In a couple of weeks we have TADHack-mini Orlando, just before Enterprise Connect. We’ve run hackathons before other events, such as TADHack-mini Japan before the big WebRTC Conference in Japan, and for several years ran TADHack-mini London before the WebRTC Global Summit. Its a great way to demonstrate what programmable telecoms means in practice. This year we’re excited to have a TADHack-mini before Enterprise Connect. The support of the Orlando technology and entrepreneurial community has been amazing. With Code for Orlando, Orlando Tech, OrlandoJS, IOT Orlando, UCF Bootcamp, Valencia College, Creative Entrepreneurs Orlando, and many more helping us. Its going to be an exciting hackathon, that we hope will make a difference to Orlando.

I thought it worth sharing my view on the impact of programmable telecoms on Enterprise Connect, and why that makes the practical hands-on learning through hacking at TADHack-mini Orlando essential.

Telecoms was once trapped in a few big vendors or service providers. Today telecom is programmable, its for everyone. Seriously, you do not need coding skills to hack on telecoms.  Come to TADHack-mini Orlando just before #EC17 and we’ll have you hacking, TADHack is for Everyone!

Programmable telecoms, as the name implies, impacts all Telecoms. I do need to clarify a few concepts I see being thrown around that fall within programmable telecoms. cPaaS (communications Platform as a Service) is a telecom app server in the cloud with some SMS and PSTN voice carrier aggregation. Its a little more complex than that, but that’s where the bulk of revenue is earned today. That cloud-based telecom app server can run a unified communications service, UCaaS is a subset of cPaaS, which is a subset of programmable telecoms.

Marketing folks and some of the analysts get hung up on the API acronym. An API is just a HTTP request – like the URL you type in a browser. Its one of the ways cPaaS / UCaaS can be accessed. The service could be configured / created using a web-form so any non-coder and use it, SDKs and clients are other delivery mechanisms for those cloud services. Its best not to get too hung up on the API, focus on the services you need to create / consume to solve the business problem at hand.

Let’s look at how some of the sponsors of TADHack-mini Orlando are delivering programmable telecoms. Cisco Spark, RingCentral, Vidyo – are making their platforms programmable to embed them into enterprises’ business processes to help speed-up tasks that involve critical but expensive humans. Telestax (along with partners DataArt and Dialogic), Temasys, and Matrix are making all this open source – changing the economics of programmable telecoms. Flowroute and Tropo along with Cisco are packaging up cPaaS for enterprises large and small – businesses want solutions to their problems and not APIs. You will be able to compare and contrast all these technologies head-to-head at TADHack-mini Orlando – no marketing BS, just hands on learning and creating, a chance to win some of the $8k prize money, nationwide recognition for the winners at Enterprise Connect on the Monday, and most of all fun! See you in Orlando 🙂