Significant new joinings at Citrix and Lenovo, Zoom's strides and more...

Hello everyone

Welcome to another edition of this weekly #digitalworkplace and #futureofwork newsletter. Let's look at the key highlights from the past week.

End user technology

Jamf and Adaptiva promote their leadership in a new research report

Jamf and Adaptiva have promoted their leadership in a new Gartner research report titled - Market Guide for Endpoint Management Tools. More details here:

Multiple other vendors are mentioned in the report. I, too, have covered the MDM and UEM market in my research, and I agree that UEM solutions have the potential to offer much more than regular endpoint management, especially when MDM, EMM, UEM, and DEX together offer a combined value for clients. Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM), a term coined by Gartner, is the center point for all innovation and transformation within the endpoint management space. Particularly in the age of AI, enterprise IT organizations look out for more automation and automated endpoint issue resolution. One thing highlighted in the report is particularly important, i.e. the importance of culture and IT team skill set. It is one thing to look out for solutions offering autonomous resolution and low/no-code enabled workflow automation, and another to have the internal teams trained on the same. Hopefully, clients will pay more attention to these softer aspects in 2025 when they frame their endpoint management strategies.

Brian Madden joins Citrix

This week Brian Madden announced that he has joined Citrix. More details here:

I have been following Brian for a long time, and his books were my initial introduction to the world of EUC. He has had an eventful professional career, and it is great to see him join Citrix . This is an excellent addition to the Citrix team, especially since Bass, another great co-author of one of the Brian Madden books, is already there. While Citrix is acquiring many firms and updating its partner ecosystem, it's essential to focus on innovation and AI-related aspects and tell their story. And who else can do that other than Brian, the EUC Guru?

GoTo's introduces new AI features for LogMeIn Resolve

GoTo has introduced new AI capabilities within LogMeIn Resolve. More details here:

This follows GoTo's continued focus on the mid-market, and rebranding of IT administration products to LogMeIn. Features such as the Virtual Technician will become table stakes in coming months and quarters and would be the most apparent feature clients would demand from their remote support software solution vendors.

Managed workplace services

Infosys partnership with Software Central A/S

SoftwareCentral A/S announced a new partnership with 印孚瑟斯 for endpoint protection. More details here:

A quick look at the SoftwareCentral A/S website is a firm specializing in Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Intune. Its rare to see a global managed service provider highlighting a partnership at the core end user computing level. Infosys's Digital Workplace Services handle continues to delight!

Rakshit Ghura joins Lenovo

Rakshit Ghura announced that he has joined 联想 More details here:

This is really a great pick by Lenovo. Rakshit had a fantastic stint at HCLTech and is a perfect leader for Lenovo's Digital Workplace services. Lenovo, as I have covered in my research in the past, is in a unique position as it still partners with the managed service providers for device management capabilities but also competes with them for digital workplace services. It is important to have a visionary leader to lead this complex but great service portfolio. My best wishes to Rakshit!

UCaaS

RingCentral launches AI Receptionist

RingCentral announced the launch of AI Receptionist feature. More details here:

This is a great feature and am surprised no other UCaaS vendor has looked at or at least promoted this functionality before. This is also a great use case for leveraging AI to solve real business problems. Way to go RingCentral!

Zoom workflow automation goes GA

Zoom announced the general availability of its workflow automation feature. More details here:

Workflow automation will allow leveraging AI generated output and making it part of a customized workflow. This is available even when users use another collaboration vendor's productivity tools. While Zoom always scores a 10/10 on innovation, workflow automation for nontechnical users has its own culture and adoption challenges. It would be really interesting to see how Zoom clients adopt this functionality, especially when they use Microsoft with Copilot and Google Workspace with Gemini.

Amazon quietly buries Chime in favor of Zoom

Staying on with Zoom, 亚马逊 has adopted Zoom for its internal communication and has dropped its own product Chime. More details here:

Chime has a sad life story. It was initially positioned as a revolutionary product in the UCaaS and especially CCaaS space, but sadly, it never really took off. It would be interesting to see Amazon deploy for its employees both Microsoft Office 365 and Zoom.

That's all for the week, folks. Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments and feel free to share the newsletter with anyone you think would be interested in the content. Thank you so much for your consistent support!

Thanks

-M