With less than two weeks to go until the start of ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Las Vegas, technology companies and IT professionals alike are gearing up for an engaging few days filled with education, insight, innovation, and opportunity. In preparation, TMCnet caught up with Kevin Butler, director of product management at Vertical Communications (News - Alert), to preview some of his thoughts on the latest trends in the IT world, including cloud computing, WebRTC, video communications, and mobility.

Butler will be participating in a panel discussion titled “When Trends Collide: Trend, Risks, and Benefits of BYOD Strategies,” which will take place at 10:00am on Tuesday August, 27^th. He will be joined by Thomas Beck of Teo and Steven Shalita (News - Alert) of NetScout Systems, Inc. to examine the challenges faced by business when attempting to effectively support a broad spectrum of employee mobile devices and what businesses need to consider before implementing a BYOD strategy. 

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1. How will the growing movement towards software impact traditional hardware vendors?

It’s important to realize that hardware is not going away. Hardware isn’t being replaced by software. Software still has to run on something. The real trend is the centralizion of hardware in data centers as well as reducing ownership and maintenance costs.

Customers are expecting to replace capital expense and ongoing management headaches for a simplified solution. Complex solutions are moving to the cloud, where they still run on hardware, just in data centers.

For hardware vendors, this means evaluating offerings that have traditionally been premise-based equipment and determining what needs to stay on the customer site and what can move off-site (whether it be a private or public cloud).

Vertical has been well-placed to address this dynamic for years. We sell a hardware solution, but have been primarily a software company for a number of years. Today, we are actively working on identifying critical communications functions that need to stay on the customer premises, and those that make the most sense centralized in the cloud.

2. The emergence of WebRTC has generated a host of new communications vendors looking to change the communications world.  How will these new providers impact the communications market?

WebRTC suggests an entire new infrastructure for providing communications functionality. It offers a great deal of promise in simplifying and streamlining the complicated protocols, plug-ins and downloads that are currently required for a wide range of communications services.

The challenge is that WebRTC is still in its infancy, and we haven’t even come close to seeing widespread adoption. This is especially important since the promise of WebRTC is a ubiquitous platform that eliminates the need for clients to install software for communications. If it’s not ubiquitous then the value proposition goes out the door.

It will be interesting to see the take up rate for WebRTC-based solutions once they hit the market. Customers—as a rule—are very cautious when implementing new technology. There’s no reason to believe that WebRTC will be any different. It may take awhile, but the technology has real promise in improving communications. Solutions need to be there when customers arrive, but it’s not a revolution until every customer has access to the technology on the platform of their choice.

3. How have you used video in your business communications?  What is the potential for video as a mainstream business technology?

We use video on occasion, and it certainly has its place. I wouldn’t use it as my primary means for communication, but in terms of conferencing with executives and strategy sessions, it works in digestible bites. I’m not sure that most people would want to use video for conversations with customer service representatives, or even co-workers. Video can be intrusive. I really don’t see it overtaking voice, email or chat in terms of becoming a preferred vehicle.

Video is a readily available technology — every computer and mobile device today seems to have the requisite camera — but it’s just not often chosen by the end-user for communication. There’s certain situation where it makes sense, but it’s not the primary choice. I don’t see that changing.

4. What different devices do you use in your daily business activities?  Which are the most useful and why?

As a product manager, I’m not exactly the best test case as my office has more computing power than many small companies. I have eight computers, four tablets, and innumerable phones. One of those computers hosts 11 or so virtual machines at any given time. I am evaluating and testing many solutions all the time.

Having said that, the most useful technologies may be Google’s common identity system. Whichever device I am on, I have access to the same information, preferences, etc. The value of Chrome’s ability to allow me to see all the recent web pages I’ve browsed on any device is profound. Amazon does a great job of this in their software as well.

Having a single identity that tracks across multiple devices makes it natural to use multiple devices. It’s critical to get the user to adopt a new device as well as the idea of using multiple devices. It’s not the PC, or the tablet, or the phone. It’s all of them, with the same experience and information across all platforms.

5. Is the mobile device market going to become a battle between Apple (News - Alert) and Samsung, or can others find success as well?

While Apple and Samsung are clearly the market leaders, it would be a mistake to dismiss other Android manufacturers, and even Microsoft (News - Alert)-based products. The global market for these devices is enormous—and expanding every day. All it takes is for a creative developer to bring some new innovation to market, and all the vendors turn on a dime to follow suit. It happened when Android devices came out, with Apple before that, and even with RIM way before that. There’s plenty of room for innovation, and even more room for developers to make money. It just comes down to vision, commitment and work ethic. 

6. To what degree has cloud computing influenced your business model?

Cloud services have greatly influenced our thinking on business models in a number of ways. The promise of the cloud is a low-cost, easy to use, service that is available anywhere. We realize we have to work harder at making our products simple to use while offering a compelling pricing story. That’s a difficult combination to pull off, but our new mobile apps are meeting that high bar.  We also realize that “available anywhere” is important and that’s why we’ve spent a lot of time making that mobile client fulfill the promise of powerful UC in your pocket. Our users aren’t tied to their desk anymore and we can’t be either.

At the same time, we’ve seen the difficulties of the cloud model and realize that it’s dependent on reliable high-speed pipes. In the US, those are still hard to find for many businesses. We have to take that into consideration. Communications are critical for our customers. That’s why they buy our products. We have to make sure we can provide communications even when the pipe fails. That’s the shortcoming of too many cloud solutions in our business.

7. What recent tech innovation will have the greatest impact on our lives?

The two most powerful forces go hand in hand. First, we are working to move all knowledge and communications onto the common platform of the Internet. More and more we are seeing the power of not locking up data in discrete silos, but letting it interact with all of the other data sources. Connecting all of this information together continues to revolutionize everything we do. We have to work on systems and means to make sure we don’t drown in all of this information.

The big winners will be companies that can take that information, organize it, and present it to the user in meaningful ways and at the right time. That’s something that we are working very hard on. Presenting the right data at the right time based on the communications that you are participating in, right now.

The explosion of mobile devices is the other trend. These devices have a variety of sensors to interpret the world around us, and we’re just starting to exploit the power of cameras, GPS, vibration, and other technologies.  The devices are also the intermediary for most of our communications, so it knows who we are talking to and what we are talking about.

We’re looking at a future where every one of our decisions and communications can be supported and informed by all of the data we have that relates to that interaction. Our memory becomes better, smart algorithms can make connections we never even thought of, we can access other people’s data on the same topic. All of that is already making it easier to remember your friend’s birthday and decide what to buy them as a gift. It can do even more amazing things for business! It’s a very exciting world.

8. What are you looking forward to accomplishing at ITEXPO Las Vegas?  What topics are you looking forward to discussing or hearing about?

Certainly, discussions on BYOD, mobility in general, and new software solutions for the enterprise are most appealing. As a growing company, we’re interested in talking to new talent (yes, I’m hiring.) We also want to see what trends are being adopted industry-wide, such as WebRTC.

ITEXPO is unique in that brings together experts from a variety of fields that have a common interest—delivering innovation that has real-world market appeal. Just like the previous ITEXPO conferences, the event in Las Vegas promises to be a thought-provoking and engaging event for all communications technology professionals.