Adam Holtby: Multinational organizations that have these very fragmented estates. This type of capability is, it is huge 'cause it's, it's a strategic investment for those folks. It's a way to better centralize mobile across those collaboration areas within those businesses that have become overly complex through different acquisitions and merges over recent years.

They spend millions on, on just kind of keeping the lights on from a, from a collaboration perspective. So there's this huge opportunity.

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we are talking about the world of mobile and the world of UCAS colliding. We are talking teams phone, mobile, and other mobile UCAS offers and why. Potentially, we haven't seen as much of them as I thought we would. I have pulled in Adam, who is a principal analyst at Omdia.

He leads the workplace transformation research there. Uh, great guy, really knowledgeable. So many thanks to Adam for his thoughts and also many thanks to Ribbon who are the sponsor of this podcast, really appreciate their support on with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Excited to have a conversation with Adam Holtby.

Uh, we had a really good prep call, so looking forward to diving into this. Adam, just wanna introduce yourself and give a little bit of context about your role please. Yeah, we should maybe have recorded the prep call Tom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would've, the, the prep call would've been a really hot

Adam Holtby: podcast.

Yeah. There's a, there's a lesson there, isn't there? Just record everything and use what's useful. But yeah. Great. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for the invite and, and bringing me on. Um, I'm a principal analyst at Omdia and I lead our workplace transformation. Research practice. So my work is, my work's really focused on helping our enterprise and technology vendor clients navigate this evolving landscape of modern work, right?

So specifically my, my work zones in on delivering. Data and insights on the, the latest trends and technology evolutions that are impacting areas like employee productivity, workflow automation is, is a huge area for me, has been for many years, and I guess more, more prevalent impediment to this conversation would be the work that I do around mobile centric collaboration.

So what does that mobile extension of the way that employees are engaging and communicating in organizations now look like and. And what are some of the, let's say, back office considerations that businesses need to make in ensuring that they're, they're getting that right. Awesome. So great to be here.

Thank you very much. No, I 

Tom Arbuthnot: appreciate you coming on and, uh, I'm, I'm gonna hold back on the workflow automation because I'm, I'm kind of desperate to have that conversation. We'll have to do it another pod because the stuff we're doing with Power Automate and make, and the AI injection to that whole space is nuts.

I'm sure that's a busy part of your world at the moment. Yeah. Don't get me started. Right. Let's pause, we'll pause it. We'll do that one. We'll do that one next time. But it's a cool space. But let's talk mobile, because this is really interesting to me is, um. Uh, I guess particularly for me, teams phone mobile, but obviously Cisco was slightly ahead in release with WebEx.

Go, uh, uh, we, I feel like we've been, we've been talking about this FMC variance, this FMC thing forever, um, back when I was, you know, doing call manager back in the day. Mm. I was expecting this to take off faster because the operators are working closely with the ucas, but it really feels like it hasn't, I guess, what's your take on this, uh, mobile and ucas kind of world coming together?

Adam Holtby: I. Yeah. Um, let step back for a second and, and, and let's just, let's just think about mobile and, and collaboration more broadly in, in the context of work, I guess. And if we look at a platform like Teams, I. And we were speaking a little bit, uh, about this offline, but teams has become, and I talk about teams in this, in this fashion and through this context now, teams has really become the window into work for, for employees, right?

For many employees it's, it is the, the digital workspace. It's the first place that, uh, a lot of employees kind of interface with and interact with. First thing in the morning. It's, it's often the last place that they interact with on an evening. It really has become this hub of not just collaboration for employees, but productivity.

Mm-hmm. And the, the mobile extension to that is vital, given the way that work styles have and continue to change. Right. Beyond just the, the different range of devices that employees are now using. We're working in a, in a much more flexible fashion across different locations, across different devices, across different applications.

So the way that we collaborate needs to, needs to follow that wax style. Right. And FMC, uh, was really a, a proposition built around, okay, let's, let's create something that's an extension to the fixed connectivity and collaboration habits. Yeah, I was trying to, I 

Tom Arbuthnot: I, in those days it was. I have a desk phone.

And wouldn't it be great if it also worked on the road seamlessly? Exactly. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah. So, so that fixed, that fixed connectivity, that fixed collaboration proposition was really kind of at the center of, of, of the universe from an employee perspective. Right. Whereas now we have these, these platforms, like teams that are really the, the hubs of productivity and collaboration for folks.

So it's those things that have become kind of the center of the. The employee universe when it comes to collaboration and increasingly productivity. So the, the, I guess the, what I'm getting at there is the, the big difference between where we've been in the past and where we need to be going. Not saying that we're there now.

That's, I guess, the basis of this conversation, but where we need to be going is. We're extending from these new ways that employees are interacting and choosing to collaborate. And it's platforms like teams that have become really important to that. And you're right, that mobile extension, so whatever you wanna call it, mobile ucas, represented by solutions like teams, phone, mobile has got huge potential to deliver on that promise and that, and that's just through the, the view of user experience.

Right. I'm sure we'll get into some of the. Administrative and management and benefits that are associated with this later on. But it hasn't, it hasn't really kind of seen the success that, that, that we may be expected by now. Mm. Um, and that, that's, that's quite counter to what I see organizations, I guess, demanding when it comes to more mobile centric collaboration.

I ran a survey last year that just asked a simple question like how, how. How important is mobile collaboration to the way that that employees in your organization work now compared to two years ago and it was 77% that advised that it was more important or vitally more important? Yeah, so there's, there's a, there's a huge demand for, for, for this to.

To take off for, for this to become a, a new way for organizations to communicate and collaborate. Massive area of potential that isn't quite being realized at the minute. Um, 

Tom Arbuthnot: do you think some of that is that we've already got the apps, so a lot of those employees are already realizing, like, like I love the phrasing of that question.

Kind of like the, the mobile collaboration. 'cause who's gonna say it's not like for nearly every role, it's so important these days. But actually so much is a meeting, like it's that the phone, I feel like is increasingly an edge case, particularly for knowledge workers. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Abso and you're right. Is that there, 

Adam Holtby: there are a lot of folks that feel that they, they kind of have this optimal approach to, to mobile centric collaboration at present.

Right. Because to your point, maybe they can access teams on a mobile device via kind of over the top application. Mm-hmm. Um. Because there hasn't really been, there isn't great awareness or there hasn't been fantastic education on the difference between a more native approach to that that's supported by solutions like WebEx Go and Teams phone mobile versus the in-app based experience.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'd 

Tom Arbuthnot: say that is, I'd hugely agree with that. 'cause I talked, fortunately I get talk to quite a lot of enterprises and it's amazing how often the conversation starts. Oh, no, not the app. Like I'm talking about integration with the, with the cellular telco and it's like that. Uh, and maybe in the case of teams i'd, i'd, I'd hazard, I guess that the naming hasn't helped terribly.

Yeah. Like, like you say, teams home mobile, like Yeah, I've got that. Well, no, no, not the app, the like, um, but yeah, I, I, I, I don't, I don't think the, the capability and, and for same f Cisco has penetrated the enterprise conversation load. Yeah. And I think, I think one of the big reasons 

Adam Holtby: for that is that there's.

There has rightfully so been this big focus on the user experience benefits, right? Better call quality. That synergy between what's happening on a native mobile device versus your in-app experience and all that stuff's great, but there's real value from a, I call it a more back office perspective, right?

In terms of how. Manageability of, of mobile workers across connectivity, across devices, across applications can become more centralized. There's the single point of control and visibility into that now, because mobile's very fragmented in organizations. Right. You've got it that have some interest. You've got teams like provisioning and procurement that have some interest on the connectivity side.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Adam Holtby: But being able to have that, that complete. End-to-end view of what mobile looks like and being able to manage policies and security and productivity workflows to, to the conversation we were having earlier across that device application and connectivity ecosystem is massive from a back office perspective because it's gonna help businesses reduce costs, it's gonna help businesses ensure that security.

And governance around messaging collaboration is unified. Um, that, I guess that's really prevalent given some of the national news that we've observed Yeah. Over the past few days. Right. And, and, and that type of stuff, that type of story is a, is a consequence of this fragmented approach. A collaboration that organizations have mobile often being this afterthought, right?

That's sometimes managed by a completely different team to who's managing core collaboration within an organization, which means you get these fragmented policies and ultimately you get these security and governance risks. Look at the, the financial service industry, for example. There's a reason that a lot of employees in that industry over the past few years have been using solutions like WhatsApp.

Messenger, their own personal email to conduct work-based conversations. It's because the mobile experience in the workplace isn't optimal for those folks. Well, guess what? The secs come calling and there's, there's nine, $3 billion worth of fines that have been imposed on financial service institutions now because of those, let's say, less than efficient practices and and approaches to ensuring that mobile is integrated as part of that core collaboration offering.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, you touched on two really interesting points there. Let's go to the kind of security and collab one. First, I'll loop round back to the cost. The, the security and collab definitely resonates in the sense of the people I've seen adopting teams, phone, mobile. It's been a lot of, um, finserv and regulated.

And actually the immediate upside they say is, uh, compliance call recording across mobile and desktop, one interface. Um, and, and the messaging is interesting 'cause we haven't, I dunno, you, you can educate me on Cisco side, but on the Microsoft side we haven't yet got SMS coming directly into the same compliance store.

It feels like that's one of the last pieces of the puzzle is to bring the SMS into the experience and then it would be a true compliance surface as well. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah, you're right. And and the, the most recent news from Microsoft there is encouraging Right. In terms of what they're doing with, with SMS and teams.

Yeah. Um, but integrating that more richly is gonna be important and it, it's gonna happen. Right. It needs to happen. Yeah. Given this, this, um, this excitement that is surrounding the use of kind of RCS, for example, yeah. RCS 

Tom Arbuthnot: finally, apple kind of capitulating and playing the game feels like a, a massive step forward that hopefully we'll see some compatibility.

'cause I don't think a lot of people get that about. SMS as well. If, if you don't, if you're not in the, the, the weeds, like you, you'd think that, well, I'm doing teams phone, mobile with, you know, vo be bt, whoever, uh, they do the SMSs, they could just send 'em to teams. But of course most platforms are Android or iPhone and they're essentially hijacking the sms and it's actually a private messaging service that looks like SMS to the user.

Adam Holtby: Yeah. And, and that's what we touched on this briefly a second ago, but again, when you look at it through the perspective of a user, that's another reason why, um, folks have been gravitating to applications like WhatsApp is because of the, the capabilities, the rich capabilities Yeah. That those solutions offer.

And RCS is, is I think, going to revolutionize that more native. Messaging. Well, it will revolutionize the native messaging experience for folks, which naturally will, will result in a kind of gravitation towards that capability. So getting your house in order now from a collaboration perspective in terms of ensuring you've got that rich integration, not just on the user side between native mobile and your collaboration ecosystem, but also from a backend perspective.

Right. In terms of ensuring that you've got that single plane, that single view of visibility and management control into the policies that extend from that native collaboration ecosystem to what you're doing in the, in the native mobile experience. And that is, is where the whole workflow proposition comes into play.

Right. And I'm not gonna go into too much detail on this, but there's massive potential there, right? When you think about how collaboration could be better weaved into the flow of work for people. Mm-hmm. Right. Not just done via a, a, a disparate siloed application, but actually in the roots of work that people engage with on a daily basis.

There's huge potential and a really exciting future with these technologies, with this more centralized approach to management and, and mobile centric collaboration that organizations are gonna be able to capitalize on. And I, I think. We started this session today talking about why, why things haven't maybe taken off as we would've expected them to, and I think one of the big reasons is because this type of capability, regardless of who the vendor is, it isn't being spoken about in this transf, this kind of transformative fashion.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, it's barely being spoken about as well, because the, yeah, I feel like the UCA has said. Telcos, you need to go sell it to your customers, and I feel like most of the mobile telcos are happily making money. Just selling mobile. So I don't think the conversation's even being had, let alone had.

Well, to your point, 

Adam Holtby: yeah. But the, the telco point is an interesting one. 'cause I think there's a huge opportunity for telcos here in terms of being able to co collate and collect these different applications, these different technologies into an advanced communication service. Yeah. Their, their 

Tom Arbuthnot: relevancy goes up, their business value goes up, the conversation changes from, uh, here's the plan.

It's minutes and. SMS is in cost too. We are actually a business partner here thinking about security and compliance and reach and enabling and all that good stuff. 

Adam Holtby: Exactly. And it, it kind of aligns with the position that, that I take. Here at Om Deer around all this is that I'll, I'll use the term mobile UCAS again 'cause it's one that I'm sure the audience will well understand, but, but that is really important capability that as per our conversation today is actually part of a broader conversation and a broader ecosystem that needs to evolve and kind of take root within organizations.

One that not only helps better enable and secure this more mobile centric workforce. But that also sets organizations up really well for this work workflow revolution that we're gonna see in terms of how collaboration is brought much closer into the flow of work, into the very tasks and activities that employees engage with day to day.

And I'm not just kind of talking about the traditional CPAs use case. There, right. That's, that's traditionally a, a kind of customer engagement based conversation in terms of how you can better engage customers and, and bring collaboration and communication into those customer workflows. This is about the work that employees do within the organization, and this, this, this huge, this huge value to be realized there.

When you think about frontline workers in particular, right? Yeah. How that. That rich integration between collaboration capabilities and the tasks and the, the platforms that they work with day to day, how, when those things are brought closer together. Frontline workers are really gonna benefit from this, this digitization revolution there.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It feels like a killer on frontline workers. And I, I know a couple of the UK police forces have been trialing it, and it's the idea that you're, you are both out and you are in the back office sometimes, and having that, like when I'm at my desk, it's, it's teams that it's all there when I'm on the road.

It's, it's the same thing and mm-hmm. Uh, I, I think that's, that's, that's the really high value you mentioned. Cost. Like that's, I feel like that's one of the things that's held this back as well because we've only had limited, certainly on the team side, limited number of operators, and there's been an add-on charge of anywhere I've seen between four and 10 bucks, waves around.

And I've, I've tried hard to get everybody to commit to a, a, a number for our research. You might've done better than me, but like, that seems like the range. So we're asking businesses to add. Cost for this feature. Um, and they're trying to reduce connectivity, cost, and mobile cost. Have you seen the same thing?

Adam Holtby: Yes. And the, there's two interesting facets to, to this whole conversation around cost. Um, the first, as you rightfully point out, is this as kind of an extension to the existing licensing agreements and expenditures that businesses face when it comes to, um, using platforms like teams and WebEx Go, right?

Um, Cisco's approaches. It's slightly different now to what it was, which is encouraging in terms of how they're costing for it. But it is, it's kind of a new line item, right? It's a new expense that needs to be justified. Yeah. And as we've, as we've spoken about earlier on, that there's, there's still some work to do, I think, in terms of justifying it.

The second element to consider is more on the. More on kind of the provider side, namely from a telco perspective, right. In terms of the costs that are involved to actually get to a place where you can offer this service. Yeah. Which are non, 

Tom Arbuthnot: non-trivial, to be fair. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah. They, they, they, they're pri they're, they're quite significant.

They, they, at least in terms of the work that I've done, and my understanding is they extend into, into the multimillions, which is. Which is massive. Right? And then there are these different flavors of solution that ultimately need to be supported and offered by these, these telcos. Um, I think there's some interesting possibilities there going forward.

There are some, some telcos that are, that are doing well in kind of finding a standardized approach that can then be rolled out across those different providers. Yeah. So they can, they can offer teams phone, mobile, WebEx, go RingCentral's offering for, for example. And then there's this, there's this whole.

Kind of emerging area around, um, network APIs, right. And what the potential could be there from a, from a telco based conversation in, in making things easier, um, and more universal in terms of how this capability can not just be rolled out by telcos, but can be done so in a way that is, is more cost efficient.

Yeah. Because if you're a telco, you could be sold on the capability, but the, the actual cost to roll it out could be so significant that it makes it a difficult Yeah, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah. Yeah. If you have to show an RI on the project as opposed to. Over three years, we'll have more customers stick with us than like, like a lot of theory about market opportunity and, and taking customers versus the hard mm-hmm.

P and l of the project. I can see how it's tough. I, my, my, my hypothesis is like everything in mobile, this will start as an add-on cost. Um, in the uk for example, BT were first, we've now got Voda VMO tour on the way, once you've got three carriers in play. Like the add-on cost will competitively erode at some point in time and, and then it appears way longer than I anticipated.

I think you'll go for a business mobile contract and they'll just say, okay, which ucas are you using? You know, are you, are you WebEx? Are you teams? Are you ring? Are you others? We can hook that up. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah, and, and especially in Microsoft's case, right? I guess they've got a, well, they've got both a flexible Intune suite now and they've got a flexible teams licensing approach with these premium offerings that they're delivering to, to kind of consolidate that capability as part of one of those offerings.

But I guess as per the, as per the core topic that we've been focused on today, it's, it's not just about throwing that capability over the wall there, there's a real need to to educate. The wider org, wider organizations on what the true value is here and what the differentiation is. And, and that isn't just about talking about this capability as a, as a bolt-on, as a feature add-on.

It's really right. This is how we can make your organization become way more mobile centric when it comes to communication and collaboration. And this is potentially. The efficiencies that you can realize, the user experience benefits that you can realize it's about much more than just, oh, I've got a, I've got a single number across teams and, and my native.

Yeah. Which is 

Tom Arbuthnot: how I hear the conversation start more often than not. Mm-hmm. It is like, which is a shame. Yeah, it is. Which bring maybe it's teams. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah. I, I, I think I felt this for a while, that obviously there's a, there's a lot of awareness around this capability from a. Uh, a collaboration perspective, right?

If you look across the, the, the collaboration channels, um, but maybe not as much awareness from a kind of endpoint management, device management, mobility management, um, side of the house. I think I. From working in that space in the past on the practitioner side, having a solution that gives me that full view of what a mobile worker looks like, extending from connectivity right through to the application experiences, having a single console by which I can set security policies across all those areas and as we've discussed more further into the future, um, develop and automate workflows and ultimately new experiences across those.

Device app and connectivity areas is, it's, it's massive. It's huge. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And you mentioned fragmentation. That definitely resonates with what I've seen in, in, in multiple ways in the sense of, often orgs end up with different carriers in different regions for cost or competitive reasons. The buying decision is usually someone in, someone owns mobile cellular buying station and somebody else owns Intune and mobile device management.

And usually mobile device management is more. The it, and, and, and often I've seen mobile is, is a different team to fix. So the teams team don't control the mobile conversation, the mobile team don't control the team's conversation. Absolutely. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah. Mobile, mobile and kind of traditional endpoint estates are still in a lot of organizations managed, provisioned, um, in a very siloed and fragmented fashion.

And often, you know, by, by, by teams that, that don't work too closely together. So there's a. You, you could argue that there's a real kind of strategic impetus to do this right, too. And you touched on that, that point of centralization, which is really important because for multinational organizations that have these very fragmented estates, this type of capability as.

It, it's huge. 'cause it's, it's a strategic investment for those folks. It's a way to better centralize mobile across those collaboration areas within those businesses that have become overly complex through different acquisitions and merges over recent years. Yeah. Those multinational corporations, they, they spend millions on, on just kind of keeping the lights on from a, yeah.

From a collaboration perspective. So there's this huge opportunity, but again, it, it needs to be spoken about in these terms more as opposed to just. Uh, you know, uh, an integration between your, your mobile number and your, your team's number. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And who, who does that, uh, education work? Do you think it's more on the telcos or more on the ucas?

I think there's a responsibility 

Adam Holtby: for both. Right. But I, I, as I mentioned earlier, I do feel there's a big opportunity here from, from a telco perspective, right? Given that connectivity is so critical to, to this proposition. Mm. And given what telcos can already offer. On that whole mobility management space, right, with their device lifecycle management solutions, for example.

Yeah. What they. Currently deliver in terms of their fixed collaboration and, and connectivity solutions and services. Being able to, to bring this together, get away from kind of the acronym soup and really zone in and focus on, right, what does this new wave of collective capabilities I. Actually enable us to do for organizations.

And a lot of that is, is what we've been speaking about today, right? In terms of that centralized approach to connectivity device and application management and security, uh, that I feel is a, is a huge opportunity that, that telcos are really in a, in a great position to, to play on. If they can speak about this capability in how it works adjacent to other important collaboration and communication features in the right way.

But that doesn't mean that the, the vendors that provide this solution shouldn't be having those conversations to, I, I really think that they need to start pitching these capabilities more than just a, an add-on to a uc and C-suite. Yeah. And think more strategically in, in how they position it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome.

Well, we, we have quite a few people from telcos listening to the pod, so, uh, I feel like you Oh, great. Some good stuff. Good free advice from Adam there on, uh, what you should be focusing. 

Adam Holtby: Yeah, yeah. There is, there's some massive opportunity and, you know, I'm, I'm available across all the usual social platforms, so, so do reach out.

I'm sure Tom Will, will put the links. Yeah. Highly somewhere. Highly recommend it. Feel free to reach out. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome, Adam, that's been a great conversation. Maybe we, uh, give it, give it a year on this topic and revisit, but I'm definitely gonna pull you back in sooner for the, uh, the workflow stuff, automation and workflow conversation.

'cause that's great. Yeah. 

Adam Holtby: A a lot happening there. It's a really exciting space. Um, this, this whole collaboration piece is, is fundamental to it. So I, I would be glad to come back on Tom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, for people that wanna find you, we will share the links, but what's the best way to reach you, Adam? 

Adam Holtby: So, um, probably LinkedIn.

I, I, I do, I do push a lot out via LinkedIn. Um, I. We've also got a, a kind of LinkedIn group for the digital workplace team here at Omdia, where it's not just my research, but research of some of my colleagues that, that, that work in the enterprise comm space and the customer engagement spaces. So we use that as a really, uh, as a really good platform of engagement with folks.

And it's not just kind of research that's behind the paywall here at Omdia. We, we push stuff out there that is in front of the paywall too. So yes, definitely connect on LinkedIn and look out for the Omdia Digital Workplace Group on, on LinkedIn too. Awesome. Thanks a lot. Good stuff. Thanks everyone.