thought most reply with a role 1-2 levels beyond where they’re at now. It’s our goal to help steer them in whatever path they currently see.

Without this vital management structure, there is a vacuum.

Do not bolt this on later, build it as you go. We took inspiration from Spotify’s model of engineering organizational scaling.

Many earlier-career engineers think management is their ultimate path, but I have found that many will stay on a tract of engineering excellence. Whether it’s a Principal Engineer or a VP of Engineering, the goal is to orient the new challenges in a manner which grows them in that direction, even if we can’t fully realize their ultimate pathing goal while at the company.

Growth & Career Pathing We’ve talked about all of these fails, how about something that has worked well for us?

By paying careful attention to these details, we have found our annual retention rate in the high 90%.

When doing initial contact with a candidate, I often ask “why are you in market?” I have seen countless folks who

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February 2019|

1 The

Most Innovative

Unied Communication Solution providers 2019

SureCall: Improving Cell Service for Better Coverage

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n an interview with Insights Success, the CEO and Founder of SureCall, Hongtao Zhan, shares his key insights on various aspects of the company and how it contributes towards the industry by maintaining the quality of all those aspects. He also discusses SureCall’s accomplishments and future initiatives.

Below are the highlights from the interview conducted between Hongtao and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of SureCall, its solutions and services.

SureCall is the multi-patented industry leader in cell phone signal boosters, combining high-quality technology with innovative designs to create award-winning boosters that dramatically improve cell service for better 2G, 3G, 4G LTE, and 5G cell services inside homes, cars and businesses.

How do you diversify Unified communication services so that it will benefit your customers?

Cell phone carriers use towers to send signal to your phone but these towers don’t reach all locations. There are so many factors such as metal car frames, structural walls, hills, mountains, trees, and other factors that block the signals that are trying to reach your phone. Boosters allow you to capture that cell phone signal, maybe outside of your house, and boost it in a new location, such as inside of your house, to give you a strong wireless signal that won’t drop calls.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.

When Tiananmen Square happened in 1989 I was a twentyyear-old college student and one of the demonstrators there.

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What happened that day led me to look at things very differently and guided me toward making decisions that shaped my future toward an education in the US and, eventually, becoming an innovator and entrepreneur. This comes through in the business as well because we are so motivated and passionate about inventing new products that promote a better life. Now, we are still employee owned and funded, we just celebrated our third year on the Inc. 5000 and the best days are ahead of us. It is amazing.

How does SureCall contribute towards making the industry better?

Good question. There are a couple of ingredients. If you are talking about manufacturing you have to start with highquality components. We are driven by customer satisfaction, not by profits, and that means we do not compromise quality because we want to offer the signal boosters that will be best for our customers. That is deeply rooted in the hearts of every employee, whether they are producing the actual products, providing customer service, sales or marketing. As a manufacturer, you need a system where everyone shares company’s mission. We have a championship team that understands this and executes it every day. If you have high-quality people then your products can be the best.

Where does SureCall see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

In the long run, we want to do more of what we’re doing today – making great products which satisfy customers and result in healthy growth. Our passion for innovation will naturally take us into 5G, which we are already engineering to solve, and we are extremely optimistic about what the future holds for all of us here at SureCall.

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“SureCall has a mission to connect people through secure and top-tier wireless communication.”

Hongtao Zhan Founder & CEO

SureCall

Considering the rising number of Unified communication solution providers, how does SureCall stand out from its competitors?

SureCall has remained completely self-funded and employee owned. Going against the grain by resisting VCfunding has given us more control over the technology and the direction of the company. We are a team of curious minds who have no limits on our ability to take care of our customers, partners, and employees, and we are often first to generate new technology, like the first 5G signal booster, that meets the needs of the changing market. There are so many things that differentiate our products from the other options on the market.

Client Testimonials “SureCall boosters are the most durable and reliable we’ve used. Our client’s trust us with solutions and we trust SureCall to produce reliable and high-performance signal amplifiers and antennas.” – Sina Khanifar, Founder & CEO of RepeaterStore “I’m live-streaming from the eye of these extreme weather situations. The tornadoes and hurricanes will often rip towers down and when this happens the Fusion2Go 3.0 is strong enough to quickly find a new tower to keep my calls connected and my hi-res video feeds streaming without a hitch.” – Clement

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“We all use our cell phones and everyone in the firehouse has service now. Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T all work and we’re really happy we chose the SureCall.” – Fuson “Fusion4Home delivered more than I expected. It’s taken our off-grid organic farm back into business and keeps us in touch with our customers. I would highly recommend this for other people who struggle with the same thing.” – Olive About the Leader Hongtao Zhan is the founder and CEO of SureCall.

Spending more than twenty-years as a lead engineer in advanced technologies, Zhan has established himself as a pioneer whose innovative designs are built to connect people through reliable cellular and internet signals. Zhan ushered in the adoption of cellular, thereby delivering inbuilding connectivity for mobile device. Filing his first patent in 2001 for the five-band amplifier, Zhan now holds six U.S. patents under the company’s name and has built a business comprised of more than 96 employees that recently celebrated their third year on the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies.

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February 2019|

Cloud The Emerging

Into the ‘clouds’

Security Solutions and

Challenges Ahead

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n the world of cloud computing, the companies are facing new security challenges every year. The essential principles of the security are secure access, credentials, application usage, anomaly detection, encryption, and storage. Cloud security companies are developing products with prominent security features to tackle these issues. Transition periods for the organizations moving from mainframe systems to cloud systems are reducing sharply. They are operating with on-premise and off-premise devices spread across countries with different security laws.

Such organizations are bringing greater security challenges and hence valuable business for security service providers. The security solutions providers should care for the needs of both security requirements and performance.

Cloud Security Services with High Growth Potential Technologies such as artificial intelligence, the machine learning and the most recent deep learning encompass a number of solutions that can be used for security purposes. Anomalies in the behavior of ‘entities’ within the system can be detected easily with the help of deep learning technology. Machinelearning technologies will help to differentiate between the good and the bad software. This approach will offer a significant tool for security practitioners enabling them to detect the threat in advance and eradicate it.

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Security hardware, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems have taken a virtual mode for operations. As more organizations have started using the cloud technology, more kinds of vulnerabilities will emerge and consequently more approaches to security will also be developed. If cloud service providers can also expand their services to emerge as ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ provider they will be able to offer the high-end data security available even to the small enterprises.

High-performance solutions for the cloud security are available today which enable the governance. The management of sensitive data in a centralized manner for all applications, systems across all platforms with onpremises and partially or fully cloud environments is possible.

Encryption can be an effective technology for data loss prevention. There’s been a lot of security spending over the last several years, and yet the number of records breached is considerably high in recent years. Companies are considering this as the business opportunity to aid in compliance with data privacy and security regulations. It indicates the necessity of sophisticated encryptions and authentication therefore they are considered as emerging security trends for data loss prevention.

• Classification and protection, security assessment and audit, document management and watermarking, and encryption.

• Security-as-a-service platform, cloud discovery, real-time monitoring and blocking, on-demand application and configuration, and Sensitive data discovery.

• Privacy and confidentiality, risk assessments, data loss prevention, tokenization, flexible and granular email security controls, capabilities around user behavior, data loss prevention, and policy restrictions.

• Secure web gateway platforms positioned to capture traffic and see the flow of data to and from SaaS applications with reports of data flow, content, and user activity monitoring.

There are technologies which use big data analytics to identify the anomaly in behavior by a user. System defenders can spot a red alert if they are working with the user behavior analytics (UBA). There is a lot of interest shown in this technology by the enterprises as this can enhance the workforce output also. These technologies offer huge business opportunity. The technique called ‘peeranalysis’ compares how some user is behaving compared to other users with the same manager or same department.

Training can be given to the employees for better security practices and enable them to adhere to the security policies.

Technology can also enhance the security of endpoints like desktops, servers, tablets and laptops using most improved security monitoring, detection of threats and quick response capabilities to incidents.

Chipset within a device can be a part of the authentication process. Apart from passwords, the device acts as a token for security in cloud networks including laptops, desktops and mobile devices. Hardware authentication solutions at processor level can combine a variety of hardwareenhanced factors simultaneously to validate a user’s identity.

Solutions Offered by Cloud Service Companies Clients have got multiple expectations while using the cloud service from providers. They should maintain complete control over their data processing even in multiuser cloud environments. They should be able to retain their efficiency and flexibility according to business objectives and policies. Access to ‘Software as-a-Service’ applications should be as secure as before.

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There are companies specializing in cloud security solutions and providing following services –

Challenges Ahead There is a great service opportunity opening up for creative and innovative solution providers in the area of cloud security solutions but they are equally challenged on various fronts. Organizational level challenges represent those risks that may impact the structure of the organization or the business as an entity. The functional areas that are vulnerable and can be compromised are identified by exploring past business records. These areas represent potential threat or source of failure and needs to be secured on priority. The physical location of the cloud data center can come across a challenge of unauthorized on-site access.

It can be prevented through staff training, physical location security, and network firewalls. Technological Security challenge is related to hardware, and services such as portability, maintenance. Compliance and issues related to the audit, lack of jurisdiction information or changes in jurisdiction and sometimes even illegal clauses in the contract often lead to the legal disputes over information security. Data Security challenges are mainly pertaining to data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Multiple companies are coming to the market with same approach to deal with the security challenges and have similar solutions to the same problem. Real challenge is creating innovative and proactive solutions which can offer better security and smooth flow of business operations.

February 2019|

1 The

Most Innovative

Unied Communication Solution providers 2019

VivifyScrum: Optimizing Project Management Processes

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n an interview with Insights Success, Goran Prijic, CEO and Product Owner of VivifyScrum shares insights on how the collaboration of Scrum and Kanban becomes a comprehensive tool and enhances the efficiency of project management processes. Also, he broadly discusses the company’s core competencies and the services it offers.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Goran and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of VivifyScrum, its solutions, and services?

VivifyScrum is an agile project management software. It combines Scrum and Kanban collaboration boards with advanced project management features. Users can organize and track their projects while managing their team members’ engagements. With the real-time updates and communication within the application, users stay up-to-date with the changes and progress of their work.

How do you diversify Unified communication Services so that it will benefit your customers?

Many of our customers (users) work as part of remote teams making communication a crucial element for success.

As a, primarily, project management tool, VivifyScrum offers couple of communication channels - messaging and commenting within the app, integration with a chat app (Slack), creating tasks via email and more.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of VivifyScrum.

VivifyScrum began its journey as a simple project management tool developed by an outsourcing company, as its first product. We wanted to make an intuitive tool that would, at that time, fill in the gap in the market - it needed

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to be simple enough and easy to use but with all the necessary functionalities to manage a project in Scrum framework.

We also wanted to develop a product that would help us grow as developers by using the latest development trends.

The most valuable inputs came from our early adopters.

Users provided in-depth feedback and we got a clear picture of the direction in which we wanted to take VivifyScrum.

Over the years, VivifyScrum evolved from a simple Scrum tool to a comprehensive agile project management software and even today, we rely on the feedback we receive and on the market trends.

The most important lesson we learned is that the market won’t wait for you. The changes are frequent and inevitable so the only choice you have is to adapt and to adapt fast.

This is where the agile mindset helps. Regular inspection and adaptation is the most efficient way of keeping up with new market requirements.

How does VivifyScrum contribute towards making the industry better?

Scrum is already a proven framework for product success and therefore working in VivifyScrum can contribute to ensuring the delivery of a product. However, at the core of Scrum is not a product but a team. Scrum framework, in general, provides more flexibility for team members, especially the remote ones. Distributed teams are able to seamlessly communicate, to remove impediments, and track their progress by using the appropriate tool such as VivifyScrum.

Give a detailed explanation regarding the Founder/CEO/Management’s influence towards the industry and the company.

February 2019|

“An agile project management software for teams and organizations of all sizes.”

Goran Prijic CEO

Product Owner

As a co-founder of VivifyScrum, my vision was to gather a team of people who will be motivated to create a product that people would love to use. Another important aspect of building an app was providing an opportunity for the team to develop their skills and talents, to help them grow as individuals and as a team.

communication solution. It is a genuine collaboration tool that keeps teams and organizations at top of the game. It provides not only communication means but features and functionalities that serve to many aspects of running a successful business - from team’s day-to-day work to organizing and managing projects.

As for the product itself, I try to stay focused on our roadmap, without getting distracted by the short term trends. However, VivifyScrum had to be improved and updated, hence the version 2.0 released in 2017. At the time, the first version had an outdated design and the technology that was used couldn’t support the latest requirements. The situation was clear - we needed to bring something fresh to the market. As I mentioned before, we decided to give VivifyScrum a facelift that would meet contemporary design and UX conventions.

Testimonials “VivifyScrum allows multiple users and multiple items. It enables project management, project tracking, collaboration and team management all in one solution. It is affordable. It has a clean user interface.” – Elijah Wanjau, Project Manager at Ibuykenya

Where does VivifyScrum see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

Being the first product we developed from scratch and released to the market, VivifyScrum is here to stay. We still have a few aces up our sleeve and we’re ready for new challenges. VivifyScrum will continue to compete for a secure position on the market of agile project management software.

“VivifyScrum is the right software for business persons or organization owners that will enable them to manage their projects and teams well in one single place. I like using VivifyScrum because of its magnificent capabilities.

VivifyScrum is cost-effective.” – Lillian Richardson, Social Media Coordinator at Commercial Bank of Texas “I like VivifyScrum because it is highly customizable to meet varying desires such as team collaboration and project management. VivifyScrum also has great customer support.” – Alex Wallrap, Director of Content Services at Global SEO Switch

Considering the rising number of Unified communication solution providers, how does VivifyScrum stand out from its competitors?

VivifyScrum is much more than just a unified February 2019|

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Digital Transformation is a Business Requirement:

Hype or Reality?

About the Author Christopher James Camut is the Director, President and CEO of Field Squared. Christopher has a successful track record of building high-performing sales teams, improving operational efď€ ciency, driving customer experience, and exceeding revenue goals.

Christopher James Camut Director, President & CEO

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Prior to Field Squared, Christopher was President of Integra Telecom, Inc. (acquired by Zayo), where he managed 300 employees and over $250 million in annual revenue. Before Integra, Christopher was CEO of Ajubeo, a Boulder-based infrastructure-as-aservice (IaaS) provider. Previously, he was CEO of Vixxi Solutions, a SaaS e911 service provider (acquired by Bandwidth.com) and was EVP and General Manager of network consultancy Telwares among other leadership roles. Christopher holds degrees from the University of Toledo in sociology and psychology.

February 2019|

Editor’s Pick

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e are at an inflection point, a true paradigm shift across businesses of every size, industry and market. No business is immune to the rapid technological change brought about by the digital era. But therein belies the disruption of digital transformation: the reward vs perceived time commitment and investment. The question on everyone’s mind is, is digital transformation all hype or reality?

A Digital Bacakbone from the Ground Up The reality is digital transformation is a business imperative. Any new business started today must be built with a digital backbone and infrastructure from the ground up.

There are three crucial components that can make or break a new business today: Automate Business Processes and Workflows Almost every organization maintains several routine to complex business processes and workflows. Sometimes the process falls within a certain department, while other times it may span multiple departments and even third-party vendors or customers.

And not to overly complicate things for this example, but there often times a single process ties into another process or two, or three.

At least in the field service management space, for instance, digital transformation is slowly making its way into the fabric of organizations that have a field service or mobile workforce. The main goals are to increase operational efficiency, improve the customer experience and understand key field service metrics

February 2019|

impact across the workforce and the organization as a whole. Business process automation makes it possible to reap the benefits of digital transformation by starting with small, incremental workflows and graduate to more complex processes as the business grows.

Focus on Real-Time Customer Experience You’ve probably heard it said that we are in the Age of the Customer, where every good or bad experience has the chance to appear on social in a minute and go viral. Fear of negative repercussions is not the reason to focus on the customer; rather, it’s learning opportunity to gain first-hand insight on how to improve the business or exceed expectations the next time around.

Further, real-time communication tools (i.e., chat, text, email, phone call, etc.) ensure businesses can keep in touch with customers from the moment they visit a website or make a purchase, day or night, location and time zone need not apply.

As is the case with service-based businesses—field service organizations, for instance—the ability to send real-time alerts via text are an important part of many different types of work orders.

Digital solutions provide the means to not leave a customer out of the communication loop when you can automate sending a text to notify the customer of a late arrival or a change in technician. Focusing on getting the customer experience right is reason enough alone that makes digital transformation an imperative for businesses today.

Open to Innovation Innovation is one of the more controversial considerations of businesses on their digital transformation journey. Innovation comes in many forms, can be thought of as a harbinger of good (or evil) and oftentimes follows a change in executive management.

The common thread among businesses that are open to innovation, is the desire to move the business forward—be seen as a leader. Famed inventor and futurist Dean Kamen said it best, “Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem and a big idea turn into an innovation.” Most business leaders can relate to simply putting up with a problem until something breaks.

Today, business leaders must be savvy when it comes to being aware of innovative solutions available to solve old problems. Keeping on the theme of field service organizations, the first problem most try to solve for is scheduling and/or routing their technicians. A simple concept, but a powerful first step nonetheless. If, however, the big picture comes into view, it’s possible to go way beyond scheduling—to come fullcircle—and instead automate business processes.

In the end, digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight, which is a good thing because it makes the concept accessible. Whatever route businesses take to improve their operations, today’s business imperative is digital transformation, before it’s too late.

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