The purpose of this CXTech Week 16 2022 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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Covered this week:
- Stacuity and JT IoT Partner
- TeleSign introduces Age Verification
- The WebRTC Architecture Landscape is Changing
- Kentik Integration with Cloudflare for DDoS
- Netflix Stock plunges 35%, yet another example of a rigged stock market
- Please Consider Conner Luzier – seeking full-time or project work in programmable comms / WebRTC
- Lead Open Source Developer Opportunity with drachtio and jambonz
- Gupshup acquires AskSid, Conversation AI. And Uniphore acquires Colabo.
- People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Stacuity and JT IoT Partner
Stacuity‘s Programmable Telecom Network enables developers to configure mobile connectivity according to their bespoke requirements, with new levels of flexibility and control, but without the need for specialist telecom skills. Stacuity goes deep into the mobile network, below the relatively high level of PSTN services or SIM activation, into functions within mobile networks.
JT IoT is a global cellular IoT connectivity and carrier neutral IoT platform provider. They help companies connect their devices to accelerate time to market, offer new services, and expand across borders.
Together, Stacuity and JT IoT deliver a unique programmable platform: from the network components where IoT device attach, through to the workflows within the enterprise. This is an important step is Staucity’s growth, with this partnership the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is now available.
TeleSign introduces Age Verification
Through its Verification API, TeleSign offers a fast, frictionless way to verify an end-user’s age. Using mobile identity insights, Age Verify immediately confirms if a user is over the age of 18. Age Verify is currently available in the U.K.
The U.K.’s new Online Safety Bill will legally require certain sites to verify users’ age. Under the legislation, the U.K. government will be able to fine sites up to 10% of their global earnings or block them from being accessed by anyone in the U.K. The Online Safety Bill could also hold site owners criminally liable for failing to follow the legislation.
Using knowledge from the phone / phone number and other publicly available data sources, they likely determine if the person using the phone (remember family plans so it’s not just who pays for the phone service) is 18+, and if not then they have to go through another layer of verification to prove they’re of age.
There are other age verification APIs available like veriff.
The WebRTC Architecture Landscape is Changing
This is a nice review from the WebRTC.Ventures team on the 4th option in building a WebRTC App. The other three different types of WebRTC application architectures: WebRTC “to the standard”, open source media servers, and the commercial media server options referred to as CPaaS.
WebRTC Unbundling is a term that references how you can combine various JavaScript APIs to replace parts of the media pipeline in WebRTC applications. These include WebAssembly, WebTransport, and WebCodecs.
Kentik Integration with Cloudflare for DDoS
As we saw last year, CXTech Week 51 2021, DDoS hits real time services hard. And Magic Transit has become the default solution. Kentik provides network observability, which is now integrated with Cloudflare. Network security teams can use Kentik’s market-leading DDoS detection and analytics, and Magic Transit, Cloudflare’s industry-leading DDoS mitigation tool, as an integrated, on-demand solution. Helping mitigate DDoS protection costs.
Netflix Stock plunges 35%, yet another example of a rigged stock market
Competition has been growing for several years, Disney+ 2019, Peacock 2020, HBO Max 2020, Paramount+ 2021, and Apple TV+ 2019. And the pandemic is now at the stage where we’re living with the virus, with most people back at work. This drop is not a surprise. In my discussions this year the focus has been on where growth comes in the US. And in the longer term how the streaming market will evolve. If Netflix can not survive, the streaming market is just part of a big studio’s bundle. Granted the miss was made worse by pulling out of Russia (700k sub drop), but Netflix did not fully appreciate the impact of yet another price rise.
Considering Netflix a growth stock in this environment is silly. Clearly Wall Street kept the charade of growth stock so it could make money when reality finally changed perception. Money is made on ‘unexpected’ changes.
Removing all the account sharing will gain some customers, and a cheaper advertising offer will appeal to about 33% of Netflix subscribers according to surveys. Likely both will be offered at the same time, cut off the account sharing, and give them the cheaper tier to retain them as customers, and hence grow revenues overall.
Personally, between Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and the occasional purchase, our TV needs are more than met. We’re not a sports, Star Wars, MCU, Disney type family. One of the things that keeps us with Netflix is all the international content, we recently saw Cracow Monsters (Polish production), not on the level of Squid Game (Korean), but enjoyable nonetheless.
Please Consider Conner Luzier – seeking full-time or project work in programmable comms / WebRTC
Conner Luzier is a TADHack regular. Check out his hacks from TADHack-mini Orlando in 2018, 2019, and 2020. He’s also presented at Enterprise Connect several times, how many soon to be graduates have such industry exposure!
He’s looking for work, ideally full-time, but is happy for project work to build his references in the industry. Conner has shown his abilities and get-up-and-go time and again at TADHack. So please get in contact with Conner, thank you.
Lead Open Source Developer Opportunity with drachtio and jambonz
Dave Horton is looking to hire a developer to work on his open source projects with him. Totally remote, looking for quality person that has skills but most importantly can learn and is fun to work with. Dave is a great guy, and his open source projects are top notch!
Gupshup acquires AskSid, Conversation AI. And Uniphore acquires Colabo, a Conversation Intelligence company buys another Conversation Intelligence Company.
Gupshup is an India based business message platform founded in 2010. Its bought AskSid for an undisclosed sum, a conversation AI platform, to automate conversations.
And in a similar vein, Uniphore, conversation intelligence for customer care, and now sales. Has bought, Colabo, which focuses on extracting knowledge from all the conversations a business has with its customers.
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
William King is now senior Production Engineer at Meta! Previously with Subspace.
Hoerdur Matthiasson is now Partner Sales Executive at Mendix! I’ve known Hoerdur since his time at Oracle/BEA, which is 15 years ago!
Derek Stevens is now Sr. Manager, Content Marketing at Cisco
Vedran Pavlović is now Lead Technical Writer at Infobip
Pallav Kaushish Head of Innovation at Inc42 Media
Alok Kulkarni is now Software Architect at GS Lab
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