Facebook Workplace: Just collaboration, or parking its tanks on UCaaS & cPaaS lawns?

Facebook has finally launched its enterprise collaboration offering, changing its name to Workplace, from the original beta-tested Facebook at Work (link). It certainly isn't a full UCaaS product - but it wouldn't surprise me if it heads (somewhat) in that direction over time, or adds in integration or PaaS capabilities that allow it to compete indirectly in future.

It's aggressively priced, and mostly targetted at the Slack-style market for timeline- and messaging-centric collaboration, also known as WCC (workstream collaboration & communication). It's got a free trial, it's free for educational users, and for businesses it costs just $1-3 per month depending on size of deployment. (For comparison, Facebook's global consumer ARPU is around 4, mainly from advertising, although this is much higher in North America - link).

Clearly, it's majoring on large similarity in user-experience to its social networking platform, which is familiar to a large % of humanity. Likes, reactions, groups and so on are all replicated.

It also has some communications capabilities already - FB's Live video-streaming service is built into the main Workplace service, while it has a separate "companion" app (Work Chat - link) for IM and voice/video. I strongly suspect it is based on WebRTC, as its consumer equivalent is one of the biggest users of the technology today. Work Chat also has file/image-sharing and (not all entirely professional) stickers, which are basically glorified emoji. 

Interestingly, the iOS appstore page for Chat - which says it's already at Version 48 - has a screenshot focusing on voice rather than video, although that may just be because it hasn't updated it yet (there's an old website link to At Work rather than Workplace too).

Some other things I've noticed:

• It references trial user companies (for internal deployment) include telcos Telenor and Telekom Austria
• Its partners / distributors include a division of Phillipines telco PLDT
• Unsurprisingly, there's a big pitch on security, privacy and data-ownership for companies that may be suspicious of FB's record.
• There's a big pitch for non-desk workers such as those in restaurants, on ships or industrial facilities (who are mostly likely to be mobile-first / mobile only, and which are often well outside the traditional UC/UCaaS universe). 
• It's apparently air-gapped from the consumer Facebook platform - although given WhatsApp's recent history, some may speculate how long that lasts.
• There's a way to create multi-company groups for federation, and presumably closed groups for suppliers/customers/partners.
• Various 3rd-party providers of identity for single sign-on support (including G Suite and MS Azure).

In common with Slack and some other UC and WCC-type offers, it suggests that use of messaging and workstreams may reduce the need for voice/video realtime communications as well as email. Its FAQ says that "Companies find that they can eliminate or drastically reduce their need for internal collaboration tools such as their intranet, telephony systems, video conferencing and distribution lists."

That is quite telling for me: "reduce their need" implies that Facebook doesn't immediately see its role as replacing old phone systems or UC (or UCaaS), or that it intends to jump into the conferencing space. Perhaps I'm inferring too much, but I suspect it means:

• Facebook isn't interested in becoming a business phone system or normal UCaaS platform, especially with PSTN interconnect. In any case, it is unclear that businesses would accept it any time soon - it's taking Microsoft a long time to move on from IM/UC to telephony.
• The apparent enthusiasm of various telco partners could just indicate prudent curiosity - or could indicate a future alignment with network-based telephony and numbering, especially given Facebook's love of phone number-based 2-factor authentication.
• Also at present, Workplace isn't being set up as a mechanism for B2C communications, as many thought it might. In many ways, that's more a role for consumer Facebook (& consumer FB identities) and perhaps WhatsApp for chatbots. Businesses have to pay for various services around their pages already.
• However, it would be very unsurprising if Workplace became more of an integration platform in future. I can easily imagine it - or partners - building ways to link it to other telephony, conferencing or CRM/call-centre systems or cloud providers. 
• Workplace could potentially become a hub for Slack-style "collaboration as a platform", also being done in various ways by Cisco Spark, Symphony, Broadsoft Tempo, Unify Circuit and many others.
• Given Facebook's enthusiasm for live video-streaming, video-calling and other communications abilities (especially in-app on mobile) it would not surprise me to see a cPaaS play or acquisition at some point. I suspect it wouldn't aim to compete with Twilio directly, or some other UC-style rivals such as Nexmo/Vonage, but either Cisco/Tropo or Tokbox could be closer to the firing line. (Actually, Tokbox would be an interesting M&A target, if Telefonica decides it can't leverage it more than it does today).
• I expect that a major push will be made later around "events" which seems to be mostly missing from the current release, and which is a huge draw on the consumer service. Renaming it to "meetings" or "appointments" would make a lot of sense, and absorb much more communications traffic in consequence.
• Facebook has perhaps the best way to categorising personal "context" of any company. Its status updates have a great set of tags of location, doing/feeling activities, tagged colleagues/friends and so forth. It has the potential to leverage this in Workplace to create a really interesting platform for Contextual Communications.

Overall, I think that Facebook Workplace looks like a much more subtle and oblique entry to enterprise communications than some people expected. It's not aiming to replace UC/UCaaS outright, but instead to gradually divert (steal?) a growing slice of the overall employee-to-employee (or cross-company) communications pie. This is very different to the way that the traditional enterprise comms companies like Cisco or Avaya or various cloud-based providers are going, where they typically aim to be at the centre of a firm's communications, radiating outward from phone or conferencing. Instead, Workplace seems to be a play for adjacency, siphoning off use from email and Slack and peripheral (often unloved) UC features, at a low price point.

If companies can get over their privacy-wariness from Facebook's consumer reputation, it has quite a lot of potential. I also suspect it could be seen as attractive as a channel play by some telcos' enterprise business units, especially where they have minimal mobile footprint today. It would probably sit alongside other UCaaS offers rather than replace them. Thus far, it's a bit unclear what Microsoft plans to do with LinkedIn, but that's also in the same universe.

But Workplace also represents a starting-point for some really interesting future cPaaS and integration plays. Facebook's familiar UI - and its vast realm of heritage and skill in design and UX - could be a gamechanger. It is rightly eschewing "boring old business phone systems" for now - but should be able to help create a variety of new voice and video experiences in subsequent enhancements, if it proves the basics, gains scale quickly, and mitigates residual concern about security and privacy.

If we call the message/timeline concept WCC, maybe this will end up being called wPaaS?

Communications apps, APIs & integrations: Import vs. Export models

There is a huge and growing interest in blending communications apps/services with other software capabilities. We are moving from a world of standalone voice, video and messaging to a range of contextualised, workstream-based and embedded alternatives.

But there are two very distinct philosophies emerging for app/comms integration:

• Export: this involves extending communications capabilities out from a central system (phone system, UC, messaging app, videoconferencing etc) into other applications or websites via APIs, or by offering granular service-components (eg WebRTC gateway, transcoding, recording etc) via a PaaS approach. Numerous examples exist, from
• Vendors (eg Unify's Circuit APIs, Genband Kandy, Xura Forge, Cisco Tropo, ALU's Rapport APIs, BroadSoft, Vidyo etc)
• Dedicated PaaS providers (eg Twilio, SightCall, Temasys) or niche specialists such as Voxbone (which does numbering for example)  
  
• Telcos' API platforms, which may be network-integrated like AT&T's Developer Platform, standalone PaaS like Telefonica Toxbox, or even just web-embeddable objects like Telenor appear.in
• Import: this involves treating the communications application or service as the user's primary experience, and bringing in other applications as "integrations" or mini-apps. These can be other communications tools (eg WebRTC video windows in a messaging app) or other functions (eg social or process-based integrations). This particularly fits with the "timeline" or "workstream" model, or perhaps a "dashboard". Examples exist in a number of areas:
• Enterprise is moving towards "workstream collaboration and communications" (WCC) apps, such as Slack, Cisco Spark, Unify Circuit and various others which can embed external services into a timeline. BroadSoft's Tempo concept looks more like a dashboard model than a timeline, but also brings in sources like DropBox.
• Consumers are moving towards "Messaging as a Platform" apps, notably in Asia with WeChat, which embeds mini-apps such as taxi-ordering into the message stream. Facebook is taking Messenger in the same direction, and even telcos want to replicate this - Deutsche Telekom is trying to reinvent RCS to take it in that direction, for example.

The API-led "export" model has been the primary trend in WebRTC, SMS and telcos' network/IMS strategies in recent years. We hear a lot about the "consumption" of APIs, "embedding" of communications or the "exposure" of a core system. It is definitely growing rapidly, in numerous guises. Click-to-call buttons embedded in websites or apps are a typical manifestation. (Video below is embedding AT&T capability into Plantronics' website)

But the success of apps such as Slack and WeChat have led to a resurgence of the idea of "unifying" communications, or using a "hub" approach, where a messaging/voice/video app becomes the central anchor of a user's "online life", either as a dedicated application or browser home-page.

Some vendors are trying both approaches - Unify and Cisco seem to be looking at both import and export models. It might be where Google is intending to take Jibe along with telcos and Android as well. Some UCaaS players seem to be taking a similar path (eg with ThinkingPhones acquisition of Fuze) as well as WCC specialists like Atlassian's HipChat.

Others are taking different angles - Microsoft seems to be using Office 365 as the anchor, importing its own Skype4Business UC application as well as maybe others in future, probably via ORTC. I suspect it will "export" more communications as well, in future. Apple (as usual) is different, still using iOS as its main platform for very selective import of a few comms/social tools such as Facebook and Twitter, and largely avoiding any export models at all. (There is no way to embed FaceTime or iMessage in a website, for example). Apple also tends to dislike apps acting as subsidiary platforms on mobile, especially if there are payments involved.

It is too early - and too polarised - to determine whether import or export will be most significant, and for which use-cases and customer segments. We may see different "balances of payments" for different vendors and service providers. However, there are a number of early conclusions to draw:

• Import models need a good and usable / well-liked core product, before they can become a platform
• Export models need the right "raw ingredients", eg simple video or SMS APIs, with the right (typically freemium) commercial model to attract developers
• Import models tend to work best with a core that is text/timeline-based, ie non-realtime
• There is a risk that some import models appear as "arrogant": I can imagine some users thinking "What, you expect me to spend the core of my day in your app?! You must be joking"
• Export models face a lot of competition - external developers have many APIs to choose from, or can implement their own capabilities from scratch.
• Import models involve competition between comms tools and other apps as the "anchor" - eg a UC tool, vs. social networks, or an Office/Google Apps suite as hub, or major enterprise products like SAP/Salesforce, or a vertical-specific platform like a medical practice-management app.
• Import and export approaches often vary in implementation between Android, iOS, Windows and native chipset-level
• Telcos have been trying export models for a long time, with limited success. Often, 3rd party platforms that act as aggregators / or "export agents". Cable / IPTV companies are closer to the import model as they own the set-top box interface to "on-board" other solutions
• We might see NFV / VNF architectures helping with telco-grade import & export in future, but for communications services it's still a long way off
• Mobile app usage tends to be fragmented. With the notable exception of WeChat, it's not clear that a full import model works well with the app paradigm on smartphones. That said, we may see greater cross-linkage between apps in future.
• Certain groups of knowledge-workers may be more well-suited to "import" comms apps, especially if they are either communications-primary users (eg call centre agents) or heavily-collaborating teams.
• Design skills are paramount throughout, for integrations to be usable. 
• We will see some "importers" acquiring companies to extend the core app functions. Slack/Screenhero is a good example. This may compete with some 3rd-parties' integrations, but may also make life easier for iOS appstore approvals.
• Both import and export models make life much harder for network policy-management (or industry regulation) as mashups are by their nature hard to pigeon-hole. 
• Every export implicitly also means an import from the other side - sometimes into "product", but in many ways horizontal apps such as SAP and Saleforce are turning into full import platforms in their own right, especially where they support multiple communications integrations.

I think that 2016 is going to see some epic battles between import and export philosophies for communications in general, and WebRTC in particular. The shift of communications to the cloud facilitates both directions. Worth watching very closely indeed.

Stop Press: just as I was about to publish, I read that Facebook is trialling Uber-in-Messenger, as part of its "Transportation on Messenger" initiative. This is a great example of an import model, and "messaging as a platform". Details are here.

What's YOUR view of contextual communications?

In recent months, I've been drilling into the new "hot topic" of contextual comms. Martin Geddes & I are so enthused by the topic that we're running a workshop on June 15th in London (details here), and we're already considering follow-ups, maybe in the US later in the year.

We're combining both the "here & now" of context with a view on where we might be heading in the medium-to-longer term. Martin wrote a very forward-looking and provocative piece on the possible future recently (here).

I'm really interested in what "contextual communications" means to everyone else. There's no fixed definition at the moment, and I suspect that we're going to get an "Olympic Rings" multi-way Venn diagram. Some views of context will overlap, while others will be miles apart. For instance, I've seen or heard all of these described as Contextual Comms:

• Sending web-form info to an contact-centre agent during "click to call"
• Embedding video/telepresence into a robot
• Using mic & speakers on a phone to map out a room acoustically & tweak the echo/noise processing
• Use a media-server to analyse a caller's tone (eg angry vs. happy) or facial expressions, and adjust the experience or script for a salesperson
• Using a device orientation sensor to work out if a phone is flat on a table, or help to the ear, and adust the UI accordingly
• Using machine-learning and analytics to assess the best time to call someone
• Mechanisms for indicating the purpose of a call
• Embedding a call into a timeline or activity-stream interface for UC and collaboration, so it can be recorded, captured & seen alongside text commentary or speech analytics

I'm sure there are dozens more as well. I'm looking forward to distilling some sort of map or ontology, so we can collectively understand this new landscape a bit more clearly. Is it one thing with lots of variants? Or 5 separate trends with a little overlap?

Do YOU have a good example or definition of Contextual Comms? I'd love to hear from you, either via a comment here, or by doing an interview briefing.

And if you'd like to talk about it publicly, we're offering all the workshop attendees an chance to present or demo their view - basically an "open mic" section of the day to showcase their unique take on context.

If you'd like more detail about the event, or to get in touch separately about context, please comment,  see this page to book a spacea, or email information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com.

Report update: WebRTC market expanding and maturing, but in unexpected ways

I've just published a major update to the Disruptive Analysis WebRTC Market Status & Forecast report, which originally came out in September 2014. The update revises the key forecasts, and considers the shifts in industry structure and use-case that I've been seeing & talking about recently.

The headline numbers: 6.7bn devices are forecast to support WebRTC (on a broadly-defined basis) by the end of 2019. At that point, there are expected to be 2bn active consumer users, and 900m business users of WebRTC (with considerable overlap).

But digging beyond the updated market forecasts, it's important to recognise some key underlying trends:

• The definition of "WebRTC" is becoming blurry. ORTC, app-embedded WebRTC, plug-ins, 3rd-party PaaS & SDKs etc. are changing the landscape. However, only the purists really care - others just exploit the "democratisation" of creating comms apps and capabilities more easily
• In numerical terms, mobile implementations of WebRTC are starting to out-accelerate desktop browser-based ones, outside the enterprise. This favours either sophisticated developers able to build apps around the various WebRTC client frameworks, or those using 3rd-party PaaS solutions
• Many "big names" have launched WebRTC products and services in recent months, ranging from Cisco & Avaya, to AT&T, Tata and Facebook. This is a strong endorsement of the technology - and often integrated with a parallel shift to cloud-based services.
• Developer mindshare is increasing - helped by hackathons and presence at vertical events - but many in the web/app world remain unaware of WebRTC's potential. Enterprise comms professionals seem much more aware of it.
• While contact-centres are still the major WebRTC hotspot in enterprise, there is growing interest in mobile customer-service apps, and video-integrated collaboration tools. This overlaps the trend towards cloud-based apps, as well as new styles of corporate messaging / social-timeline approaches to communication.
• This is driving the "disunification" of business comms, as I discussed about 3 months ago. WebRTC-based DUC will grow much faster than WebRTC-based UC, although that has large potential too. There will be >300m business DUC users by 2019.
• The market for vendors selling WebRTC gateways (telco/enterprise) or commercial WebRTC platform-as-a-service is comparatively slow-moving, but starting to pick up steam. The last 6 months has seen considerable advances in uptake of "interoperable" use-cases. 
• However, developers often have a variety of open-source alternatives - and there is a growing suspicion that PaaS indirectly competes with vendor-driven products. Indeed, some vendors now have their own PaaS platform (Genband Kandy, Digium Respoke, Acision Forge etc).
• There are now more than 10 telecom operators with some sort of commercial implementation involving WebRTC, with several more with well-advanced plans and prototypes that Disruptive Analysis is aware of. Some have multiple initiatives
• For major consumer web services, WebRTC is creeping in, often with limited tests and deployments for obscure user groups - such as Facebook's video-messaging for Chromebook users. It's still unclear if Whatsapp's long-awaited voice service is based on WebRTC or not. 

In other words, there is a lot of noise and action - and indeed growing usage - but comparatively little hard cash at the moment. However, that is starting to change - CafeX's recent funding round is a good indicator, while discussions with vendors & PaaS players have shown growing awareness of better marketing and partnerships. This is also not unusual - there was a considerable lag between people using the web in its early days, and anyone (beyond ISPs) making real money from services or application infrastructure.

Ultimately, WebRTC is a technology which lowers the bar for both true innovators, and others doing today's services more easily/cheaply. In many cases, WebRTC adds value to something else - whether it's extending the reach of a conferencing system, or helping reduce churn by better customer-service. 

Overall, Disruptive Analysis remains bullish about the technology, both in the short-to-medium term, and in the long run as it converges with cloud, contextual communications and even aspects of IoT. WebRTC remains a fundamentally disruptive technology, and its ramifications are only at the first stage of being realised.

The new update is sold along with the full "reference report" from September, plus a one-hour briefing call and additional update later in the year. Contents and pricing/ordering details are here. 

I'll also be speaking or moderating at various upcoming WebRTC-related events:

• UCExpo, London, April 21-22
• Advanced Comms Asia, HK (April 28) & Singapore (April 30)
• WebRTC Expo, Miami, May 12-14
• Contextual Communications Workshop, London, June 15

Lastly, if you have any questions, or represent a WebRTC company or user, interested in setting up a briefing with me, please contact me via information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Dis-Unified Communications: WebRTC & The Enterprise App Dilemma

Enterprise technology often follows consumer trends. Currently, in the mainstream telecoms world, phone call and SMS usage is being eroded by competing and fragmented IP and app-based platforms – the so-called “OTT players”. Instead of using a handful of standardised (but expensive and limited) services, people are voting with their thumbs and using a wide range of communications apps and tools, on a case-by-case basis. They offer a mix of functionality, low/free cost and "coolness" - Whatsapp, Skype, Kik, LINE, WeChat, Viber, Hangouts, iMessage, Instagram, SnapChat and so on.

In business, an equivalent trend (or threat) is brewing. It manifests as communications dis-unifying, despite the industry buzzword suggesting "unified" platforms are the only path to the future. As well as standalone VoIP and conferencing systems, we are also seeing specific instances of enterprise communications being carved out of traditional, centralised UC/PBX platforms and integrated directly into cloud-based applications and business processes.

In addition, business users who have never before had a PBX "seat" or extension (eg the self-employed, or startups) are using sophisticated mobile or cloud-based apps to enhance their communications experience. They are also using IP-connected phones and tablets, rather than legacy circuit-based communications.

Some dis-unification has always been inevitable - we all get invited to other companies' conferencing systems, webinars or even messaging platforms. Many in the business community use their own personal mobile and home phones, Skype when travelling, send messages with personal webmail - or indeed using the tools built-into sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. New collaboration tools like Slack are currently getting a lot of attention as well. These tools have mostly been used for communication between companies, but a fair amount (especially BYOD calls and SMS) has been between colleagues internally as well.

The question is what happens in future to business communications.

Disruptive Analysis sees two possible paths:

• Towards more fully-Unified Communications, where enterprise IT departments, working with their UC&C vendors and service providers, extend corporate communications platforms to mobile, to collaboration both internally and externally, and (via APIs and SDKs) blended into corporate line-of-business apps and web tools.
• Towards ever-more fragmented Dis-Unified Communications (DUC), where a declining fraction of a business's total voice, video or messaging traffic transits its own "platform", as employees extend the BYO model from devices, to BYOconferencing, BYOcontactcentre, and adopt applications and cloud-services that have their own contextual comms built in by their developers or service providers.

Disruptive Analysis believes that both trends will happen simultaneously, in fact - but just in different contexts. And WebRTC will be a catalyst of both - allowing UC to address more devices and use-cases, but also allowing "DUC" to encroach from adjacent software domains. (Non-WebRTC approaches will also continue as well, but most will converge over time, such as Microsoft's Lync Web API and ORTC)

We already see UC systems being extended outwards - for example "guest access" enabled in Cisco Jabber, or federation from MS Lync. WebRTC will extend this trend further - already seen in early implementations like Unify's Circuit. Hosted UC platforms offered by telcos are also starting to embrace WebRTC - a trend that is likely to be embraced by most vendors and major operators during 2015.

 

As in consumer markets, a core part of WebRTC-extended business UC proposition is around interoperability and identities being “anchored” in central systems, with well-defined numbers and identity (and security). This certainly makes sense for industries and companies with strict compliance and call-recording needs, for example - and it seems likely that these capabilities will be integrated into line-of-business apps such as doctors' practice-management or banks' trading platforms.

Conversely, other contexts have counter-arguments that communications-as-a-feature works better as optimised “islands”, disconnected from traditional UC platforms. A putative video-interviewing service for recruitment, built into a site like LinkedIn, would probably have no relationship with E.164 phone numbers or single-enterprise IDs. Similarly, clunky phone-number dial-ins for conference calls and webinars will gradually fade out - probably replaced with email addresses or other log-on IDs.

The real battleground, however, will be future vertical applications for business, both internally-focused and for B2C/B2B interaction. There seems little reason for an oil-company's field maintenance application (which might incorporate video interaction for remote diagnosis of problems) to interface with the UC system used at head office - especially if it is cloud-based and used for multi-way conferences with partners and suppliers as well. A security application, which includes both physical guards as well as CCTV cameras, would also likely be standalone.

The choice of communications components would up to the app developers, who may well choose a WebRTC platform provider, and look to support a broad range of endpoints, both with and without telephony capabilities. B2C interaction platforms on the web may also be decoupled from phone-based contact centres - although some will undoubtedly be multi-channel . In many instances, new models of communication will be invented - a permanent telepresence "window" between two offices doesn't really fit with the "call" and number-based UC system. The benefits of dis-unification (to users and developers) would likely outweigh the management/organisational downsides of UC.

Some of the DUC applications will be standalone communications services (as Skype, Talko and many conferencing/webinar platforms are today), while others will integrate audio, video or IM functions directly into other software or websites. Many, but not all, will based on WebRTC, perhaps using developer-centric 3rd-party platforms like Genband Kandy or Acision Forge.

The ramifications of this trend are huge - and largely under-appreciated by the UC community. Globally, there be 1.7bn people using communications as part of their work by 2019 - but Disruptive Analysis forecasts only 23% (400m) will have a formal UC/IP-PBX "seat" - and even most of those will use some form of DUC applications at least occasionally, as well as their main "corporate" system.

The other 1.3bn will use a mix of standard telephony (mostly mobile, GSM/UMTS plus a small % of VoLTE), or various form of VoIP, Video and cloud communications. Even among the hard-core of global "knowledge workers", there will be 600m who use WebRTC at least sometimes in their job - yet fewer than 100m of those will be using it in the context of their UC system. The vast bulk of business interactions via WebRTC will be dis-unified.

Put another way, by 2019, the number of dis-unified communications users in business will probably be twice the number using UC, whether premise-based or hosted. This is as big a trend in enterprise communications as so-called "OTT" apps are for telcos. 

For a full analysis of the impact of WebRTC on UC & DUC, see Disruptive Analysis' research report, which covers the enterprise market as well as telecoms and the consumer web. Purchasers will also receive an upcoming update document. Please click here for details.

Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis and author of this article & the report, will be at Enterprise Connect in Orlando on March 16-17, and UCExpo in London on April 21-22. Please contact information AT disruptive-analysis dot com for briefings, speaking engagements and private workshops/consulting