The purpose of this CXTech Week 17 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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Tony Jamous Announces next Venture. Oyster, a distributed talent enablement platform.

Talented people in developing countries dream of opportunities that are stimulating and pay well, but are only to be found in developed countries. And the companies in developed countries, who would be open to hiring someone great in another country, need to go through a massive admin/hr/payroll obstacle to make it happen. So they don’t hire them. That is why a senior software developer in San Francisco is paid $250k per year, while the same talent say in Portugal is paid less than $50k, and while the same talent in Nigeria stays unemployed. I felt that this was a big problem that is worth dedicating my next 10 years to.

Tony Jamous, Founder Oyster (previously founder of Nexmo)

COVID-19 impact on UK & USA voice traffic by Simwood

Great analysis from Simwood on the complex situation we see across the US and UK in voice calling. The picture below summarizes a pattern many voice providers have seen. The increase in call duration if definitely the most consistent trend. Also Easter holidays had a bigger impact on some countries than others, e.g. Germany versus the US (where Spring Break was cancelled and online school continued for many kids).

Adding video communications into the mix brings much more complexity as the massive video conferencing increase masks a much more complex profitability calculation. Also forgotten in these video-hype days are the work horses of collaboration: email, messaging, and content collaboration tools – all showing large increases in usage. The poor sales people trying to keep deals alive without meeting with clients, only by talking with them, is likely a significant component of the increased call durations!

Another factor I’m starting to see in the US is employee burn-out. They’ve been ‘at work’ since the start of the year without a vacation. Balancing work and home life, with the background noise of COVID-19 news; and some segments of society demonstrating their gullibility to misinformation on Facebook (but more on that later).

Home life includes long queues at the supermarket (forget online ordering there are no available delivery slots), toilet paper hunts, and deciding on the week’s meals based on what happens to be in the super market, not what you planned. Hoarders have moved on from TP and hand sanitizer, to chicken. Coupled with work encroaching into the weekday evenings and weekends, people are now dropping off the grid!

The situation will continue through this year and into next. This initial data is interesting and I applaud Simwood for sharing. We’re likely to see a much more complex situation emerge in the coming months.

TADHack Global 2020 website launched

TADHack Global will run across 10 cities around the world on the 10th and 11th October 2020, plus from the comfort of your own home as we allow remote entries, ever since its founding in 2014. So whether you’re not able to make it to location, or you’re avoiding crowds because of COVID-19, you can still take part. Your chances of winning are the same being in-person or remote. A big thank you to Simwood for being the first sponsor to confirm for TADHack Global in 2020.

To win one of the many cash prizes is simple: create hacks using the global sponsors’ technologies. Click on the location you plan to attend (or be involved with remotely) to get more information about the location, schedule, and resources.

TADHack Global is a hackathon that helps people learn about the latest Internet, IT, and Telecoms technologies; and use those technologies to solve problems that matter.

Our hacks have included programmable telecoms (voice, video, messaging), internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, machine learning, speech and face recognition, mobile payments, enterprise communications, decentralized web, blockchain, encryption, open source, and many other technologies. Check out previous years’ hacks from 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.

At TADHack Global you’ll have fun, meet amazing people from around the world, learn important new skills, and perhaps even change the world with your hack!

It is likely some TADHack locations could happen when school shutdowns are in effect in that city. If a school shut down is in effect in your city the location will run online only.

Learned this week Telestax are no longer actively supporting Restcomm/Mobicents

I was preparing a presentation for TADSummit Asia on open source telecom software and my Mobicents and Restcomm links were forwarding to Telestax. After bit of searching I found the code on Github. From what I understand they are no longer actively supporting the code. This was (well still is) one of the largest repositories of telecom protocols, I discussed its value in relation to the Microsoft/Affirmed acquisition in CXTech Week 14 2020 newsletter. As Ivelin (the founder of Mobicents) said to me, “Nothing can kill an open source project. 🙂 That’s by definition. “

All your CPaaS / UCaaS / CCaaS / CXTech market size predictions are now wrong

I’m putting together an update of the CXTech landscape for TADSummit Asia. Some of the updates include:

• Added another 200+ companies (bottoms-up analysis)
  • Expanded list of global VoIP providers and CXTech companies
  • Expanded list of master agents and distributors (mainly US, international TBC)
• Added channel and telco contributions to the revenues
• Updated projections to include global recession for H2 2020 and H1 2021.
  • Most collaboration providers are unimpacted – slight acceleration for some
  • Call center is initially unimpacted, but slight downturn in H1 2021
  • Usage based businesses impacted in H2 2020, e.g. CPaaS.
  • Will update downturn model as results get announced through 2020.
• Added regionalization of revenues (simple Americas, EMEA, Asia split)

In putting the analysis together I realized we’ve reached a point for telecom services that Americas, EMEA and APAC are all roughly the same. North America is still slightly larger as poor regulation means North Americans overpay for their telecom services compared to the rest of the world.

New CPaaS Provider added to the list, Soprano Design

Soprano made an announcement recently that got them on my radar, “Soprano adds RCS capability to its CPaaS platform as Australian & New Zealand businesses ramp up customer engagement.” Given the experience of other CPaaS providers, it’s unlikely to have much impact on revenue beyond a few trials this year, and likely next.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Chris Matthieu has moved on from MagicLeap as they refocus on hardware. I was asking him in January if he was planning to move onto building his next company.

Congratulations to Sailesh Shah who is now Worldwide Sales Consultant at X-dream-Distribution GmbH

Well done to Caroline Locke who is now IoT Connectivity Delivery Manager at Vodafone Business. I’ve known Caroline since before Telefonica began BlueVia.

Congratulations to Brian McManus, who is moving on from Amdocs. He was our marketing guy at Teltier, nearly 20 years ago!

Damien Staples is now Vice President, Wholesale at Inmarsat

Henri Setiawan Wyatno is now Tribe Leader SMB Digitalization and Digitization at PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia

James Frederik Blom is now Vice President: ISV’s at MobiledgeX

Mark Thiele is now CEO & Founder at Edgevana Inc. Previously he was ecosystem and partner development for Ericsson’s EDGE GRAVITY

Its time to Delete Facebook Forever

Facebook are facilitating groups promoting mis-information, below is just one example. To stop this, delete Facebook from your life forever. You’ll be happier and have more time in your life – I did 7 years ago. You can share stuff with your family and close friends using encrypted private chat groups with Matrix.org or Telegram or one of the many other private social platforms. Your family and close friends should matter more than the BS some celeb or influencer claims. #DeleteFacebookForever

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