The purpose of this CXTech Week 26 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.

You can sign up here to receive the CXTech News and Analysis by email. Please forward this on if you think someone should join the list. And please let me know any CXTech news I should include.

We’re half way through the year (week 26), and wow, what a year!

Being in programmable communications is a fortuitous situation compared to many industries this year. Though having events to run, has its challenges 😉

TADSummit Asia achieved 2.5k views on YouTube of its videos so far. Showing online events can work. The key is fresh, original, insightful content that is easy to consume, when and where convenient for people.

I see too many events and live webinars with mis-comparisons of Slack and Microsoft teams, rambling discussions full of misrepresentations on why RCS is already big you just didn’t notice, 5G-enabled service wishful thinking, conflating edge compute (which is a real though niche business) with mobile edge compute (which is wishful thinking). Absolutely have a go in making the business happen, you never know. But please focus on solving problems for customers that are willing to pay with those technologies. Rather than occupying our time with spin and towers of silly assumptions.

Customer buy when you solve a problem for them, not because they’ve been bludgeoned into submission with a marketing hammer. Let’s use the marketing budgets for sharing experiences, understanding, and insights to help build the industry faster; than a wishful-thinking hamster-wheel going nowhere fast.

WhatsApp’s new payments system stalls in Brazil

I was a little surprised when the launch was announced. I don’t trust Facebook, full stop. Look at their history of deceit, mis-information, and fermenting dumbass ideas: anti-vaxxers, 5G – COVID-19, wearing a mask is unmanly, and a vast list of anti-science and anti-common-sense BS. The Guardian did a great piece on Facebook and QAnon, another wacko conspiracy delusion.

Looks like an adult was finally asked to review the idea after launch. And Brazil’s central bank suspended the newly launched system that allowed users of Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service to send money via chats and ordered Visa and Mastercard to halt payments and transfers via the system.

People regardless of their economic situation care about their privacy. Personal safety is a BIG thing in Brazil, and that is directly linked to online privacy including the phone number. TADHack Uruguay had some great hacks on the importance of privacy around the phone number. This is an example of why TADHack is global, different countries / regions have different needs and problems.

IntelePeer Launches Managed Solutions Offering to Accelerate Customer Adoption and Deployment of Automated and Omnichannel Interactions

IntelePeer, a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider and sponsor of TADHack Chicago / North America in October, announced today the availability of Atmosphere Managed Solutions, a full-service program that assists customers with creating self-service and omni-channel customer experiences through workflow automation, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics. Hopefully we’ll be able to include some of these capabilities in the hacks from Chicago and North America.

The Importance of Telecom Applications

Great piece from Jim Machi of Sangoma, that explains why TADSummit and TADHack exist. We all need to ensure innovation is not stifled or owned “by a few.” Open source projects, small companies, new innovations from larger companies breaking into a new market all come through TADSummit and TADHack.

The BIG guys have no interest in anything that’s not controlled by them. The more it stays the same, the better. No innovation, or controlled innovation (controlled by me), means no disruption. And the money keeps pouring in, to them. The big telecom / communications guys would stifle the innovation by putting all kinds of roadblocks in place, using standards bodies to delay the inevitable, dominating marketing share. In the meantime, innovation continued and what was created outside their realm became defacto. Services we know and love that make our lives better.

TADHack and TADSummit are on the right side of history. Maybe the wrong side of the money as helping the BIG guys on the wishful-thinking hamster-wheel going nowhere fast is where the $$$ are. So it’s great when someone gets what we do at TADS, and let’s everyone know 🙂

Avaya Forum on Contact Tracing Includes CDC, National Academy for State Health Policy

Avaya will present a Virtual Contact Tracing Leadership Forum on June 25, sharing expertise and guidance to help public health officials and other groups rapidly establish contact tracing programs to address emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contact Tracing has been widely recognized as a key factor to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on communities, and enable organizations, businesses and people to open up and return safely to work, to school and to recreation.

Contact center and CPaaS (communications platform as a service) solutions are key technology building blocks to build and scale contact tracing capabilities quickly and efficiently to alert, monitor and notify citizens regarding potential exposures as part of the global effort to recover and emerge from the pandemic.

A Slice of TADSummit Asia: Open Source Telecom Software

In this series of weblogs, A Slice of TADSummit, we review a few of the themes from TADSummit Asia. This slice focuses on open source telecom software.

Open source projects are a critical part of the web’s success. As programmable telecoms becomes democratized, open source projects are of increasing importance to the telecoms / communications industries. And like many web open source projects, with just general web and IT skills people can use open source telecom software at scale and with high availability.

Telcos have tended to shy away from open source telecom software, rather adopting retro-closed source solutions (e.g. IMS and RCS). But even there, open source has made its way in creating greater innovation and lower pricing, thanks to companies like ng-voice, who have presented at TADHack and TADSummit.

Most CPaaS / UCaaS / CCaaS providers use open source telecom software projects. Many of the tech-savvy providers have either forked a project, or are confident of being able to fork with no risk. A few of the bigger ones, like Twilio began on open source with Asterisk and FreeSWITCH, but have since built out their closed source platform.

This is not a winners takes all business, it’s a dynamic market, meeting a plethora of evolving needs. Where exceptionally smart technologist continue to create and share software that makes the world better.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Congratulations to David Walsh for starting a new position as Chief Commercial Officer at Reprivata, a security start up. Yet more talent leaving programmable communications.

Nuwan Alwis is now Senior Manager Information Technology Operation at Mercantile Investments and Finance PLC. I’ve known Nuwan since his time in hSenid Mobile.

Eng. Anuradha (???) for added a new position as U4SSC (United for Smart Sustainable Cities) Expert at United Nations.

Frazer from Simwood is looking for help with TADHack Bristol / United Kingdom

Congratulation to Elisja for her SIMCON Award 🙂 Well deserved, SIMCON is unique, these are awards by the people and for the people. Not the usual pay to play awards.

Luigi Migliaccio has started a new position as Head of Customer Operations at Poste Italiane.

Brandon Robinson is now Vice President Of Product Development at Inteliquent

More people changes at Cisco Collab, Amy Chang is out, Sri Srinivasan is out, and now Jeetu Patel is in as Head of Collab, Security, and Applications. Given the relative lack of growth of Webex compared to Zoom, there’s lots of pressure to catch-up. Microsoft Teams’ move into consumerization of the service shows Cisco is falling behind.

You can sign up here to receive the CXTech News and Analysis by email.