SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 15, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enterprise Connect, the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration, today announces highlights from its robust 2018 program. This year’s event will expand on recent years’ focus on the new technologies that are disrupting the industry, such as speech interfaces, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning, and team collaboration software. The show’s keynote lineup reflects this transformation, with talks planned from industry disrupters Amazon Web Services, Workplace by Facebook, and Slack, as well as a new-technology emphasis from incumbent-vendor keynoters Cisco and Microsoft.

Enterprise Connect 2018 will take place March 12-15 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL. For more information and to register, please visit: enterpriseconnect.com/orlando/  

“We’re dedicated to offering our audience the most relevant programming--bringing the latest technology developments to the event while also continuing our strong heritage of practical, in-depth information about current issues in the industry,” said Eric Krapf, Enterprise Connect General Manager and Program Co-Chair. “The robust list of speakers and the quality of the content reflect our commitment to addressing today’s concerns while helping our attendees prepare for an exciting and potentially disruptive future.”

Emerging Technologies: This year’s program will dive deeper into emerging technologies within the industry:

• Keynote: Collin Davis, General Manager, Alexa for Business, Amazon Web Services
  -  Davis will focus on Amazon Alexa for Work, an intelligent assistant that uses conversational interfaces to help professionals be more productive at work.
   
• New track: This year’s new Speech Technologies track will provide information ranging from basic tutorial to case studies described by end users. Attendees will learn how and how soon new voice technologies could change the enterprise.
  -  Real world use cases will be presented in this track, featuring executives from Quicken Loans, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Kentucky-based St. Elizabeth Healthcare and more.
   
• Industry Vision Addresses: Diane Chaleff, G Suite, Office of the CTO, Google Cloud, will discuss Google’s vision for how machine learning will fuel the changing enterprise communication landscape.
   
• Innovation Showcase: This year’s Innovation Showcase will have a focus on Speech Technologies, recognizing companies new to Enterprise Connect that are implementing speech-to-text, speech analytics and sentiment analysis, translation, Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and more.

Team Collaboration: With more enterprises evaluating Team Collaboration, this important new technology will play a prominent role in the Enterprise Connect program:

• Keynotes: Cal Henderson, CTO and co-founder, Slack, and Frerk-Malte Feller, Director of Workplace Ecosystem Partnerships, Facebook (Workplace by Facebook)
  -  Both companies will Keynote at Enterprise Connect for the first time and touch on their new approaches to enterprise communications, stressing workplace collaboration tools as the platform upon which future enterprise communications will run.
   
• Expanded track: The Team Collaboration track  has grown to encompass a wider range of programming. Attendees will learn how the market landscape is evolving, how to manage their Team Collaboration environment, how to address issues of security and compliance, and more.  
   
• Case study session: “Team Collab App Decision Factors: Enterprise Adopters Share Their Experiences” will welcome speakers from Stanford University, Brooks Brothers, Mott MacDonald and more to share past experiences and best practices.

Learn more about this year’s program here .

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About Enterprise Connect
For more than 27 years, Enterprise Connect has been the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration in North America. Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industry's vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise networks and communications. Enterprise Connect owns and produces No Jitter, (nojitter.com), providing daily blogging and analysis of enterprise communications, and it also serves the community with a weekly email newsletter and a webinar series. For more information, visit enterpriseconnect.com/orlando. Enterprise Connect is organized by UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc (UBM.L), an Events First marketing and communications services business. For more information, visit ubmamericas.com/.

Media Contact:
Kimberly Samra
ECPR@ubm.com
415-947-6362