 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Enterprise Connect 2019, brought to you by 5ix9ine. Welcome back to Orlando, Florida. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and we are theCUBE. We are in the Enterprise Connect 2019 show in 5ix9ine's booth. Welcoming to theCUBE for the first time. We've got Cara Longo-Porty, Director of Product Management from Tetra VX. Cara, it's great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for having me. So, you've been in the unified communication space for a while. You guys, Tetra VX, have been at this event before, but there's been this massive evolution in enterprise communications and collaborations. I think they were talking this morning in the keynote about this is the biggest ever Enterprise Connect 6,500 attendees, about 140 vendors exhibiting here behind us. Give us a little bit of a viewpoint of what Tetra VX does for unified communications and how you're helping customers to be able to utilize that for internal and external communications. Okay, so Tetra VX has been in this space, as you said, for a really long time and we've gone through the evolution. So, we've been a Cisco partner, we've been a Microsoft partner, and then we've recently started our own version of unified communications, which we call our NVX product. What I think is really exciting about us is that we don't have a horse in the race. So, we're able to help an organization figure out what's right for them, whether it's Cisco or Skype or whether it's our product or whether it's a hybrid, we can offer what's best for them. So, that's what I think is kind of exciting about us. All right, so, unified communications, been talking about some of the integration points with the contact center, some of the broader communication trends, maybe help expand on, as you said, you don't have a horse in the race, but what are some of the key partnerships and what's exciting you at the show here so far? Yeah, so you touched on one of my favorite partners, truly Five9, so they're our contact center partner. We work with them directly and you're starting to see a little bit of a blur between unified communications and contact center and organizations not really knowing what they need. We've got a long history with them and we partner well with them. So, Five9 is definitely a partner I'd mention. Yeah, well, you talk about it, it's an interesting dynamic because there is some overlap, but there's definitely, there's some swim lanes as to where you play and where you don't what environment, maybe bring us into a Tetra VX, you know, who's your typical customer, you know, whether it's a vertical or a buyer, you know, who's that the Tetra VX normally starts with? Yeah, so it truly is all over the place because it depends on the product, which of course is based on their needs, but an organization might have a large contact center, so they're using Five9, let's say, and then they have unified communications need for their headquarter employees. So that's where we might come into play and then we have an integration with Five9 so we can make that seamless. So as a person in the organization, I don't know what platforms we're on and I don't care and I don't want to care, but it seems like we're all able to talk to each other seamlessly. Let's talk about that seamless word because we hear it a lot, it's used in marketing a lot and it's obviously the goal, right, to ensure that these communications that the right teams internally can communicate with each other, for example, the contact center folks could get the content that they need to deliver through whatever channel, but how, let's talk about that, what are some of the things that entail making those internal comms really seamless and adopted by the internal users? I'd say there's probably two big things. One is around the user experience. So as a user, there are so many different platforms to communicate with, am I chatting, am I making a phone call, et cetera. We really want to make it where an organization provides something for their employees to go to one place to do it all. I want it to be crystal clear, even if I, in my own mind, am trying to figure out which channel I want to pursue, that I've got that opportunity to have that one place to go. I think the other piece, though, is change communication. So as an organization, when they roll out a new solution or as a solution has new features and functions, telling the organization, telling people why they should care, and that leads to adoption, because you're going to have the best product in the world, but if you don't make it personal for the end user, it's destined to fail, right? Yeah, so the role of mobile has really transformed a lot what's going on. I, as an end user, a consumer, have certain expectations of what's happening in communication. How's that blurring into the enterprise? How do you look at that boundary between personal communication and enterprise where unified communication plays? As the consumer, you're bringing those expectations with you to work, right? And you're not really going to be satisfied if you take something and as a consumer, have an expectation, and then your organization provides something that's from me, right? And I think we're seeing, and you've seen all these reports where it says people are leaving organizations because they're confused about communications. They're being provided tools that they feel are subpar, which prevents them from being able to do their job. So I think that the perspective of being able to support what a consumer wants in their workplace is critical. And how does the company turn that into competitive advantage? So you got to focus on what the consumer needs, and we know with some of the things that let's say an Apple or an Android platform are doing, and then taking that through because if an organization has employees that are mobile users, you got to support that. Some are using IP phones, you got to support that. I mean, you really got to support the whole gamut in whatever way a person wants to communicate. Can you talk us through where some of the collaboration changes are impacting your customers and your product line when I walk around the show floor, when I go to the keynote, some of the traditional, oh, okay, wait, I think I've got this category at Enterprise Connect in this category, they all seem to interplay today when I listened to a Microsoft or an Amazon or Cisco today. I mean, they're blurring, right? And so I think years ago, you saw everybody wanted best and breed, and that got too complex. So everybody's swung the pendulum back to, I want one vendor. And now we're swinging back a little bit to, I want best and breed, but I want to have that single user experience. So I think that's where integrations are coming into play. So you can integrate all these disparate solutions and provide that single user experience, and that's what users want. Yeah, just following up on that, we throw out words like platforms and marketplaces. Where is it today? Is it just, if I choose a big vendor, I expect that they're going to be able to integrate, and I force them to have APIs and work with everything else, or is it more of an enterprise marketplace where I can go and choose my pieces? And is it on me or is it on the vendors? How does it all end up working together? I think it's on the right partner, right? So the right partner's going to provide you either all those integrations or the opportunity to integrate with them, because maybe that is on the organization side to do it. It's really picking the partner that's going to work with you to do that. Let's talk about security. As customers are moving to the cloud with respect to unified communications, security, taking a backseat to some of the other top of line priorities, or where is that in the customer conversation? I think it's important. It's always going to be important. I think back to the consumer aspect, I as a consumer have certain expectations. So that's got to be the lowest bar, right? Protect me as the end user. Organizations have their own security measures and you got to figure out how to play with both of those. Yeah, Kara, any guidance you can give? We hear, you know, often technology is the easy part of rolling this out. Organizationally, we heard in the customer panel this morning, it's like, well, when you ask your users how they want to be trained, it's everything from just, you know, send me YouTube videos to, I want White Glove Service and somebody walk through it and most companies don't have the resources to be able to do that. So any guidance and help you give as to how companies can really modernize their communications and help their productivity? I mean, I think user adoption is the key, right? So I think one aspect is an organization's own culture. They know their culture like nobody else. Do the users want to be bombarded with emails? Do they want a WebEx? Do they want a table tent in the cafeteria, right? What's the right mix there? I think, again, partnering with an organization to make sure that they're able to provide those services or have those artifacts already available for them so that they can mix and match to what their organization needs is critical. But what are some of the things that you're finding in terms of how companies are measuring adoption and its resulting impact on, say, new revenue, streams, new products, new services? Yeah, I mean, usage is always important, right? Are they using the tool or the applications? That's always one great measure. Adoption, and I think adoption can be viral, right? If I'm telling my friends I really like something or I'm saying I can't do my job because something's impeding me, those are some of more of the softer metrics, but that's the stuff you got to pay attention to because that becomes the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, Kara, I'm curious. Do you have metrics of when you roll out a solution? Is there a way you're measuring that? They're hero figures that the organization can come and say, you know, my NPS went up or my employee satisfaction got better? How's succession measured when your customer base? A number of different ways also depends on the organization, right, back to culture. So usage obviously is key. Having those Lighthouse customers that will go too bad for you and talk about it, having partners that'll speak about you and that will refer you time and time again, I think those are all great metrics. So what are some of the things that are going to be coming out that people can learn about in the Tetra VX booth here at Enterprise Connect? Yeah, so we have different solutions. I mentioned before that we don't have a horse in the race, so you can come see the different solutions we have and sort of our unique approach to figuring out what's right for an organization. We have a monitoring tool that's pretty cool and what's neat about it is it doesn't just monitor, it makes recommendations about what to do about issues. And then some of our partnerships as well. I think those are all great things to come learn about in our booth. And something I want to point out as well is that I always pay attention to and theCUBE does as well is the number of females that are highlighted at events. And this Event Enterprise Connect, 50% of the keynotes are females, which is great. You yourself recently won a Stevie Award for Women in Business. Congratulations about that. Thank you. I'd just love to get your perspective on how does Tetra VX support women in technology and advancing in their careers? I mean, Tetra VX truly does support women in technology or women in the workplace for sure. We have a number of different women on our leadership, which I think speaks volumes to the organization. At our organization, we even have a women in business program that we work together. And sometimes it's social stuff and sometimes it's supporting people in different ways. It really is a truly supportive organization that I am thrilled to be a part of. Awesome. Last question for you since we're halfway through day two of Enterprise Connect 19. What are some of the things that you've heard and seen so far that excite you about the continued evolution of Enterprise Commons? I think continuing to support end users on their collaboration journey, but I think there's really the recognition of the end consumer. I'm bringing my consumer expectations. Hey, Mr. Company, what are you doing about that? Are you giving me those tools? And not just number of tools, but tools that really are the ones that helped me get my job done. Absolutely. Well, Kara, thank you so much for joining Stu and me on theCUBE. Again, congratulations on your Stevie award and we appreciate your time. Thank you. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE.