What’s in a name? Part 2.

There’s been quite a bit of debate stimulated by the weblog “What’s in a name? Finding a better handle for Programmable Telecoms“, the related twitter discussion (see below), and lots of other threads over the past month.

Summarizing where we’ve got to so far.

There is a strong push against using cloud in the handle for the following reasons:

  • Cloud-washing. For example, using the ‘cloud’ label for legacy products and old-school approaches.
  • Honesty. Some deployments are hybrid. Cloud is not always in the best interests of the customer.

Paul Sweeney raised a good point on looking beyond the term cloud, as network made way to cloud, what does cloud make way to? Here decentralization is a partial answer, as cloud has enabled centralization of power in Facebook and Google, where your personal data is forfeit. However, the world we’re moving to is more heterogenous where centralized and decentralized solutions will co-exist. So we weren’t able to find an easy concept to use for beyond cloud.

Another point raised by Paul, and many others, is ‘Connectivity’ is a theme of everything we discussed at the State of the Union discussion during TADSummit 2018.  From Connectivity many other C-words flow like Communications, Conversations, Collaboration, Customer experience, etc.

Jerome, and many others, highlighted programmable telecoms is an enabler, we’re not the CRM industry, we’re an enabler in supporting multi-channel conversations, in the routing, recording, protection, and analysis of those conversations. But we’re not CRM. And this is why, even though it seems passé, technology (tech) is a timeless word for enabler. Since we developed the tech for knapping flint (which BTW caused of one of the first industrial diseases, silicosis), technology enables everything we do.

No handle is going to be ideal. We’re taking an agile approach with this handle search, of good enough (MVP) and see how the market reacts.

So how about CXTech? Where the C stands for Communications Experience Technology, or Connectivity Experience Tech, or Conversation Experience Tech, or Collaboration Experience Tech, or Customer Experience Technology. We’re the enabling technology across all these experiences. Whether its customers (CCaaS, MFA, omni channel) , or things and networks (IoT, connectivity, neural hosting), or employees (UCaaS, collaboration), or the myriad of CPaaS use cases across people, things, services, and networks. We’re a fundamental enabler. The website CXTech.com and cx.tech are already taken, and there is a conference on CXTech (Customer Experience), so the name is not blue-sky. However, it’s a term for everyone to test out with customers, analysts, press, really anyone but industry insiders.

CXTech: where C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because we’re enablers.

We’re not ditching programmable telecoms or if you prefer programmable communications. This term is for the choir, it’s a handle we all understand. But in creating a label for broader awareness, let’s see how CXTech performs. We’ll not know unless we try.

On next steps, I’m going to be updating the TADSummit website with this label and positioning. We already have the TADSummit 2019 landing site, as well as TADSummit Asia (28-29 May), TADSummit Americas (15-16 Oct), and TADSummit EMEA (19-20 Nov) sites live, though they are all very much work in progress. Thanks to VoIP Innovations, Apidaze, hSenid Mobile, Wazo and CCPS for being our initial TADSummit sponsors in 2019. Please get in contact if you want to be involved!

BTW, Thomas Howe and I are putting an ebook together, ‘Communications: State of the Art’, I’ll include a chapter on the thinking behind CXTech.

On other actions from the State of the Union discussion at TADSummit, we now have a stated TADSummit policy, and we have 4 confirmed female presenters for TADSummit Asia, with many more presenters to add. We’re trying our best to improve equality at TADSummit.

TADSummit 2019