Netaxis Inspiration Day continues to grow

Last week we held our annual Netaxis Inspiration Day in Antwerp.  Wow the success of the day took us by surprise. We had a record audience significantly up on last year and some highly relevant speakers. Lots of questions from the floor, lots of conversations during the break and beers in moderation afterwards 😉

I’m not going to go over the whole day’s events in the minutest detail. It is worth noting though that there is, as ever, a lot going on in the communications industry. Lots of change and whilst historically change in this game has been slow to happen this pace of change is itself changing.

For one the industry continues to consolidate. Familiar names disappear and we have to get used to the new. It’s been nearly two years since Cisco announced their intention to purchase Broadsoft. We are only just getting used to the new name even though Cisco has been a “household” name in the tech world for decades.

I specifically mention Cisco because they are a partner we are doing more and more with. Projects in multiple markets with some great big brand customers. More about these in due course I’m sure.

The pace of change is driven to a large extent by the emergence of new technologies and indeed by players new to our market. How often do you use a landline? WhatsApp, Slack, Teams (pick your flavour) yes, mobile calls maybe when data connectivity is poor which it often is.

There is a fair chance that if you call me using a landline or cellular client if I don’t recognise the number I’ll think hard about answering the phone and don’t bother leaving a voicemail.  Now if you contact me using one of the aforementioned Apps you will likely get a 100% success rate.

Agility is extremely important in today’s market and one of the things we try and do is make it quick and easy for our customers to adapt quickly to the needs of their own customer base. New service? It’s an API call. Low touch easily customisable self help portal? Yep. The user experience is everything here by the way.

Opportunities such as our own Inspiration Day don’t really come that often in our market. I find that trade shows are too big and anonymous. This particularly extends to the massive event that is Mobile World Congress although as I write I realise that for us MWC is a big generator of leads and a place where many of our existing customers come to meet us.

I’d say that our own event and those organised by our friends at Cavell and the Cloud Communications Alliance are amongst the few that allow attendees to get together to discuss and learn. Intimacy is everything.

Anyway we are really pleased with how our Inspiration Day went. The week was so full on with customer meetings on the side it’s taken me the weekend to get over it. If you were there and were inspired please do get in touch to let us know:) Otherwise I’m sure we will be seeing you again soon.

Ciao