{"id":17347,"date":"2021-03-25T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/?p=17347"},"modified":"2021-03-25T10:48:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T10:48:28","slug":"ringside-insider-interview-with-dan-davies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/ringside-insider-interview-with-dan-davies\/","title":{"rendered":"Ringside: Insider Interview with Dan Davies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Ringside. This series looks at trends across the business communications landscape today. To gain this level of insight, we ask the experts for intel. Information and technology leaders share their thoughts on how the sector has changed throughout the years, and what is going to impact it in the future.<\/p>\n

For this episode, we ‘sat down’ with Dan Davies, chief technology officer at Maintel, a cloud and managed services company with a focus on communication<\/a>. The company is made up of experienced, trusted technology advisors that improve their clients’ organisations through digital transformation. Maintel make its customers’ employees more efficient, effective and collaborative through Digital Workplace technology. The company helps clients retain, acquire and delight their customers with Customer Experience<\/a> tools. Finally, it connects employees, partners, suppliers and customers to their applications and data through secure connectivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan, what’s your role at Maintel, and what do you love about your job?<\/span><\/h2>\n

I’m the CTO, responsible for ensuring that our technology strategy underpins our business strategy and delivers effortless communication capabilities to our customers<\/a>. I love being a part of providing business-critical communications services to a diverse set of public and private sector organisations, and knowing these services enable them to achieve their strategic priorities. <\/span><\/p>\n

On top of this, I’m passionate about delivering meaningful outcomes to our customers, not just great technology. I’m particularly proud of the support we’ve been able to provide to our many amazing NHS customers throughout the pandemic, ensuring their communications aren’t something they need to worry about!<\/span><\/p>\n

In what ways has business communications changed over your career?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Business communications has changed beyond all recognition since I started my career in 2000. The first office I worked in was connected to the internet via a 56k modem connected to the back of a server. Excitingly, the business upgraded this to a 256k KiloStream service shortly after I joined. Our mobile phones were decidedly un-smart. GPRS & WAP being the new big (but largely completely unusable) things to keep us connected to the web, and carrying my laptop around was a good weight training alternative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have less than fond memories of trying to pair up my PDA via Bluetooth to my mobile to allow me to pick up email over its GPRS connection, and it taking an entire hour-long train journey before I managed to download any! So for me, the most significant change and the enabler for the connected world we live in today has been the exponential growth of the internet. More specifically, the technological leaps we’ve made in both wired and wireless access technology bandwidth, coverage and reliability. <\/span><\/p>\n

There’s been a complete flip, from a world where we did everything offline and only “connected” when we had to, to a world where our laptops and phones are practically useless without an internet connection. This has transformed the communications industry. The adoption of IP based technologies could not have been possible without this technological advance, which has, in turn, enabled the rich, always-on communication, collaboration, digital customer engagement and ubiquitous connectivity we often take for granted today.<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t