ITEXPO wrapped up a few weeks ago, and those of us who were there are still processing the insights we had at the live event in Anaheim.

If you didn’t make it this year — and even if you did — we’d like to invite you to experience some of the energy and the theme, discovering the next frontier in communications, at the conference.

There were so many brilliant and inspiring people — attendees, presenters, and sponsors — gathered in one place. The collective energy of the group could be felt in the session seats, in the lobby, at the meals, and at the parties.

Listen below to a TechnologyAdvice interview featuring ITEXPO 2015 presenters, attendees, and sponsors. Hear their favorite takeaways below. And read on for the most compelling quotes we heard.

Mike Kane from Dyn on the two methodologies that exist in the telecom marketplace today:

“If you look down the hall you’ll see a number of thing about VoIP equality optimization. So we think we’re sort of on the other side of the trend line here. The trend curve is more and more companies want to use the internet, it’s everywhere, it’s ubiquitous, and it’s low barrier to entry network. A lot of people are afraid because they can't optimize like they used to when they had their own private connectivity.”

Mike Ross from 4PSA on why companies should make decisions based on their customer’s needs and wants:

“The game really in telecom is to maintain and not radically change the legacy experience. The legacy experience is what most people have. We can't just dump everything and not use anything in ISDN or analog. We can’t get rid of this stuff. You have to understand your target audience and if your target audience is supporting a global market, you have to actually look back in time and make sure you can support that analog and mobile phone somehow or don’t expect much.”

Christopher Martini from ConnectSolutions explained key considerations for a successful Skype for Business implementation:

“There are four distinct phases: plan, deploy, run, and extend when you’re looking at rolling out Skype for Business. We see some common mistakes and pitfalls. You often see customers really want all of the benefits of the future of unified communications but they are somewhat reluctant to walk away from a large investment in legacy equipment. Our view is we understand why you’re trying to hold on but you’re not really going to see the true value of this investment by still relying on legacy equipment.”

Brad Chapin from Sonus on some of the common trends he saw at the conference:

“One of them of course is the move to UC. With the move to UC comes obviously SIP and SIP Trunking and those capabilities. The other trend is obviously moving to the cloud. Microsoft is putting a big push to moving to the cloud. A lot of other vendors are as well.”

Carlos Gonzan from iDrive on the importance of cloud and whether or not everyone will be in the cloud at ITEXPO 2020:

“The cloud is just more affordable, efficient and reliable. You can add servers, databases quickly via the cloud through hosted services and backup your data to the cloud and restore quickly. Your data is all safe and it resides in a data center where it’s replicated. They may have multiple copies in case of a disaster. It’s just a much more efficient way of doing things.”

John De Los Reyes from Enghouse on why multimedia/video conferencing also need to be taken into account:

“The trends we're really seeing are around the full multimedia experience, bringing video into the contact center where I can troubleshoot a problem while actually seeing it. A business problem is hey, I’m having a problem with this part, can you help me fix it? If you're troubleshooting over the phone, that person must be very descriptive versus being able to see what’s actually happening in real-time and troubleshoot as part of it.”

Perry Goldstein from Marshall Electronics on why we’re currently in a revolutionary time in communications:

“Systems that used to cost $40,000 per room hardware appliances, point to point is being replaced by software like Skype for Business and Google Hangouts and things like that. What it’s doing is creating a different industry that’s also allowing us to do more because of the low cost. It’s all there and it’s so inexpensive that anybody can do that so it’s going to change how we interact and communicate with each other in business and in personal.”

Keith Nussbaum from RingPlanet explained why VoIP way businesses are going and why there’s a great convergence of business and personal:

“VoIP is definitely the way businesses are going. The FCC has announced they’re helping transitions customers off of POTS platform and that’s what all small=medium customers are on, a copper platform. This is a perfect time to get in while competition is still driving down prices.”

Dorothy from Grandstream explained why there’s demand for different customers can interact through Android:

“The biggest trend we are developing and have been on for a while is Android devices in our SIP products. We have Android phones that are video phones that run the Android OS that can also be SIP phones, lots of apps you can use. Skype, GoToMeeting, Hangouts, as well as running the phones on your IP PBX. Recently we debuted an Android videoconferencing system.”

Damon Williams from Jabra explained why Microsoft will never be alone in this space:

“You’ve seen obviously the other players like the CISCO, they’re not going to take things lying down but even the smaller players, people like choice and something that Microsoft offers is not necessarily one-size fits all. You’re still going to find the niche markets in this space. How easy is it to do business? Sometimes when you roll out the 365 piece with choices in it, it doesn’t necessarily always fit. There’s definitely space there for other companies to play in.”

Brad Chapin at Sonus detailed the variety of different customers that attended the conference:

“We have had major resellers here, major carrier partners, I even met last night a guy who has a company called Pet Galaxy which is a pet resort. He’s in San Antonio and has an old panasonic and is going to migrate to Skype for business. Really you're getting every walk of life here. You’re getting all sorts of different customers. You get all sorts of different people. That’s the one surprising thing, the diversity of customer types.”