Are CCTG making any money? Is callManager part of that group or is it just pie-in-the-sky projects that are making nothing? If the VP of Engineering for that group was removed then there must be some focus on the BU
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Are CCTG making any money now?
CCTG, and indeed the entire collab group is an accident waiting to happen. Nobody wants Spark and resources are being cut from WebEx which has been deemed feature complete! Even Call Manager is stagnating. Tick, Tock.
I couldn't predict the future of CCTG but there is a team in Galway, Ireland Republic, that want to have their fingers stuck in all the pies. Their mgmt team are spreading their bets in the hope that they will be seen to be pivitol to the BU when they have a few engineers stuck in every single product and the thinking is this will keep the LR's at bay. Problem is they not delivering on any of them, are forcing their way onto many of these projects, whether wanted or not, and providing little value as they breeze in and breeze out. I happened to speak to one guy who hasn't been at the company very long but in the last 8 months has been asked to work on 4 different products and got nowhere with any of them. Busy fools in essence! I can't say that it is quite that bad here but if these are the sort of tactics being employed in other CCTG sites in attempts to try and avoid the LR reaper then it says a lot about the Business Unit as a whole I think.
Rowan Trollope looked pretty drained and lethargic at the Beat yesterday. Not like his usual self. He must be burning the midnight oil......or up late working on his LinkedIn profile like the rest of us?
Collaboration is one of the business we should be seeing some return if the company was being successful in their shift to recurring revenue stream strategy. Per month seat licence fee for Jabber, Spark, Spark Board, Huron, CUCM etc. Clearly have a bit to go yet here or maybe the reasons for the slowdown are more obvious? Too expensive? Too cumbersome? Just plain rubbish?
Collaboration business only declined by 3% in Q1. Was expecting a bigger fall. I guess we won't be getting the "amazing job" email from Mr Trollop this time.
If "Spark is the future" then bye bye CCTG.
Spark is the platform of choice for Cisco and they are putting all their eggs in that basket. Spark is the future! The problem is customers don't like it, or the crazy prices Cisco demand for it. Jabber, which they have sold millions of licences for, and customers are finally starting to like, will be weaned off? Seriously?
Don't even get me started on Spark board. No amount of polishing that turd will pay dividends.
is any customer really using spark and paying for it? the only interested ones i saw balked when they saw the pricing (and went to Lync)
Expect jabber to be put out to pasture pretty soon. Watch managers of Jabber projects scramble to get hooks on other work in Spark or face LR.
From what I can see Spark can do pretty much everything that Jabber does, and then some. So duplicate products for the most part which must be a headache for sales guys? I think you can use Jabber in on-premise mode like any other free XMPP clients so maybe that's the difference? Do we still sell to on-premise customers? I guess banks, government agencies and the like must have full control and don't trust 'cloud'. Not sure really.
Collaboration as a business is making some money in the last while after several quarters in the red. That said I don't believe CCTG are contributing hugely to that profit making and if that is indeed the case then they will draw unwanted attention from the LR reaper sooner rather than later. You can only hide in the shadows for so long but a business must eventually start producing money. If your team are not working on a project that is making money you can expect to be given a small window to bring it to a point where you are making money or else find yourself in line for the chop.
Do Spark and Jabber not effectively do the same job? Spark, which people don't seem to like very much has all the rooms stuff like Slack has, but Jabber doesn't. Also I don't think Spark is making many dollars yet either but it's obviously the product the Business is betting on for success in collaboration.
What I don't get is having two competing clients from the same company - let alone the same BU! One of your biggest competitors is actually inhouse which sounds beyond crazy to me!!
CCTG is Spark and Jabber.
Call Manager and desk phones are in a separate group UCTG.
**TROPO CEO
Jason Goecke, the Troop CEO was drafted in as Phil Harris' replacement. He reports directly to Jens Meggers, same as Phil had done so is a direct replacement.
So who's the head of CUCM engineering now? Ty?
Everyone getting paged for a build breakage is not cloud :)
The thing I find so tragically hilarious is that this "Collaboration" BU is the worst offender for actually collaborating! The Indian Engineering teams don't want to work with the European or American teams unless they are forced to. Then they don't want to share knowledge with them unless it is picked out of them with an axe. The UK teams and the Norwegian teams (ex tanberg) refuse to follow Cisco processes but they have the intellectual property so they do whatever they want as nothing is written down! #jobsecurity
The respective teams then resort to their collaboration tools - i.e. Cisco Spark - and b--ch about each other in private spark rooms, scrums and meetings while nothing actually gets done, and nothing gets released that makes any money. Long may it last!
Just don't make the mistake of b--ching about each other in the wrong spark room as that is going to cause endless problems!! Site leaders and directors don't care about collaboration as they scramble to try and attach themselves to something with a chance of making money so they can keep the wolves from the door for a little bit longer.
Yep, Call Manager and Cisco desk phones are the only things making any money in that BU. The rest are hiding behind that revenue but making nothing but noise and power point presentations. Not even seen any decent POC demos in the last few years so innovation has dried up too which is a big worry for the BU. If CUCM and desk phones move into a different BU like it was before, the rest is just worthless dross leaking huge amounts of cash.
There is still a ton of mgmt in that BU that has been there forever and needs to go. They've kept themselves protected for years.
I read in another thread that Phil Harris was the VP that got canned. Ty Thorsen made the announcement on his behalf over email. Very abrupt correspondence but what else would you expect from him.
Yes, CallManager is part of that group (and the bulk of the revenue along with the phones). But no longer growing!
If they are relying on Spark Board then they must be crapping themselves. What a piece of $hit!
If they are making no money then they will get nuked. Simple as that really. Rowan Trollop has overseen a few quarters of small growth in the Collaboand trying to move to a recurring revenue stream but that might just a stay of execution.
Who was the Engineering VP?