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Why Smart Tech Companies Miss the Warning Signs | Tim Banting

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Why Smart Tech Companies Miss the Warning Signs | Tim Banting

The warning signs are often there. The difficult part is telling a successful company that its next big idea might be the wrong one.

Tim Banting, founder and principal analyst of So What? Now What?, joins Simon Dudley on B4Obvious—Before It Was Obvious for a conversation about competitive intelligence, unified communications, technology strategy and the uncomfortable business of seeing change before people want to acknowledge it.

Tim’s journey begins with the British Army’s Royal Signals and work alongside intelligence analysts during the Cold War. Watching small signals become meaningful patterns helped shape the approach he later brought to market intelligence: look beyond the announcement and work out what it means—and what somebody should do next.

The conversation follows his move through Cisco and Microsoft into industry research, including Current Analysis and Omdia, before establishing his own business. Having worked on both sides of the research relationship, Tim offers a perspective on how vendors buy intelligence and how analysts turn information into useful advice.

Tim and Simon revisit changing approaches to enterprise telephony, expanding product portfolios, softphones and Cisco’s Umi consumer telepresence bet. They discuss what happens when companies become insulated from customer reality, and why selling another feature is not the same as solving another problem.

Microsoft, Skype, Lync and Teams provide further examples of a collaboration market that kept changing direction. The discussion also considers AI-generated content, authenticity and the value of judgment when information is increasingly easy to produce.

For younger professionals, Tim explores practical education, trades and the idea of T-shaped skills: deep expertise in one area combined with the communication and commercial abilities that make that expertise useful.

In this episode:
- Military intelligence, weak signals and identifying consequential patterns.
- Competitive intelligence inside Cisco and Microsoft.
- Vendor strategy, customer needs and the danger of corporate bubbles.
- Unified communications, IP telephony and changing collaboration platforms.
- The difference between reporting news and delivering actionable insight.
- AI, career resilience and developing T-shaped skills.

Listen if you work in competitive intelligence, product strategy, AV, IT or unified communications—and want to ask better questions before the market makes the answers obvious.

Follow B4Obvious for candid conversations about business decisions and industry change. Hosted by Simon Dudley.

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TRANSCRIPT 🔗

WEBVTT
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If you're a friend of mine, I'm going to tell you if you've got spinach caught between your teeth.
00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:07.120
And I'm going to do that in private, never in public.
00:00:07.839 --> 00:00:14.080
So I wanted people to understand that I'm going to tell you as it is, but I will do it discreetly.
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I will tell you what I think is really good.
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I will tell you why you're different.
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And I will also tell you if you've got spinach in between your teeth.
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And I think once you start doing that, you establish that degree of trust.
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This week we have an old friend of mine, Tim Banting.
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Tim has been, well, actually, we were just talking about this before the show started.
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I've known Tim for probably 10 years, maybe a bit longer than that, but I have no idea how he got started.
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So, Tim, welcome to the show.
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Why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do today, and then we're going to go in the way back machine and find out how you actually got here.
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Excellent.
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We're jumping to TARDIS.
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There's a nice UK reference, and that also dates me as well.
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So yeah, my name's Tim Banting.
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I'm the founder and principal analyst of a company that I founded called So What Now What.
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Reason why I chose that name is uh a lot of market intelligence out there answers the what.
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So they go add infinitum on what's been announced or what press announcements sort of uh cover.
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What I wanted to do was to provide the now what is that sort of actionable insight.
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So I'd try and curate out the fluff, sort of strip out the marketing fluff, find out what's real for the competitive intelligence professional and market intelligence professional.
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Okay.
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So you're a pretty important guy, as in you're all over LinkedIn, a lot of people know who you are, a lot of people read what you have to say.
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But you didn't come out of the egg doing this.
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So why don't we go back in our TARDIS way back machine?
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Um, you would you be a Tom Baker era uh Doctor Who?
00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:03.280
I think I probably would have been.
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I think when I wasn't hiding behind the sofa of uh Doctor Who, it may have even been John Pertwee, which really dates me now.
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But uh I think Tom Baker was my Doctor Who.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Where did I start off?
00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:22.800
I started off in a small village called Abbot's Langley, which isn't too far from Watford, so sort of um outskirts of London, really, in the in Hertfordshire.
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What can I tell you about my childhood?
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Money was pretty tight.
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My father was a really good influence on me.
00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:34.960
He was a shift-working typesetter, so he worked in traditional print to start with.
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Um one day he tells me the story of a sales rep that turned up in the um car park in a brand new car, and my dad was on a bit of a break, so uh probably rubbing the oil off his hands or print off his hands, and had a word with the sales rep and asked him what he did.
00:02:51.039 --> 00:02:57.840
And from that day on, my dad decided that's what he wanted to do, and that really sort of reshaped our family from uh that day on, really.
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So uh yeah, it was a turning moment for my dad, and it always made me think of you know that I I've got a little poster on my daughter's uh wall next door that sort of says luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.
00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:14.240
So I think we make our own luck.
00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:20.879
My dad certainly made his own luck that day, uh, and he just recognised there's an opportunity there and uh decided to go for it.
00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:25.360
So that was really my dad was a big influence for me in in that way.
00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:34.159
Traditional tra uh pretty traditional household, usual sort of children should be seen and not heard, so that made me very quiet and rather observant.
00:03:34.960 --> 00:03:37.520
But what about yes, what about school?
00:03:37.759 --> 00:03:45.520
Because we've had a bunch of guests on so far, and it's been very interesting to see how much everyone's got an A V degree.
00:03:45.759 --> 00:03:48.639
Oh no, that's right, no one's got an A V degree.
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I don't think there is such a thing as an A V degree, but no one kind of realized at 16, what I'm gonna become an analyst in the telecoms business.
00:03:57.199 --> 00:03:59.919
I mean, so where how what was school like?
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And and then did you I don't even know if you went to university.
00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:08.319
Yeah, well, I went to school at a school called Parmeters, which was meant to be the Posh School.
00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:11.599
We we all had to have an interview to get in, although it was publicly funded.
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My claim to fame was I went to school with the guy that broke Bering's bank.
00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:19.600
So Nick Leeson was in my geography and computer studies class.
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So that was a bit of a uh that's a bit of a uh notorious name out there.
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So I left school with a handful of O levels, or as I was going through my sort of O levels at the time, I hadn't really got a clue on what to do, and there was a lot of redundancy, a lot of unemployment in the um in the UK at that time, and I thought, what the heck do I do?
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Um as a kid, I grew up, my parents used to take me to the Royal Tournament, which was like a big military tattoo in in Earl's Court in London as a bit of a treat.
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And I always was found in the back of a Royal Signals Land Rover playing around with the Morse keys and the radios and everything else, you know, underneath the camouflage net that they have in the sort of um stalls that they had out there.
00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:05.199
And I thought, well, actually, I I quite fancy a crack at the Royal Signals.
00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:11.439
So at the time I joined the Army Apprentice College in Harrogate, where I studied electronics and communications engineering.
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Um so that was my foundation.
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How can I put this?
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I had a very interesting career uh working alongside military analysts during the Cold War.
00:05:23.199 --> 00:05:26.160
So I spent uh they used to call it sneaky beaky stuff.
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So I sort of supported all the intelligence core, special forces type deployments out there.
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Um, and I watched them piece together all these little faint signals and indicators into patterns, and it's really quite a link to what I do today, actually.
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So military intelligence isn't all James Bond stuff, some of it is just looking at some very core signals around what the economy's doing and you know what the state of the Russian Navy was during the Cold War.
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And they were piecing together all these signals and coming out with these fantastic insights into what was going on, and I thought this is really exciting and interesting stuff.
00:06:01.120 --> 00:06:07.120
It's it yeah, it's it uh just so we get a sense of this, uh uh Tim, what year are we talking that you went in?
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Yeah, so that would have been 1986 through to 91.
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So just as the Berlin Wall came down, so I was at the NSA uh listening station in Teufelsberg on top of the uh it's called the Devil's Mountain, right out in the middle of Berlin, the biggest landmark or the highest landmark in Berlin.
00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:37.279
So I I was there and then my shift finished, and a colleague took over, and he spent the whole of the uh remaining tour just partying because the Berlin Wall came down.
00:06:37.519 --> 00:06:41.680
So uh he had a great I was doing all the work and he was doing all the partying, which felt a bit unfair.
00:06:41.759 --> 00:06:45.279
So yeah, that must have been about when was that 90s, early nineties.
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Yeah, yeah, 91, 92, I forget what the year was that the Berlin War well maybe before then.
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Berlin War was it 189?
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I don't remember now.
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89, 1991, that sort of era.
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Yeah, that sort of era.
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Yeah, so yeah.
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It's interesting, isn't it?
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You talk about you talk about piecing together a story.
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I I'm a big fan of that as well.
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I think it's interesting there's that older Indian story about the monks touching the elephant and the the one monk, the blind monk is touching the tail and thinks he's got an uh thinks he's got a snake, and one t touches a leg and thinks he's got a pillar, and another one touches an ear and thinks he's got a massive leaf.
00:07:24.879 --> 00:07:27.839
And it's only when you add it all together that you actually work out what it is.
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Although I'm not certain if you were blind you could really describe what an elephant is.
00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:38.720
Um but yeah, it's an interesting interesting set of skills that you generated as a result of that.
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It was, yeah.
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And then left the army, joined Mercury, who were the only alternative to British Telecom as a competitor then.
00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:50.639
So I sort of uh did all the SCADA stuff, the self-what was it?
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Uh SCADA visory control and data acquisition.
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It's all this sort of telemetry that goes between MUXs and networking gear.
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So I was programming those up and doing network provisioning in in the long, long time ago in the networking days.
00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:08.959
I then joined where did I go from there?
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I joined a very small company um that made their own dialogic board-based IVRs and cool centre cap uh cool centre uh functionality.
00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:23.519
Um and that was for but the biggest customer there was British Telecom.
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So BT with all their North stars and uh Meridian Option 11s and 61s and 81s.
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So really amazed.
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Do you remember those days when we had PBXs the size of filing cabinets that had had their own room?
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I mean, it's it's amazing how far we've gone, but I was I was sort of installing in in those sorts of locations.
00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:44.320
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
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This was uh what mid-90s by this point.
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Yeah.
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This was an era before I mean I've talked in other episodes to people about the way that IT and telecoms basically converged in the early 2000s.
00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:04.720
Uh I guess Cisco were probably the biggest lead with that with Call Manager, but but lots of other people did it as well, probably better.
00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:07.600
But Cisco clearly had the name.
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But in the mid-90s, the idea that telecoms and uh IT would merge was laughable.
00:09:14.879 --> 00:09:23.279
Uh I remember talking to telecoms managers of big financial houses, and they would say things like, Well, we get five nines reliability.
00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:28.720
For for those who don't know what that means, it means 99.999% reliable.
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Just so you get a sense of what that means, is that 20 minutes a year of downtime?
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And they were like, IT can't even do 99%, let alone the three more nines.
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So did you see did you see the IT coming, or did you think the telecoms and IT would be totally separate forever?
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Well, that's an interesting segue to my next part, which is uh I went to I went to um Reading University to do like a six-month course on token ring, just as we started moving to IP.
00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:02.559
So that was sort of wasted six months of my life.
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But I I joined um a company called Rockwell.
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They did very big A C D systems for call centers uh that were like I mean, you remember Rockwell from the um from the NASA days, you know, they were great, huge, really engineering heavy companies.
00:10:18.399 --> 00:10:22.080
So I got I got into the contact center business, then I joined a company called Geotel.
00:10:22.799 --> 00:10:26.240
And I got my interview with Geotel, and then Cisco went and acquired them.
00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:29.519
So on the day that I was meant to join Geotel, I missed out on all the shares.
00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:33.120
Um on the day I was meant to join Geotel, it was actually Cisco.
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So I started off at Cisco, and and at the time we were um looking at network-based contact centers and uh premise-based contact centers, and that was at the time when they made the Celsius acquisition uh acquisition for for IP telephony.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:11:00.879
Well, I remember going to the TMA, the Telecom Managers Association in Brighton with a big bag full of IP phones, and they were the early Celsius ones, I can't remember what they called, the VIP 12s or something like that.
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The ones that when you picked up the headset, they actually got hot on your ear as you were putting the putting the headset up at your ear.
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And all of my former traditional telecoms guys were coming into this room and they were picking it up and clicking and blowing.
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And does this work?
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And they were trying to catch it out, and and they sort of thought, well, maybe the my writing's on the wall here.
00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:21.759
This looks really interesting.
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And in a very short period of time, there we go, straight into IP telephony.
00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:30.159
So you you you kind of fell into IP telephony, yeah, right?
00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:30.320
Yeah.
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The day you started Cisco port you.
00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:36.000
I mean, it doesn't get any more falling into it than that.
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No, and it's very exciting to me.
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I mean, what did you think of it?
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Because as I said before, lots of telecoms managers, and I dealt with a load of them.
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I was telling these people I SDN lines, or I was selling a video conferencing that needed ISDN lines, and therefore telecom managers would come and talk to us, and they were all like, IT, oh no, they'll never run this.
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And then three years later, all of them decided to retire early, mainly.
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Did you see it coming?
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I saw, I did see, well, maybe that goes back to my military intelligence days where I was taught to sort of see these early signals because I did see to some degree the uh telecom adoption telecom adoption life cycle, Jeffrey Moore Crossing the Chasm, which is a book that everyone should really read.
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They were talking about this visionary, before you cross the chasm, you get this early adopter visionary stage where people are willing to sacrifice and trial and beta and be the sort of guinea pigs to see what this emerging technology would do.
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And I could see some very interesting names, even in finance, saying, well, actually, this makes perfect sense for us.
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We're gonna converge everything.
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Cisco came out with the architecture for voice video and integrated data, which was moving everything onto the same data network.
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And I thought, wow, this is really gonna cut down on cabling costs, astmos and changes, all of that sort of stuff.
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You don't have to have we had two different wiring schemes to desk, one for data, one for voice.
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It just made no sense.
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So I thought this is really quite revolutionary here.
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So I thought this is where I want to be and this is where I want to focus.
00:13:08.799 --> 00:13:10.240
It's a very exciting time.
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I mean, and because it was oddly, it was Windows server-based, because it it was um software-based, it moved so quickly because previously digital PBXs were you had to wait a year until Nortel released a new type of software for the uh option 11 or whatever, option 61.
00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:34.240
So you went from a yearly cadence of software releases to this regular cadence of feature updates.
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And we went from 10 features to 100 features to 250 features in a very short period of time, moving as the technology advanced.
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So it's a very exciting time.
00:13:46.799 --> 00:13:57.759
There's been an interesting debate recently that I think you've also got involved in in some of the groups where they're talking about innovation versus reliability, as opposed to an extent.
00:13:57.840 --> 00:14:00.480
It's not quite reliability, but and it's interesting, isn't it?
00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:08.320
That the telecoms world, the old telecoms world, sacrificed all innovation for reliability.
00:14:08.639 --> 00:14:24.879
And IT the IT world came along and went, no, no, no, we'll we'll build a a minimum viable product and then we'll just keep iterating, and then it will eventually beat the the uh the five nines reliability to 99.999.
00:14:25.120 --> 00:14:26.960
I don't mean five nines as in the company.
00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:30.639
Entirely different, although totally based on that that number.
00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:35.360
So it's it's interesting, isn't it, to see how the innovation changed.
00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:39.120
Because my world was more video, yours was obviously more telephony.
00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:51.679
And it's interesting to see how in some ways video was was innovative, but in other words in other ways it wasn't, because there was only at any one point there were only two players in the market.
00:14:51.919 --> 00:15:03.360
Now that whoever those two players were kept changing Pichatel and and Vtel, and then I suppose, well, very, very briefly, VTel and uh Polycom, and then Polycom and Tamburg.
00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:07.759
And there was it was always two companies.
00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:09.600
So the innovation wasn't that much.
00:15:09.679 --> 00:15:13.600
I think in a world where you've got lots of competitors, you get a lot more innovation.
00:15:13.919 --> 00:15:14.639
Yeah, and you do.
00:15:14.879 --> 00:15:26.960
Going back to those days, Simon, I remember we were speaking, you know, obviously based in uh we were at Bedfont Lakes at that particular oh no, we're at Stockley Park in that time near Heathrow, and we were speaking to people in San Jose all over the place.
00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:32.480
Again, you had to have do you remember the old days where you had to type in the uh IP address of the distant end?
00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:34.320
I mean, that was awful.
00:15:34.480 --> 00:15:50.000
And then at Cisco, it was like, well, we can we can use an IP phone to to dial the distant end, so we didn't even have to worry about using a well, it was like the the old days of using a phone for SMS, you had to keep pressing the button until you got the A, and then press the button until you got the D.
00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:55.759
Same with that horrible remote control with the ISDN, it was like you were forever, you know, it's a long format.
00:15:55.840 --> 00:15:58.080
If you mucked it up, it was really frustrating.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:15:59.840
Sometimes you had to get facilities in.
00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:08.000
For some reason, facilities knew how to get get all this to work, and then we moved into this world of well, actually, the IP phone can make the call to the distant end.
00:16:08.399 --> 00:16:14.159
And that was that was at the time when telepresence started making its way into onto the scene.
00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:15.919
I've got a little story for you.
00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:26.000
In 2005, uh I don't know if some of these characters, but in 2005, Craig Malloy, Michael Kanoya, and I went to see Cisco.
00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:39.200
We we were just about to launch the Life Size Room System, so the world's first high-def video system, and we met a guy in San Jose, Building 23, called uh Martin DeBeer.
00:16:39.519 --> 00:16:44.720
Yes, South African, very senior guy, don't remember Martin's title.
00:16:45.279 --> 00:16:54.720
And uh we this is all under NDA, and uh six people from Cisco turned up, they all flanked Martin, and it was very confrontational across this ball table.
00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:56.639
And they said, So what are you guys doing?
00:16:56.720 --> 00:16:59.919
And and uh we wanted their version of SIP.
00:17:01.039 --> 00:17:02.159
SCCP was it?
00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:03.600
SCCP skinny, yeah.
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:06.079
How how's SCCP become skinny?
00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:08.319
I that's a marketing statement at the first order.
00:17:08.559 --> 00:17:11.519
Because everyone got hung up with with the acronym, they could never pronounce it.
00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:13.359
Is that have I got one too many C's in there?
00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:13.759
Or yeah.
00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:14.079
Yeah.
00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:14.960
Oh ridiculous.
00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:18.960
So anyway, we met Martin De Beer and and uh he said, So what are you guys gonna do?
00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:23.039
And Kanoya stood up and said, We're gonna do high definition in one megabit.
00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:28.480
And he looked at us and said, Well, we're gonna do high definition in twenty megabits.
00:17:29.039 --> 00:17:36.160
And he said, Why would you do it in in and I said, sorry, I said, Well, why would you do it in twenty if you can do it in one?
00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:39.680
And he looked at me and said, You do know what Cisco do.
00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:50.880
And I responded, because I don't have very good impulse control, with with the phrase, well, but that's great, that's like Shell making a car that does one to the gallon.
00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:54.640
It would be really good for Shell, but it wouldn't be very good for the consumer.
00:17:54.960 --> 00:17:55.279
Absolutely.
00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:02.960
And uh and the meeting broke up at that point, and no, we never got skinny sports, and then they went off some years later, went off and bought Tamburg.
00:18:03.359 --> 00:18:08.079
But it's interesting, so you were part of Martin, I assume somewhere you were part of Martin's world.
00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:09.359
That's right, yeah.
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:17.839
And then Barry O'Sullivan with Voice Technology Group, VTG, and and Barry's sort of made his money from the uh telephony world.
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:27.519
And Cisco, I think, lost a bit of um I think Cisco lost its way a little bit because we ended up with, I remember saying at one time, why have we got 30 different types of IP phone?
00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:30.000
It's like we got one for every day of the month here.
00:18:30.079 --> 00:18:31.920
It just doesn't make much sense.
00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:40.079
But I think at the time Cisco were were obviously for every one dollar of IP telephony sold, it pulled through six to seven dollars of networking gear.
00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:52.720
But also there's a lot of margin to be made on IP phones then because the world wasn't ready for um PC-based communications and uh and the way in which we're communicating now, which uh sounds very odd looking back at it a long time.
00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:53.839
It does, doesn't it?
00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:54.079
Yeah.
00:18:54.319 --> 00:19:02.640
Telephones, people couldn't really get their a VoIP phone or a what's the word, not a VoIP phone, sorry, a soft phone, as they used to call them.
00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:05.839
Something that users just could not really get their head round.
00:19:06.079 --> 00:19:11.279
They preferred the physical location of a phone on their hand and their desk, which didn't really make a lot of sense.
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:15.359
Yeah, and there's nothing better than slamming a phone down, is there, in disgust, or when you're angry.
00:19:15.519 --> 00:19:22.400
But the weird thing was the soft phone was actually a graphical representation of the phone on the screen.
00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:31.200
There was no butt it was all let's let me dial out the sort of three by three phone had to tap it out with a mouse.
00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:32.880
It was it was strange.
00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:34.960
But that was the user interface back then.
00:19:35.279 --> 00:19:37.519
So why did they go for 30 different phones?
00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:43.759
Is it just because someone in product marketing just couldn't control themselves and decided they did need one for every day of the month?
00:19:44.079 --> 00:19:46.000
Yeah, I think it was the endless pursuit of more.
00:19:46.160 --> 00:20:10.160
It was like, well, what we need is more phones and more opportunity to upsell phones, and why have two speed dial keys when you can have six, and then we can add a sidecar and have another 12 on there, and maybe we can have a speakerphone on this one, and maybe we can have a colour screen on this one with some of those XML apps that everyone sort of wanted, but no one could tell you what what the app was that you you could use with it.
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:21.279
It was just a very odd time where I think it was a case of there's there's the portfolio, pick what you want, but I think in the end it just ended up confusing a lot of people.
00:20:21.440 --> 00:20:23.440
They they just didn't know which ones to go for.
00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:24.880
I think it's a good example.
00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:28.480
I think it's it but I think everyone did at that time.
00:20:28.559 --> 00:20:31.200
I I genuinely think that it wasn't just Cisco.
00:20:31.279 --> 00:20:37.200
Uh almost every player in the market was looking at it, going, we don't really know which way this market's gonna go next.
00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:43.839
So we'll spread the net as wide as possible and then just see which direction it starts going in.
00:20:43.920 --> 00:20:45.440
Uh it's interesting, isn't it?
00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:51.759
And that was a time where Poly well yeah, Polycom was building VoIP phones and competing with Cisco.
00:20:51.920 --> 00:21:12.400
In fact, that was a time where uh I know that Cisco got really upset with uh Polycom because apparently Polycom reps would literally follow Cisco Reps around in the city of London and other places and walk in the door and say, I know you're looking to buy 10,000 Cisco phones, but we can do them for$50 cheaper, which upset Cisco rather badly.
00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:16.880
And then Yale in started up and um just destroyed everybody's business.
00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:18.319
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:34.319
I mean, but it was interesting because um Cisco clearly led the market, drove the market, had great success there both in IP telephony video, still doing extremely well with their UC capabilities and collaboration capabilities.
00:21:34.799 --> 00:21:49.839
But I knew that it was time to move on for me when in 2010 Cisco launched this UMI, which was like a consumer video telepresence unit for$600 for the hardware and$25 a month subscription.
00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:53.599
And this was at a time when Skype was already offering free video calls.
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:59.279
And I I thought this is this is a little bit this this is going a bit wacky now.
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:06.079
And I remember Marking uh Martin De Beard sort of was um he was he was quoting the press release saying everyone will have one.
00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:10.000
Uh John Chambers was sort of saying, I bought one for me and one for my family members.
00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:18.960
And it almost remembers, I almost remember uh, you know, when ATT launched the Picture Tell back in 1964 at the New York uh trade conference.
00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:25.279
Again, it was about a thousand pounds, I think, in today's money just for a 30-minute video call.
00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:27.519
I mean, crazy prices.
00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:39.839
And I think that what I found at the time I was a market intelligence manager at Cisco was I felt it was very difficult working internally to tell people that have built up these businesses, is this wise?
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:41.920
Is are we going in the right direction?
00:22:42.079 --> 00:22:43.279
Is the writing on the wall?
00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:45.680
You know, have you looked at the early signals here?
00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:48.960
So I think Well they get they end up in their own bubble, don't they?
00:22:49.279 --> 00:22:52.319
This is the problem I think among companies do it.
00:22:52.559 --> 00:22:52.799
Yeah.
00:22:53.119 --> 00:23:03.680
I I spent most of my career, or much of my career sort of by accident, trying to keep CEOs uh grounded with with varying levels of success.
00:23:03.920 --> 00:23:12.720
And yeah, when someone like John Chambers is a good example, a man I have a I don't know him by the way, but I have a huge amount of respect for what Chambers did for Cisco.
00:23:13.119 --> 00:23:14.079
A remarkable CEO.
00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:43.519
But he does show a level of was it hubris, really, that you would think that it would be a good idea for the CEO of the company that makes it to turn around to the market and say, a multimillionaire, which he clearly was even then, a multimillionaire has decided to buy a product that his own company makes, as if in any way that's a testimonial for normal human beings to go, oh well, John Chambers has got one.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:45.200
Well, I I must buy one as well.
00:23:45.359 --> 00:23:46.799
Said he also had a private jet.
00:23:48.559 --> 00:23:50.000
Who were of the same level.
00:23:50.319 --> 00:23:52.160
Yeah, and he also had a private jet.
00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:54.319
So that wasn't a very good thing.
00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:57.279
Well he probably had a telepresence room in his house, I suspect.
00:23:57.519 --> 00:23:58.400
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:58.559 --> 00:23:59.680
I I wouldn't be at all surprised.
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:01.519
Telepresence was an interesting one as well.
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:04.799
I remember the first time I saw that, that was a wow moment for me.
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:26.160
But the uh Rob Lloyd actually came into the first telepresence room in Stockley Park with a big hot mug of coffee, and at that time we had all the all the lovely furniture and everything was built with the uh with the brown, the brown paint to make sure that your facial tone, skin tone, and and and everything was absolutely perfect.
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:35.680
He came down with this very big hot steamy mug of coffee, put it on the furniture in the first telepresent session, and made a perfect ring on the furniture.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:44.079
And then after that, we got this, there were posters made, no food or drink in this room, and everyone was busy trying to polish out the uh the ring, the coffee ring mark that he made.
00:24:44.319 --> 00:24:46.559
But yeah, really interesting times.
00:24:46.720 --> 00:24:49.920
Technology moved on so quickly, but at the time it was breathtaking.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.799
It was so, you know, I I know I've spoken at length of mistakes that Cisco had made.
00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:55.759
All companies do.
00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:04.240
Nortel made lots of mistakes, all companies really do, but I think you know, being at the forefront of that technology and that leading edge was was an exciting time for me.
00:25:04.319 --> 00:25:05.440
I really enjoyed it.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:07.279
Now, a question for you, right?
00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:11.440
Cisco clearly became a major, major player in IP telephony.
00:25:11.599 --> 00:25:16.160
Do you think it was the product, or do you think it was the business machine that Cisco is?
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:38.160
I mean, I I I'll I'll I'll lay my own hand out here and say Cisco to me is a company that is a sales organization and a magnificent sales organization with a product thing attached, and what they do is buy companies in to make to to allow their sales organization to go and sell them again.
00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:42.799
And this that sounds a bit like I'm being disingenuous to to Cisco.
00:25:42.880 --> 00:25:45.359
I'm not, I think it's a genius business model.
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:52.160
But do you think they won because their product was better, or they won because their their sales model was better?
00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:57.680
I think they're so yeah, I think you rightly pointed out at that particular time the sales model that they made so many acquisitions.
00:25:57.839 --> 00:26:05.200
I think John Chambers said if five out of eight of them find those acquisitions work for us, that's great.
00:26:05.279 --> 00:26:08.319
We can afford to learn from our lessons with the failed ones.
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:09.839
At that particular time, that was it.
00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:25.920
It was right inside the tornado and with the go-to-market and the channel partners and the CCIEs, all of that was geared up perfectly to just take these products in through acquisition, build your own business unit through it, sell it through the channel and repeat.
00:26:26.079 --> 00:26:40.559
Um, I think Cisco's model now is is more around looking that they make more informed decisions on the companies they're going to require, Splunk being one of them, and look at ways in which that can really start um telling the Cisco integrated story a lot more.
00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:55.119
At the moment, at sorry, at that particular time, I think when Cisco was going through their major acquisition strategy, it was more a case of well, it sits on a network so we can sell it, rather than how can we integrate this to add value through the whole portfolio?
00:26:55.519 --> 00:27:07.359
Yeah, I mean to to give the audience a bit of a sense of scale, I I I I think I would agree with you, Tim, and obviously you're much more involved, or were but much more involved with Cisco, probably still are than I ever have been.
00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:21.519
But I do remember when Cisco bought Camburg in whatever that was, 2009 or something, they were they were the 133rd company they'd bought, which is quite remarkable.
00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:23.039
They they do a very good job.
00:27:23.119 --> 00:27:32.079
I mean, it's all what Cisco do is they they they partner with a bunch of little companies, they wait to see which one is the best of the ones that they've partnered with.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:39.119
Best doesn't necessarily mean technically best, but certainly the best overall fit, should we say, for Cisco.
00:27:39.279 --> 00:27:46.720
Then they cut off all the others and say to the one that they're gonna buy, we're gonna buy you, but we obviously get to pick the price, because without us you're nothing.
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:50.079
And it it's hard to argue with the with the success of that.
00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:56.559
They effectively run all these little companies as incubators because they know they're not very good at building it themselves.
00:27:56.880 --> 00:28:00.559
And it's cheaper to build to have somebody else build it, and you just pick the winner.
00:28:00.799 --> 00:28:02.559
Yeah, it was build, acquire, or partner.
00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:04.319
Though those that was that was it.
00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:10.000
I mean, almost I almost felt like that should have been written on a t-shirt and we could have worn it all around Stockley Park.
00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:13.599
So uh Well, you don't want to give away, it's a bit like pen and tailor.
00:28:13.759 --> 00:28:17.519
You don't want to give away how you do the secret stories, do you?
00:28:17.759 --> 00:28:19.920
Even if that is fairly obvious if you look at it.
00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:21.920
Okay, so 2010 comes up.
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:25.599
You're now you've been at Cisco 10 years or something similar.
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:26.960
Yeah, that's right.
00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:32.799
So you decided this I d I do vaguely remember this UMI thing.
00:28:32.960 --> 00:28:35.839
They were trying to push it towards consumers, weren't they, at that time?
00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:36.559
That's right.
00:28:36.720 --> 00:28:45.680
Yeah, they were, because they they acquired this company called Link Sys, and we're gonna go into the big and big into consumer world because they thought, well, if it works in the world of business, it must work in the world of consumer.
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:47.839
But unfortunately, that didn't pay off for them.
00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:59.599
At the time, I was market intelligence manager looking at this new upcoming company that was stretching their legs and uh and sort of finding their way into software-based communication called Microsoft.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.079
So written by them.
00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:02.720
Yeah.
00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:19.519
Well, going back to um your your interview with PK, Patrick Kelly, uh, as you were going through all the various iterations of OCS, I actually joined Microsoft to help them out as a senior product manager for Link, which was just at that transition to Skype Skype for business.
00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:24.000
So we went from OCS to Link and then went to uh Microsoft Teams.
00:29:24.079 --> 00:29:28.640
So I spent two years in Redmond, great time there, very, very busy.
00:29:28.799 --> 00:29:33.359
They were they they looked at market intelligence and competitive intelligence with a completely different lens.
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:39.119
I was up briefing senior members of the team, they were flying in people for compete retreats.
00:29:39.279 --> 00:29:45.039
I was getting up at half past five in the morning to brief VPs and country managers on what was going on.
00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:49.200
They were doing a lot of battle cards and scenario planning and war gaming.
00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:57.200
Really exciting, really, really interesting stuff that that really helped position Microsoft to the, I would argue, to the place where they are now.
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:00.079
It's really interesting you talk about Microsoft, isn't it?
00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:03.759
And and I've got some questions for you about the Skype situation.
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:09.680
But it's interesting to see how different culturally Cisco and Microsoft are.
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:16.799
Microsoft, I mean, they do buy product in, but they don't do it at an industrial scale like Cisco do.
00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:26.799
And they have a sales organization that is cycled through, but not like Microsoft's is, where basically every year everyone seems to have to apply for their job again.
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:33.359
Cisco just w takes out the bottom, whatever they define as the bottom 10% each year.
00:30:33.599 --> 00:30:36.880
So it's kind of interesting to see how culturally different they were.
00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:46.960
And I wouldn't have expected Microsoft to be better, I don't know if they are better at competitive intelligence, but from what you've just said, they appear to take it more seriously.
00:30:47.279 --> 00:30:48.640
Well, I would think that was probably it.
00:30:48.799 --> 00:31:04.720
They they sort of realized, and uh obviously at the time, um prior to me joining, Bill Gates was going, he was wheeled in front of Department of Justice, I think, sort of explaining the monopolistic sort of approach that that Microsoft had, and he was taken to task there.
00:31:04.799 --> 00:31:11.039
So there was a lot of let's tread carefully, let's be respectful, let's run this past the lawyers.
00:31:11.119 --> 00:31:15.440
So there was a lot of concern around uh litigation, that sort of thing.
00:31:15.680 --> 00:31:29.440
There was also a lot of business units competing against each other, so the way in which instead of acquiring companies, you'd get business units competing against each other, and everyone would be backing against each other, uh, and and may the best be you win.
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:33.920
So I think those were during the Bollmer days, the the Steve Bollmer days.
00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:38.079
And I think Satya Nadella's made a really great job of changing that culture around.
00:31:38.160 --> 00:31:41.599
It's a very different Microsoft compared to the one I was at.
00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:48.319
Yeah, Bollmer seemed very competitive and combatitive as a as a CEO.
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:54.960
And maybe you want to talk about I'm interested having worked for both Cisco and Microsoft, two of the stalwarts of the industry.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:32:02.160
Um the difference in the way that the CEO's voice changes an entire organization.
00:32:02.319 --> 00:32:13.680
I I mean I certainly experienced it in well, every company I've worked for, but I've never worked for a company with 70,000 or 200,000 or however many people Cisco and Microsoft had got.
00:32:14.079 --> 00:32:24.240
But the the it always the CEO, even if they didn't meet 95% of the population of the organization, they definitely set the mood music.
00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:31.279
I'm interested to understand, in your experience, how do they do I I I've never really understood this myself.
00:32:31.519 --> 00:32:34.720
How do they manage to set the mood music?
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:43.279
I mean, I don't know if you ever met Bollmer, but he was an example of someone who affected the mood of a hundred thousand people at Microsoft at that time.
00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:44.400
Absolutely.
00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:52.960
I'm trying to sort of explain, I'm trying to pick my words carefully because it it was he had this absolutely incredible energy.
00:32:53.200 --> 00:32:58.559
He wanted to know exactly where how do we get through this, what's the path.
00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:02.480
He was very if if you ever done that sort of uh colour psychology, it was very red.
00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:06.880
Just give me the highlights, tell me where we're going, give me the action, go, go, go.
00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:14.960
And and that sort of dominated all the way or percolated all the way through the sort of Microsoft senior management team all the way through to managers.
00:33:15.039 --> 00:33:19.039
Um and it was this constant, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.
00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:23.920
Uh, not really giving yourself much breathing space to sort of make sure you're going in the right direction.
00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:26.400
But it was this sort of we'll learn along the way.
00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:41.119
Uh so it was a it was a very it was a it was a very difficult situation and very difficult environment to um to manage and very alien to, oddly, very alien to my military career, which was a lot more uh collaborative.
00:33:41.279 --> 00:33:42.960
You'd think it'd be the other way around.
00:33:43.119 --> 00:33:51.119
But I think that the military is more around, you're the expert, you're doing advise me, where it was top-down, this is what we're going to do.
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:54.799
Um so it was it was a very strange environment for me.
00:33:55.200 --> 00:34:00.319
Well, the British military, of course, and as does the US military, has very strong NCOs.
00:34:01.119 --> 00:34:08.880
Where, say, for example, the Russian military doesn't really have any kind of NCO level that that matter, it's all from the top down.
00:34:09.039 --> 00:34:16.239
Now, what about so compared with those two, compared with your military experience and your Microsoft experience, how was Cisco at that time?
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:20.559
Because you would have worked under John Chambers, another very big personality.
00:34:20.880 --> 00:34:22.800
Yeah, very charismatic.
00:34:23.119 --> 00:34:28.960
Um, more of a listener, very, very much focused on the customer, almost evangelical.
00:34:29.039 --> 00:34:34.400
I I remember going to my first sales conference out in San Jose, and people were running to get to the front.
00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:45.760
It was really quite incredible, a very charismatic person, spent a lot of time listening to customers, a lot of time listening to partners, which was very refreshing and really good.
00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:57.760
I thought that was really good for Cisco, the fact that he'd he'd go on to conference calls, speak with the Bank of America, speak with some of these very large corporations, find out what their problems are, what the issues were.
00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:02.559
Even when it came to customer support calls, uh, there was a clear escalation path.
00:35:02.639 --> 00:35:11.760
And if it got to a particular if it got to a particular level of escalation at the TAC, you know, it would be a case of John Chambers would be on the call.
00:35:11.920 --> 00:35:23.360
Um don't want to be the manager who's I had another colleague that was called John Chambers, and not the John Chambers, but a different John Chambers.
00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:29.360
And I remember on the conference calls, you used to get announced, and a computer voice would say, Tim Banting joined the call.
00:35:29.599 --> 00:35:41.840
One call, John comes in late, and it said, John Chambers joining the call, and everyone, you know, it all went silent, and everyone was waiting for a a Southern Drilled accent to be on the line, but it wasn't.
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:47.199
Yeah, but he he would get involved where you needed to get involved, quite hands-on from a customer perspective.
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:48.159
It's interesting.
00:35:48.320 --> 00:35:50.960
Tell me about CEOs, a little as side story.
00:35:51.519 --> 00:35:56.079
I think the best CEO I ever worked with was Bracken Darrell at Logitech.
00:35:56.400 --> 00:35:58.400
Uh that's possibly not true, actually.
00:35:58.719 --> 00:36:00.719
Not that Braffin wasn't fantastic.
00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:04.400
He was, but I've worked for some really other great CEOs as well.
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:09.760
Craig Malloy in the early days, Bob Haggerty when I was a Polycom.
00:36:10.719 --> 00:36:11.440
Very different.
00:36:11.519 --> 00:36:15.679
But but Bracken he he wasn't particularly colour.
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:18.320
He was he was retail focused.
00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:23.840
So he didn't really he understood the market, but you couldn't put him in front of a big B2B customer.
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:27.679
He just didn't have the the language to speak to these folks.
00:36:28.239 --> 00:36:40.559
But I I once heard uh Bill uh Clinton described as a man who everyone felt if they'd met him that he was their best friend and that he really cared about them.
00:36:40.719 --> 00:36:44.639
And as I used to say about Charles Legall, he could um fake sincerity.
00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:49.760
And I never really knew if Bracken faked it brilliantly or really did care.
00:36:50.159 --> 00:36:53.199
And I would meet him once a year at some conference or other.
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:56.960
I mean, I met him more often than that, but in person, probably once a year.
00:36:57.119 --> 00:37:10.079
And you come away from a 20-minute conversation just pumped, just what a great he's listened to everything I've said, he's understood, he uh I've given him all the background, nothing would change.
00:37:10.639 --> 00:37:12.719
But my god, it made you feel good.
00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:18.320
And it's very interesting to see how different CEOs manage things in different ways.
00:37:18.639 --> 00:37:22.239
No, absolutely, and it does set the it does set the precedence for the whole company.
00:37:22.639 --> 00:37:29.599
It's not just uh a a poorly written vision statement slapped on a wall somewhere, but it it does really it starts with the leader.
00:37:30.079 --> 00:37:30.880
It does, yeah.
00:37:31.039 --> 00:37:33.199
Oh, those AI, those things are always nonsense.
00:37:33.280 --> 00:37:36.800
I think they were always written by AI, even before AI existed.
00:37:37.440 --> 00:37:39.840
Uh so okay, so Microsoft.
00:37:40.480 --> 00:37:43.440
Did all the links that oh I did have a question about Skype.
00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:48.880
So Microsoft bought Skype for eight and a half billion dollars and they kept the label.
00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:51.199
Did they keep anything else?
00:37:51.519 --> 00:38:04.239
I'm not sure that they did, because I I remember when I first moved out to the uh US, I got a Skype mobile handset that would connect on any Wi-Fi network and it would allow me to ring my folks back home.
00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:10.400
But I don't remember anything sort of I don't ever remember anything surviving that.
00:38:10.559 --> 00:38:19.519
Um and I think Link had its own separate infrastructure, Skype had its own separate infrastructure, and then everything went away when they they they came out with Teams.
00:38:19.679 --> 00:38:23.119
It was like, let's let's just say it was all distributed.
00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:31.360
I mean, for those of us who aren't old enough, those of you watching this who aren't old enough, unfortunately, Tim and I are clearly at almost exactly the same vintage.
00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:37.760
Skype, the biggest thing about Skype in the early days wasn't telephony, it was Instant Messenger.
00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:45.440
And all your friends could work at different companies, and Skype was the only instant messenger that allowed you to talk to anyone across any network.
00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:49.679
Um it got past everyone's firewalls in those days very easily.
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:58.000
And as a result, everyone already had Skype on their desktop because they'd send each other messages who's going for lunch, that sort of thing, for different companies.
00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:06.800
But so it was completely distributed, and then Microsoft bought it, and then they kept the label, but I think all the infrastructure behind it just disappeared.
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:08.880
So do you think it was worth eight and a half?
00:39:09.039 --> 00:39:13.760
I mean, I suppose now eight and a half billion dollars to Microsoft is like find it down the back of the couch.
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:16.480
But at the time, it seemed like a lot of money.
00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:17.840
It certainly was.
00:39:18.079 --> 00:39:20.400
Um, and I'd I'm not too sure.
00:39:20.559 --> 00:39:27.840
I'd love to sit on a call with Mahendra or or other people that I know at Microsoft still and sort of talk through that.
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:30.639
That would be a really interesting uh angle to explore.
00:39:30.880 --> 00:39:36.880
Yeah, there was Yahoo! Messenger and all sorts of other consumer versions out there.
00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:56.800
I have a feeling that someone somewhere thought, well, if we can have a foot in the business world and link to the consumers, and I remember at the time there were things like Microsoft were experimenting with eSIMS in the early days for laptops, and they obviously had their Windows mobile phones as well, and that partnership with Nokia.
00:39:57.199 --> 00:40:01.039
I wondered if they thought, well, this will be a way of connecting B2C.
00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:04.559
Um I'm not too sure what what was going through.
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:11.840
Or it could have been a high-level exec who decided he wanted an MA on his resume when he moved on to some other company.
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:14.639
And believe me, that happens all the time.
00:40:14.960 --> 00:40:15.920
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:16.159 --> 00:40:18.800
I need I want to be a CEO next, but I haven't done an MA.
00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:20.079
Oh, I better do an MA.
00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:23.679
Um da-da! We found another company to buy.
00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.079
Okay, so let's move forward a bit.
00:40:26.159 --> 00:40:31.199
Uh, Microsoft, you you did you got through Link, you got to Teams, then what happened?
00:40:31.599 --> 00:40:32.159
What happened then?
00:40:32.239 --> 00:40:36.559
Oh, I got a phone call from uh someone saying, Have you ever thought of being an analyst?
00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:48.639
Um and I thought, well, that sounds interesting because I I've done market intelligence inside a vendor and I've spoken to all these interesting guys like Gartner Forester, IDC, Current Analysis, all of these sorts of people.
00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:51.920
I thought, oh, I wonder what it's like on the other side of the table.
00:40:52.159 --> 00:41:02.960
So having a very large budget to buy all this market research, I thought, well, it'd be great to be the other way around, working for a market research company and selling into these vendors.
00:41:03.199 --> 00:41:05.360
So I've been on the buy side of market intelligence.
00:41:05.440 --> 00:41:08.000
I thought, well, I'll move on to the sell side.
00:41:08.079 --> 00:41:09.679
So I joined current analysis.
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:13.199
That was my first sort of foray into market research.
00:41:13.280 --> 00:41:16.480
Um, and then I joined from there on, I moved I joined to Omdia.
00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:20.400
And then after that, I I sort of formed my own company.
00:41:20.559 --> 00:41:33.360
So uh yeah, I sort of poached a turn gamekeeper, not only Cisco to Microsoft, but also then from one side of the table to the other, from market research um purchaser to market research vendor.
00:41:33.679 --> 00:41:38.800
So talk us through that, because I don't think many people have done that, and and no one we've had on the show yet.
00:41:39.039 --> 00:41:43.280
So what fundamentally is the difference between the two roles?
00:41:43.440 --> 00:41:45.119
Is it a completely different world?
00:41:45.199 --> 00:42:08.239
I and and I say this because I remember an old boss of mine once said uh I was I was joining Polycom in back in 1999, and the the VP of sales said to me, He said, Well, we we because I asked him about the role, I'd never worked for a vendor, and he said, Well, we sit up here on our ivory cloud and we encourage things that are good and we discourage things that are bad.
00:42:08.400 --> 00:42:12.480
And uh I thought to myself at the time, I thought, well, ivory clouds don't float very well.
00:42:12.800 --> 00:42:17.119
When I got there, it was more like the Battle of the Somme than it was standing on a cloud, right?
00:42:17.199 --> 00:42:18.320
It was absolute chaos.
00:42:18.639 --> 00:42:20.000
Muddy trench warfare, yeah.
00:42:20.159 --> 00:42:21.599
Yes, it really was.
00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:22.239
It was.
00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:31.039
Uh, you don't go from 12% market share to 65% market share in under two years without there being a bloodbath and there was a bloodbath.
00:42:31.280 --> 00:42:33.199
Great fun, but my god, it was chaos.
00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:41.119
But anyway, did you what did it look like you were on Ivory Cloud when you joined, and then two days later you're stabbing people in the face in a trench?
00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:43.679
In terms of market research selling into vendors.
00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:50.239
Yeah, I mean, just I'm just wondering, did it look quite different from the outside than it turned out to be on the inside?
00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:51.599
That's perhaps the real question.
00:42:52.239 --> 00:43:15.440
Yeah, so part of my role as market intelligence for Cisco and Microsoft was really about looking at all the different market research firms and trying to synthesize and read between the lines of all of the different market research firms, because some of it was actionable intelligence, some of it read like somebody's thesis, very, very sort of high-level thought leadership stuff.
00:43:15.679 --> 00:43:28.079
And it was very much a case of um trying to read between the lines, trying to find out what was actionable, trying to work out what whether or not there was any middle ground between all the different vendors, because everyone had their different perspectives.
00:43:28.239 --> 00:43:35.280
So I found out with with like a million dollars worth of budget, I'd be buying market research and I'd still have to be doing work myself.
00:43:35.519 --> 00:43:46.079
So on the other side of the on the other side of the table, it was how can my experience help drive what I know is needed for the vendors?
00:43:46.239 --> 00:43:51.840
So at that particular time, current analysis was very much focused on um actionable insights.
00:43:52.079 --> 00:43:56.239
Just don't throw something out there and then hope that the vendor will pick it up.
00:43:56.400 --> 00:44:04.000
Tell them what they need to know, which is great, but of course It still has to be very generic because you don't know which offenders you're writing for.
00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:08.800
It would be a mix of Microsoft, Cisco, and someone else, or Tambo, Poly, and Logitech.
00:44:08.880 --> 00:44:12.159
Or so it had to be, it was generic, but it wasn't really precise.
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:18.079
That's where you go into the wonderful world of projects and customization and that sort of thing.
00:44:18.239 --> 00:44:19.360
Yeah, it was an interesting.
00:44:19.519 --> 00:44:24.960
I had to sort of think if I was reading this, what would I want to get from it?
00:44:25.039 --> 00:44:29.599
And what would I then pass on that would be actionable to a senior product manager?
00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:36.159
Yeah, one of the one of the things that I think is always interesting is there's an old phrase that Napoleon used.
00:44:36.239 --> 00:44:42.320
He said, if you want to lead the English, work out which direction they're marching in and walk in front of them with a flag.
00:44:42.480 --> 00:45:01.360
And I think it's intriguing to me that we are in a world where some folks within an organization, and having been on the other side as the buyer of competitive intelligence, um, there are folks within organizations who want to pick the one that fits their worldview.
00:45:01.599 --> 00:45:06.719
I believe this, find me information that fits that, and I always resisted that massively.
00:45:06.800 --> 00:45:07.840
It's like, no, no, no.
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:11.119
We've got to know the truth, not just comforting lies.
00:45:11.440 --> 00:45:22.639
But of course, there's always going to be folks within organizations who just don't like the answer you're giving them and try and affect how you report to them as a result.
00:45:23.119 --> 00:45:24.079
Yeah, yeah.
00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:34.239
How uh I remember somebody saying to me, I I won't name the company because people will work out the individual, but people saying what we pay these analysts money, and then they're not saying we're the best.
00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:43.840
And I'm like Because everyone pays the money, and if everyone just got an analyst to say they're the best, they're not an analyst now, they're a they're a YouTube marketer.
00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:45.280
I mean, what what do you want?
00:45:45.599 --> 00:45:48.159
Just say we're the best and be done.
00:45:48.639 --> 00:45:51.599
Well, that's great, but it doesn't really mean anything, does it?
00:45:51.679 --> 00:45:53.760
It's self-praise is no recommendation.
00:45:53.840 --> 00:45:58.079
I'm uh I am in fact the world's greatest lover and racing driver.
00:45:58.320 --> 00:46:03.360
And few few people know that because no one else has ever said that about me.
00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:08.800
But and I suspect many of you, if you're watching this, I think you'll know already that neither of those things are true.
00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:12.320
And if you're listening, I will let now neither of those things are true.
00:46:12.639 --> 00:46:21.679
But there is this sort of uh pressure, there is must be a pressure on you as an analyst to just say what people what you think people want to hear.
00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:24.719
How did you solve that or solve for that?
00:46:25.199 --> 00:46:35.280
I used to say right from the start, I said, look, if you're a friend of mine, I'm gonna tell you if you've got spinach caught between your teeth, and I'm gonna do that in private, never in public.
00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:42.239
So I wanted people to understand that I'm gonna tell you as it is, but I will do it discreetly.
00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:50.320
So that's my my thought is that the sort of well, most I was gonna say like the jester in the court, in the king's court, the jester.
00:46:50.559 --> 00:46:59.920
It's a case of I will here's here's my counsel, I will tell you what I think is really good, I will tell you why you're different, and I will also tell you if you've got spinach in between your teeth.
00:47:00.079 --> 00:47:04.000
And I think once you start doing that, you establish that degree of trust.
00:47:04.159 --> 00:47:10.719
I'm not gonna that there's all there's all too much in the analyst community, this sort of perception that it's pay-to-play.
00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:15.280
I don't know of too many vendors, if any, that actually do that.
00:47:15.519 --> 00:47:27.840
Um, so it's it's one of those areas where you have to tread very carefully, you have to realize that not only are they they are clients, you know, have to say the you have to tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly.
00:47:27.920 --> 00:47:30.800
You're you're doing themselves a dis disservice if you don't.
00:47:31.280 --> 00:47:32.480
Yeah, I think that's fair.
00:47:32.639 --> 00:47:37.840
But it takes the level of bravery that when you're on the buy side, you don't necessarily need to have.
00:47:38.079 --> 00:47:56.559
And I I do agree, I mean I think there's been a few occasions in the 30 years I've been doing this where companies have paid certain uh very large analyst firms large sums of money and suddenly they're at the top of their two by two thing, and then as soon as they stop paying them, they're not even on the list anymore.
00:47:56.960 --> 00:48:07.039
But I do think the pay to play gets thrown around more because it's easy, it's an acquis it's an accusative accusation, even, that no one can refute.
00:48:07.679 --> 00:48:10.880
So it's easy to throw around if you don't like the answer you're getting.
00:48:11.280 --> 00:48:12.639
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
00:48:13.199 --> 00:48:13.760
Interesting.
00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:16.079
Okay, so you're doing your own thing now.
00:48:16.400 --> 00:48:17.039
Uh-huh.
00:48:17.760 --> 00:48:19.440
What are you concentrating on?
00:48:20.159 --> 00:48:25.039
Well, I'm trying to concentrate on market adjacencies and the way where the market's moving.
00:48:25.119 --> 00:48:34.159
I've seen so many transitions from digital telephony to IP telephony to collaboration to contact center to customer experience.
00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:54.400
What I'm trying to do now is look at where the market's going or skate to where the puck is going to use a Wayne Gretzky uh so I look at the unified communications side of things, I look at customer experience, I look at CCAS, contact center as a service, and also CPaaS, uh communications platform as a service.
00:48:54.719 --> 00:48:58.239
Because on the on the customer side, they're all converging.
00:48:58.480 --> 00:49:09.599
CPAS players have got uh, or CPAS vendors have got an element of contact center in there, contact center have got an element of CX in there, CRM vendors are adding contact center.
00:49:09.679 --> 00:49:12.000
It's all this, it's all going as this big blob.
00:49:12.159 --> 00:49:15.599
So I'm trying to help customers and clients understand where that's all going.
00:49:15.920 --> 00:49:27.920
UCAS as well, that seems to be very stagnant in terms of development, and we're seeing a lot of UCAS vendors, Zoom, Rings Central, Dialpad, and others sort of integrating contact center capability in there.
00:49:28.079 --> 00:49:36.719
So all of this is very much blurring, which is leading to buyers turning around and saying, I don't know what to do, I'm not going to make a decision.
00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:39.280
And vendors sort of saying, Well, where do we go next?
00:49:39.440 --> 00:49:45.360
So I'm hoping that my service will help vendors walk through that that difficulty.
00:49:45.679 --> 00:49:55.840
Now, I know this is about this podcast is meant to be about how things have turned out when in hindsight they always look obvious, but at the time they certainly didn't look obvious.
00:49:55.920 --> 00:49:57.440
And we talked about that at some level.
00:49:58.079 --> 00:50:04.320
One of the things that in the last 15-20 years I've noticed is everyone has always said software is eating the world, right?
00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:09.119
And we already talked about how Voigt did that to the old telephony world as an example.
00:50:09.280 --> 00:50:12.320
Just monstrous iterations, forever better.
00:50:12.639 --> 00:50:14.320
Do you think AI is changing that?
00:50:14.480 --> 00:50:23.280
I mean, I I gotta say, from my own experience, I haven't actually written myself a CRM yet, but to be honest, I probably could.
00:50:23.519 --> 00:50:31.920
When I say I would write, I mean I turn around to ChatGPT or Codex or Gemini and go, write me a uh CRM.
00:50:32.719 --> 00:50:38.639
I've done a number of applications for my own use, and they turned out to be really quite useful.
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:40.320
What's your thinking on that?
00:50:40.400 --> 00:50:45.519
Do you think the customers are going to start just saying, well, I don't need to spend all this money on a SaaS model anymore.
00:50:45.599 --> 00:50:46.639
I'll simply build my own.
00:50:46.880 --> 00:50:49.360
Is that turning into a practical option now?
00:50:49.599 --> 00:51:00.239
Yeah, I think Salesforce has seen the writing on the wall, and that's the reason why they went headless CRM very quickly, knowing that, well, actually, it doesn't matter what user interface you got on the front, it's all about the data on the back.
00:51:00.400 --> 00:51:04.079
So I think a lot of the data is the new currency.
00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:06.239
AI is only as good as the data that it's got.
00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:18.960
And I think with this sort of, and I hate the term vibe coding, but I think with this sort of vibe coding environment, you're gonna get business analysts or business people that will just be able to say, I want a composite dashboard of this, this, this, and this.
00:51:19.119 --> 00:51:23.440
I think the user interface with um unified communications is going to disappear.
00:51:23.519 --> 00:51:30.880
It will be very clawed-like, you'll have a chat session, a couple of buttons, and a canvas that will produce these artifacts based on what you want.
00:51:31.119 --> 00:51:37.440
I'm hoping at some time AI will work out what's important so it'll be able to do my own personal workflow.
00:51:37.599 --> 00:51:44.159
So if I'm working on a project with you, Simon, it will say, Well, Simon wants this delivered by Friday, you better start working on this bit now.
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:48.239
I'm hoping that AI will start leaping forward in terms of productivity there.
00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:55.679
And I have a feeling no one's really gonna care about the user experience because we'll create what's useful for us.
00:51:56.079 --> 00:52:10.719
Yeah, yeah, I think which probably segues us nicely into so what's gonna happen in what we talked throughout your career of you noticed things were changing and more clearly than many of us have, by the way.
00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:13.679
So well done you, or at least that's what the story you've told us.
00:52:13.760 --> 00:52:16.079
So I but I I completely believe you.
00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:18.800
What do you think is gonna happen next?
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:24.159
Do we think that AI is gonna eat the world in the same way that software at the world the last 15 years?
00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:26.159
I'm really concerned about AI.
00:52:26.239 --> 00:52:31.760
Um I am a little more skeptical, and I'm also concerned that there's a bit of a bubble going on.
00:52:31.920 --> 00:52:34.239
I don't think the world's got enough water.
00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:38.400
I know the UK hasn't got enough water to service all the data centers that it needs.
00:52:38.559 --> 00:52:44.239
I'm seeing things like the EU AI Act putting a big break on things.
00:52:44.400 --> 00:53:00.880
There's concern in the EU around the US Cloud Act and the way in which you could any US vendor could go into any data center and pull European data out if the government decides that it's in their interest to do so.
00:53:01.119 --> 00:53:04.480
I have a feeling that we're gonna see a lot more regulation in in place.
00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:14.639
There's a lot of concern around these frontier models that are doing some amazing things, lying about things and replicating and stuff of science fiction movies.
00:53:14.880 --> 00:53:18.400
I have a feeling that some of this is going to actually slow down.
00:53:18.559 --> 00:53:25.039
I think regulation is going to be enforced, and I'm hoping that it slows down rather than the bubble bursts.
00:53:25.199 --> 00:53:32.239
Well, I do have a feeling that uh there's only so many NVIDIA chips that you can put in your data centers and recycle every single year.
00:53:32.320 --> 00:53:35.039
There's there's only so much of that you can do.
00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:42.639
And we're seeing people like Uber burning through all of their annual use of tokens in a couple of months and realizing how expensive it is.
00:53:42.719 --> 00:53:54.400
And I'm not sure there's too many marketing departments are gonna get pats on the back for doing wonderful creative slides and burning through a load of tokens when there's developers sitting around saying, Well, where did they all go?
00:53:54.559 --> 00:53:55.920
Where do all those tokens go?
00:53:56.159 --> 00:53:56.559
I don't know.
00:53:56.719 --> 00:54:04.000
I think we've we've we're reaching this point where um there's a lot of hype, and I think that that's gonna level out, and hopefully it's level out rather than burst.
00:54:04.079 --> 00:54:07.360
But I'm rather skeptical about AI.
00:54:07.519 --> 00:54:16.400
You know, great tool, fantastic, but I I do wonder at what time do people turn around and say, well, actually, it it's it's too expensive.
00:54:16.559 --> 00:54:22.960
I do need some humans in the loop for judgment calls and to validate all of this and to understand context.
00:54:23.119 --> 00:54:28.800
I've I'm I'm amazed at how many hallucinations I've seen in things like LinkedIn posts and copy.
00:54:29.280 --> 00:54:42.559
And uh if you used AI at all, you you need to have that human judgment, that awareness, and that context to understand if it's real or not, or actually to make sure that the prompts are well engineered enough to give you a decent output.
00:54:43.199 --> 00:54:44.880
I I couldn't agree with you more.
00:54:44.960 --> 00:54:48.320
Um unfortunately I I'm more skeptical than you, even.
00:54:48.559 --> 00:54:50.000
I I think it's gonna burst.
00:54:50.159 --> 00:55:01.119
I think Anthropic and OpenAI, they say, oh, we've got OpenAI just stated just yesterday that they've got a billion dollars worth of uh of ad revenues.
00:55:01.760 --> 00:55:07.119
All that really proves is that human beings don't understand the difference between a billion and a trillion.
00:55:07.360 --> 00:55:15.599
Um they would have to have trillions of dollars worth of ad agents or ad revenues to justify the valuations these organizations are getting.
00:55:15.679 --> 00:55:18.079
It and it doesn't mean that people don't understand that.
00:55:18.159 --> 00:55:30.239
They they think well, AI is useful, and I think very few people would disagree that AI is useful, but it's not useful enough to justify the valuations these organizations are getting.
00:55:31.840 --> 00:55:34.400
There's obviously a big backlash now in the US.
00:55:34.559 --> 00:55:43.039
No one wants a data center within 50 miles of their house, and that's true across the entire country, so I think that's becoming an issue too.
00:55:43.280 --> 00:55:53.039
And I think we're living in a world where I think uh we we might be I hope, maybe I'm just uh being hopeful here for a second, which isn't not my standard methodology, by the way.
00:55:53.119 --> 00:56:00.559
I'm not a generally hopeful person in these senses, but one wonders are we at peak social media and are we at peak AM?
00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:03.920
I think people are getting bored with the AI material.
00:56:04.079 --> 00:56:08.559
You can see it in it feels non-authentic.
00:56:08.960 --> 00:56:12.159
It's very artificial as the words as the words.
00:56:12.320 --> 00:56:13.440
It is artificial, yes, yes.
00:56:13.599 --> 00:56:15.199
Yeah, yes, the clue in the name, isn't it?
00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:16.079
Yes, absolutely.
00:56:16.159 --> 00:56:18.239
And it's not very intelligent at times either.
00:56:18.559 --> 00:56:22.320
No, no, well, no one really you can't even define what intelligence is, can you?
00:56:22.480 --> 00:56:23.840
So all right.
00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:30.000
So as we come to the close on this, you've had a very interesting and diverse career, and I knew very little about any of it.
00:56:30.159 --> 00:56:32.800
So this is great, and thank you for spending the time with us.
00:56:33.199 --> 00:56:34.400
Couple of questions.
00:56:34.719 --> 00:56:44.960
If you were a young person now, or or you knew a young person now that you were advising, I've asked another everyone we've asked so far has given me an answer to this one.
00:56:45.119 --> 00:56:47.679
Would you what would you say about education?
00:56:48.159 --> 00:56:50.159
Is is university worth it?
00:56:50.239 --> 00:56:51.519
Would you do something else?
00:56:51.679 --> 00:56:55.280
Would you recommend a military career, perhaps like you did?
00:56:55.440 --> 00:57:01.199
Um would you say just go and do a CCIE, or would you just say just go and get a job and work it out from there?
00:57:01.519 --> 00:57:02.559
It's a tough one, isn't it?
00:57:02.719 --> 00:57:13.840
I mean, I well, I've got a 12-year-old daughter, so I came to parenthood very late, and I would probably say to my daughter, look for for something that is a trade, something that AI won't replace.
00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:24.000
Whether or not that's a heating engineer like her mother is, or whether or not that's nursing or doctor or something where AI's not going to come along and steal your job.
00:57:24.239 --> 00:57:26.960
Peter Drucker coined the term uh knowledge worker.
00:57:27.119 --> 00:57:32.639
I don't think he ever imagined that AI would come and take a lot of people's jobs in that space.
00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:37.360
So I think I'd probably say look for a trade, try not to tarry yourself with debt.
00:57:37.599 --> 00:57:50.800
I know you have to the average UK student, I think, leaves education with at least 30, 30,000 pounds worth of debt, which is really quite worrying before you even jumped on the housing market.
00:57:51.039 --> 00:57:52.960
So it'd probably be learn a trade.
00:57:53.119 --> 00:57:56.719
Or the other thing that I like the idea of is being T-shaped.
00:57:56.960 --> 00:58:03.440
So if you think about a T, you want to be deep in something like an IT domain if you want to move into our space.
00:58:03.519 --> 00:58:14.960
So network protocols, cloud security, collaboration, and then broad in the skills that you have, like soft skills like cross-team collaboration and communication skills.
00:58:15.119 --> 00:58:18.559
So deep expertise and then this broad set of skills.
00:58:18.719 --> 00:58:21.519
I think that applies to anything, even trades.
00:58:21.599 --> 00:58:28.320
You know, it's no good being the an excellent carpenter if you can't go out there and win business or or do your own sales and marketing if you're self-employed.
00:58:28.480 --> 00:58:35.119
So I think the whole idea is really based on this T-shaped, you know, deep in a domain and broad in a in a set of soft skills.
00:58:35.199 --> 00:58:36.880
I think that's what I'll probably say to people.
00:58:37.119 --> 00:58:39.360
Look, look for areas where you can be T-shaped.
00:58:39.679 --> 00:58:40.480
Interesting.
00:58:40.719 --> 00:58:43.360
I always ask everyone this as their last question.
00:58:43.599 --> 00:58:45.599
What should I have asked you that I didn't?
00:58:46.480 --> 00:58:48.639
What should you have asked me that I didn't?
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:54.320
Well, some of the stuff that we we could talk about about military intelligence, I'm not sure that I should should have answered.
00:58:54.480 --> 00:58:56.719
Maybe that's one for a beer or a coffee at another time.
00:58:56.880 --> 00:58:58.719
Oh, that's a very interesting one.
00:58:58.960 --> 00:59:00.320
I'm not too sure.
00:59:00.559 --> 00:59:11.679
Probably something along the lines of what does Steve Baumer do with a Manchester United proposal that came to him on an Apple iPad.
00:59:12.239 --> 00:59:14.960
I'd like to see a video of that, I strongly suspect.
00:59:15.360 --> 00:59:18.800
I wish I I wish I was at a time when I could have used a smartphone to record it.
00:59:19.039 --> 00:59:20.639
Yeah, I hope that you would.
00:59:21.760 --> 00:59:25.039
Everyone, thanks for getting this far into the show.
00:59:25.360 --> 00:59:29.360
I will link all of Tim's details into the descriptions.
00:59:29.519 --> 00:59:31.360
Uh, we'd love some feedback.
00:59:31.679 --> 00:59:34.639
So let us know what you thought of Tim and I's conversation.
00:59:34.719 --> 00:59:39.199
We certainly got into some ridiculous technical detail, and that was wonderful.
00:59:39.360 --> 00:59:42.880
I mean, I thought I was very controlled when I didn't talk about token ring.
00:59:43.119 --> 00:59:46.559
After you said I did a six-month course, I was like, oh no, no, no.
00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:48.000
So, with that, Mr.
00:59:48.079 --> 00:59:50.880
Tim Banting, thank you so much for your time, my friend.
00:59:50.960 --> 00:59:52.079
It's been a real joy.
00:59:52.239 --> 00:59:56.880
Uh, join us next week, everyone, for another, hopefully, scintillating interview.
00:59:56.960 --> 00:59:59.760
It will be because they're all scintillating after that.
01:00:00.400 --> 01:00:01.039
Come on.

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