Leapfrog CX Strategies

Dave and Evan meet with Darren Schreiber , the co-Founder and CEO of 2600Hz .  With nearly two decades of telecom experience under his belt, Darren’s core focus is on distributed computing and communications technologies.  His contributions to the open source telecom community are immense, including co-authoring the FreeSWITCH books and mentoring at universities and workshops.  He previously ran a...

Dave and Evan host their first TalkingHeadz foursome. In this episode we meet with Davide Petramala and Laura Faughtenberry of Avaya OneCloud CPaaS . Avaya is best known for its powerful enterprise contact centers which can now do even more with OneCloud CPaaS. In this podcast we find out more about how/when Avaya got into the CPaaS business, and how customers are using it to customize even faster...

Dave and Evan meet with Aurangzeb Khan , SVP GN Jabra . Aurangzeb was co-founder & CEO of Altia Systems which Jabra (GN Netcom) acquired in 2019 . Currently,  Aurangzeb is the SVP of Intelligent Vision Systems at Jabra, best known for its Panacast products. The PanaCast products use multiple cameras, or a cam-array to create real-time, immersive video.   Earlier, Aurangzeb was President &...

Dave and Evan meet with Kira Makagon , Chief Innovation Officer, RingCentral . Kira is a serial entrepreneur that landed at RingCentral in 2012. In her current role as Chief Innovation Officer she leads product strategy, product management and design, engineering and R&D.  She has had a tremendous impact on RingCentral. Before RingCentral she co-founded several technology companies, including...

Dave and Evan meet with Evan MacMillan , CEO and Co-Founder of Gridspace . We had to pull Evan out of the garage to record this podcast. Gridspace is a collaboration between SRI Speech Labs and some fellow Stanford engineers. It is pioneering real-time speech infrastructure for contact centers and developers.  Gridspace was formed in 2012 as a collaboration between SRI Speech Lab, the lab behind S...

Dave and Evan meet with Rowan Trollope , the CEO of cloud contact center provider Five9 .  Rowan was named the CEO of Five9 in May of 2018. Though many of us within the industry met him during his three years as the head of Cisco Collaboration.  Rowan is passionate about how digital transformation revolutionizes the way we communicate. He is a self-proclaimed geek and self-taught software develope...

Evan and Dave chat with Karen Mangia , VP Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce . Karen Mangia focuses on strategies for personal and professional success, and she regularly works with executives, managers and future leaders at companies of all sizes globally.  She published two books in 2020:  Listen Up! How to Tune In To Customers, And Turn Down the Noise and Working From Home:  Making the...

Evan and Dave chat with John Saw , the CTO of T-Mobile .  John Saw is the EVP of Advanced and Emerging Technologies at T-Mobile, and is responsible for constantly evaluating ways to disrupt wireless communications. John was previously the CTO at Sprint and came to T-Mobile as a result of the companies merging. John was also the CTO at Clearwire before the company was acquired by Sprint in 2013.  J...

Evan and Dave chat with Bill Wignall, the CEO of Sangoma Communications .  You may not be that familiar with Bill or Sangoma, but both are industry giants that have  outperformed their peers and the broader industry.  Bill has guided Sangoma through tremendous growth and transformation, largely through acquisitions.  Sangoma is known for its plug-and-play, enterprise grade solutions. The company i...

Evan and Dave chat with OJ Winge and Simen Teigre , the founders of Neat .  Neat came out of stealth at Zoomtopia 2019. The company is new, but on day one had extensive expertise in both video and video hardware. OJ and Simen were part of Tandberg which is arguably the most innovative source of video technologies (both before and after its 2010 acquisition by Cisco).  Both OJ and Simen went to Cis...

Evan and Dave chat with Karl Hantho of Pexip .  Pexip is the result of a 2019 merger between Pexip and Videxio -- both started by a group of visionary industry veterans, both offshoots of Tandberg. They set out to break down the barriers which were making enterprise video conferencing expensive, and difficult to use, manage and scale. Pexip provides interoperability with Microsoft Teams, Google Me...

Evan and Dave chat with Chris MacFarland , Chairman and CEO of Masergy . Masergy Communications is a software defined networking services company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Plano TX.  Its  offerings include advanced networking services such as Managed SD-WAN, UCaaS, CCaaS, and Managed Security. Chris MacFarland joined Masergy as COO in 2008 and was promoted to CEO and Executive Chairman....

Evan and Dave chat with  Scott Wharton , VP & GM, Video Collaboration at Logitech .  Logitech is well known for its PC and USB peripherals, and it has recently emerged as a major player in enterprise video. The company has been a key partner to  Microsoft, Zoom, Cisco, Google, and many others. It has also been instrumental in building a bridge between smart room vendors and video conferencing...

Evan and Dave chat with Tom Puorro ,  EVP and GM Products at Poly.  Tom leads the global development team, which is responsible for audio, video, and headset solutions at Poly. He joined Poly in 2018 and was part of the formation of the new company/branding after the merger of Plantronics and Polycom.  Prior to joining Poly, Tom served as VP and GM of Cisco Collaboration's UC Technology Group...

Evan and Dave chat with Jeff Teper , Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365 Collaboration with Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.  Jeff leads the product design, and engineering teams for Teams (and a few other areas too) with the aim of empowering people and organizations to collaborate. Though he's been at Microsoft for close to 30 years, he's still inspired by its core mission of conne...

Evan and Dave chat with Anand Janefalkar , CEO and Founder of UJET .  UJET is a new kind of CCaaS company, cloud native, designed and built for modern communications. That means it natively integrates with other cloud apps, without duplicating data, and is built for modern, multi-modal communications.  Anand is passionate about creating better business results through more natural communications....

Evan and Dave chat with Javed Khan , SVP and GM of Cisco Collaboration .  Javed Khan leads Cisco’s multi-billion-dollar Collaboration business which includes the Webex portfolio of Meetings, Teams, Rooms, Calling, and Contact Center. In this podcast we discuss the WebexOne conference that Cisco hosted earlier this month.  Prior to this position, Javed was running Cisco’s Cloud Calling business. He...

Evan and Dave chat with Craig Malloy , the founder and CEO of Lifesize .  There are few, if any, executives in enterprise video who have seen what Craig has seen. He founded Lifesize in 2003, and other than a brief break, he's been at the helm the whole time.  Lifesize started as a vendor of premises-based, proprietary video equipment.  The company has gone through a few different industry tr...

Evan and Dave chat with the recently named CEO of Vonage , Rory Read .  In this podcast we get to know the new dude in charge at Vonage. Rory Read joined the Company as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors in July 2020. He was previously Chief Operating Executive for Dell Technologies, and also served as CEO and President of Virtustream, a Dell Technologies business. Rory also served as Exec...

Evan and Dave chat with the legendary tech activist and author Cory Doctorow . Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- a contributor to Boing Boing and the author of young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Founda...

Evan and Dave chat with Javier Soltero , VP & GM of Google Workspace.  Javier wants you to re-think G Suite. Actually, he wants you re-think suites and in general. He explains in this podcast the logic and intent of rebranding G Suite to Google Workspace. We also cover some of the changes at Google Cloud, and Javier explains why enterprises can trust Google with their data.  Go ahead and downl...

Evan and Dave chat with Cameron Weeks ( Twitter / LinkedIn ), CEO and co-Founder of Edify .  We strive to have guests that span the industry, and this episode has it it all. That's because Edify offers UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS. Actually, that's not even broad enough. Cameron and Team Edify are on a mission to redefine business communications, cloud, omnichannel, and customer engagement. H...

Evan and Dave chat with Tony Bates ( Twitter / LinkedIn ), CEO of Genesys . Many factors are currently contributing to the interesting and uncharted territories in which businesses now find themselves. From the global pandemic, to the continued rise of AI and the cloud, as well as the ever-evolving understanding of customer experience. For our guest today, Tony Bates, the confluence of these force...

Evan and Dave chat with Noreen Allen , CMO of Bandwidth Inc .  Noreen has been the CMO of Bandwidth (NASDAQ: BAND) since 2012. She is responsible for driving revenue across all lines of its business. Her specialty is building powerful, category-leading brands and creating scalable revenue engines for tech companies. Over the past twenty years, she’s been part of multiple rounds of fund raising and...

Evan and Dave chat with Alan Duric ( Twitter ), the CTO/COO and Co-Founder of Wire .  Wire, based in Zug Switzerland, is a provider of secure collaborative communications, Wire offers messaging, voice and video calling, and file-sharing services all protected with end-to-end encryption.  The Wire app launched in 2014 with secure messaging. Over the years it has expanded into a full communications...