The purpose of this CXTech Week 52 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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Vidyo sees 1349% mobile and 936% desktop growth in its services

Back in CXTech Week 21 2019 we covered Enghouse buying Vidyo for $40M on $60M revenues. Check out the Enghouse Interactive results (link in title) to see the timeliness of that buy.

Their objective with M&A is a cash-on-cash payback within 5 – 6 years. I think Vidyo will beat that objective.

Symbl raises $4.7M from Amazon and others for ‘conversational AI’

Congratulations to the Symbl.ai team. In a year that has seen crazy raises, it’s nice to see ‘sensible’ investment numbers. Like we saw for Matrix.org (Element.io) back in May this year with $4.6M, covered in CXTech week 22 2020.

Symbl.ai are a sponsor of TADHack Global 2020, and had an impressive first event, as you can see in this summary. And they will be back sponsoring TADHack Global in 2021 🙂

Crosscut Ventures led the $4.7 million round, which included participation from Alexa Fund, Amazon’s voice-focused investment arm. Other backers include Jump Capital, Third Kind VC, Technexus Ventures, and Flying Fish, in addition to angel investors such as Capio founder Tony Chen and Tom Williams, founder of BetterCompany.

European Association of Next Generation Telecommunications Innovators (EANGTI)

Their mission is to allow Europe to continue to reap the benefits of innovation and intellectual property developed within the continent. EANGTI is dedicated to highlighting the opportunity in creating a strong eco-system and SME-friendly environment that fosters innovation.

Their objectives are:

• Deepening the understanding of SMEs’ role and importance in Europe in driving R&D and innovation and ensure that European SMEs have a voice.
• Encouraging collaboration between industry players, regulators and other relevant actors, in order to secure an independent European technology ecosystem.
• Promoting the capabilities and opportunities of next generation software-defined networks, and creating dedicated SME-based showcases and deployments of relevant technologies.

Eangti’s representatives are Dr. David Bachmann, CEO ng-voice, Co-President of Eangti and Franck Spinelli, CEO Amarisoft, Co-President of Eangti.

Simwood: Thanks for an interesting year!

This is an honest and frank review of 2020, which echos many in the programmable communications business. The outlook to 2021 is also accurate.

Through 2020 many enterprises have applied bandaids to keep business operating. It has enabled many to see the truth that programmable communications is better than legacy offers. While they also tended to keep the legacy systems operating as well.

Through 2021 and into 2022 we’ll see consolidation, as businesses get costs better under control, given the confidence built in programmable communications: that is CPaaS, CCaaS, UCaaS, cloud, open source, etc.. Essentially, the pandemic has forced action when often businesses operate under, if it’s not broke don’t fix it. By the end of 2022, we’ll have jumped 10 years of BAU adoption in a matter of 3 years.

This also means many more businesses will have a different attitude to communications. They do not need a telco for their telecoms. Voice is ever more a feature. We’ve been saying this for decades, but by 2022 we’ll start to see and feel its impact in the broader market.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Eric Nadalin is now CTO, co-founder at tru.ID. Previously co-founder and CTO of Nexmo. I mentioned last week in CXTech Week 50, Luis Pedrosa has moved to tru.ID (worked for Eric at Nexmo).

Rajendar Singh Dhami is now a Senior Software Engineer at Espire Infolabs.

Ben Langfeld is now Principal Developer at Power Home Remodeling.

Milind Pathik is now Chief Business Officer at Route Mobile Limited.

Jean-Luc Nguyen is now Founder, CEO & CTO at Storylation. I mentioned Storylation in CXTech Week 39 2020.

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