CXTech Week 37 2020 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 37 2020 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech?  The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.

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KEYYO, Bouygues Telecom Enterprise, Acquires Apizee

I’ve known Apizee since 2013, providing WebRTC based solutions to enterprises, particularly in France. It’s nice to see the exit into Bouygues Telecom Enterprise. They positioned as a CPaaS, but that always felt like window-dressing. The core focus was enterprise solutions in unified communications, call-back, and contact center.

From the announcement it’s clear the Apizee’s video assistance solutions sealed the deal. And confirms the challenges for WebRTC platform players, and why Agora Inc’s IPO remains dodgy in my opinion.

OpenSIPS Summit Distributed 2020

OpenSIPS is one of the most used Open Source SIP Servers in the world. It’s routing millions of calls across the globe each day. It has been 100% Open Source and has been backed by a robust community for over 10 years.

I was fortunate to be invited to present on “Open Source Telecom Software Status, Trends, and the Road Ahead.”

I recently replaced the battery in my Macbook using iFixit. My experience in choosing iFixit reminded me of the discussions we had at the OpenSIPS Summit after my presentation around the social contract assumed in open source. It made me realize I’d followed a social contract with iFixit, as discussed in this weblog.

TADSummit EMEA / Americas 2020 Agenda

TADSummit EMEA Americas agenda is focused on fair, frank, and independent advice / education for the rest of us in programmable communications / telecoms who are not wrapped up in the BABS (Bay Area BS) machine 

Thank you to all the presenters as well as our sponsors: Automat BerlinGoContactRadisys, and Sangoma for making TADSummit EMEA / Americas possible.

We’ll have world-class keynotes, real-world industry status and strategy, open source thought leadership, innovator interviews, insightful case studies, and some TeleTalks from TeleSign. People come back to our content year over year, check out this video from Matthew Hodgson on Matrix from 2015 that has been viewed 4500+ times. It may not be 3.77 billion views like Psy Gangham Style. But it’s respectable for a niche event in programmable communications.

We ran our first TADSummit in 2013 in Bangkok. Back then there was a growing body of innovators (e.g. CPaaS, UCaaS, CCaaS providers), telcos, alternative network providers, developers, open source leaders, API companies, and enterprise focused service providers, learning how to make money from the application of CXTech.

What is CXTech? The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers. Think of CXTech as the democratization of telecoms, and the term can be used interchangeably with programmable telecoms / communications.

After the success of TADSummit Asia 2020 in May 2020 we decided to run TADSummit EMEA / Americas online to avoid taking any risks while we wait for the COVID-19 vaccine. We may not have the full networking experience and the enjoyment of spending a couple of days together. But we can share the latest thinking to place a collective milestone marker in the development of programmable communications. TADSummit Asia 2020 achieved 2.4k views of the videos through the event, one video got to 280+ views, many 80-100, several 100+, e.g. Dave Horton’s presentation on Jambonz received 155 views. Which is good for our niche.

Twilio drops from #2 to #4 in the Omdia SIP Trunking Rankings

The ranking surprised me a little, it’s more than market share so the ranking is a bit contrived in my opinion. For the legacy providers its complex, meaning its an accounting issue on how they divvy up the revenues across SIP and legacy trunking. In my opinion Twilio continues to lead the market, and its online marketing knocks the socks off everyone else in the list.

Route Mobile IPO

Mobile Route is an India based messaging aggregator than has built out a number of RTC solutions. It positions as a CPaaS, so it can claim to be an Indian Twilio, but it is not. I see little developer engagement rather enterprise application and aggregation sales.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Alistair Farquharson is now VP Engineering at Vatom Inc. We met when he was CTO for SOA Software, which became Akana, API Management.

Martin Willitts is now CTO at Zedify UK, Zero emissions city logistics. We first met when he worked for Three UK as a service specialist.

Monzer Ali is now Chief Technology & information officer (CTIO) at MTN Uganda.

Tim Spencer if now President and CEO at Invatron Systems Corp.

Michael Vakulenko is now Product Manager at JFrog, continuous software updates.

Mark Ash is now Director Production & Industrial Print at Konica Minolta Business Solutions UK Ltd at Konica Minolta Business Solutions UK Ltd. He had a near death experience on his bike. I’ve been hit a few times on my bike, but so far have been lucky.

Allan Knabe is now Co-Founder at Reedelk,

Phil Sheppard is now an Advisor at NewINSIKT Limited, which presented at TADSummit a couple of years ago.

Sura sri Lakindu is now Head of Social Media at SEVEN MEDIA GROUP

Thomas Clayton is now Chief Revenue Officer at Bill.com. I’ve known Thomas since his BEA/Oracle days, and through Bubbly.

Sobish Mahajan is now a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Illinois Institute of Technology, and is a great supporter of TADHack.

Darryl Weaver is now Site Reliability Engineer at ZOE, a nutritional science company. We first met at TADHack Global 2014 🙂

Dimitar Kokov is now System Administrator at Zoiper.com.

Stefan Kraemer is now Leiter Account Management Enterprise at ORBIT Gesellschaft für Applikations- und Informationssysteme mbH.

Rob Pronk is now VP of EMEA Sales at Plixer, security and network intelligence platform.

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