Last week's Enterprise Connect event was an eye-opening experience from many perspectives. A tour of the exhibit area seemed like a real-time stroll through the history of contact center technology.

Several traditional contact-center providers were present, but some former industry powerhouses were notably absent. Also missing were many recent additions to the industry ecosystem. The consistent question for me was identifying what was new vs. iterations of existing concepts.

There's no question that customer care is going through at least three major transitions: cloud, context, and hybrid.

• The move to cloud is well underway. Estimates have the cloud contact-center market growing at least 20% year-over-year for the foreseeable future.

• The market shift from transactions to interactions requires a much deeper set of insights than traditionally applied. Context is an extraordinary opportunity to improve the service you've delivered (or not) -regardless of the customer's starting point.

• Delivering value in hybrid (cloud + on-premises) environments is critical to ensuring that vendors respect existing customer investments while infusing new value through cloud.

Good news: Cisco is heavily invested in these three areas, not only in our contact center, but across the entire Collaboration portfolio.

Market transitions are rarely simple. As a vendor, making it through them requires:

• Focusing on the long-term success of each customer
• Having the financial strength to execute on that focus

Investing for long-term customer success is critical.  Market transitions tend to start in the minds of developers, evolve to the vendor pavilion, and then reach customers. Corporate patience in transitions is a virtue. Long-term success requires extensible platforms that enable customers to easily evolve over time.

Financial strength is critical. You need the investment horizon to move an entire ecosystem through these transitions. That means products, platforms, teams, partners, and customers.

Cisco looks forward to continuing to lead the transition as the trusted provider for our industry.

Learn more about the products in our Customer Care product portfolio.