Over the past decade, programmable communications have evolved in waves—each bringing us closer to the vision of truly intelligent, adaptive, and trusted engagement.

Wave 1: CPaaS – The Programmable Foundation

Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) unlocked the ability to integrate voice, messaging, and video directly into applications. For developers and enterprises alike, CPaaS was the first step toward agility—moving away from siloed systems and into programmable, API-driven engagement.

Wave 2: Network APIs – Opening the Telco Core

With initiatives like GSMA Open Gateway, telcos have begun exposing valuable network capabilities—such as Quality on Demand, SIM swap detection, location verification, and identity checks—through standard APIs. This step added a new dimension: trusted, network-level context that CPaaS alone could not provide.

Wave 3: vCons – Structuring the Conversation

Virtual Conversations (vCons) emerged as a shared format for capturing, storing, and sharing interactions across platforms. For the first time, multimodal engagement data (voice, video, messaging, metadata) could be standardized—making it easier to analyze, train AI models, and create consistent experiences across channels.

Wave 4: AI APIs – Context + Intelligence at Scale

The next leap is already here: AI APIs, especially those powered or enriched by telco assets. AI APIs are not just about large language models—they are about combining context (via network APIs), structure (via vCons), and programmability (via CPaaS) to create truly intelligent engagement.

This is where agentic AI comes into play—AI systems that don’t just respond, but act, orchestrate, and decide across multiple systems. Imagine:

An AI customer assistant enriched with real-time network identity checks. A proactive service bot that shifts channels based on QoS triggers. An enterprise agent that combines vCon conversation history with AI-driven sentiment and network data to personalize every interaction.

Why Telco AI APIs Matter

Telcos have unique data, infrastructure, and trust advantages:

Local presence and regulatory compliance. Low-latency edge compute for real-time AI. Verified identity and secure network paths.

When telcos expose AI capabilities as APIs—either homegrown or in partnership with hyperscalers—they can play a central role in the AI engagement layer.

Shaping the Ecosystem at CASA25

At CASA25, we’ll be exploring this convergence head-on:

CPaaS providers bringing orchestration and reach. Telcos exposing network APIs and AI services. vCon innovators ensuring conversation data is clean and portable. AI leaders pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in real-time engagement.

This is not just technology evolution—it’s ecosystem orchestration. Together, we can define the frameworks, playbooks, and demonstrations that show the world what Intelligent Engagement really looks like.

The question is no longer if this will happen. The question is who will lead it.

The energy around CASA25 keeps building—and we’re excited to share that Vonage has just signed on as a sponsor! A true heavyweight in the communications space, Vonage brings the power of Ericsson and a sharp focus on Network APIs, AI, and enterprise enablement.

Their support signals something bigger: CASA25 is becoming the go-to gathering for those shaping the future of programmable communications.

And they’re in good company.

🌟 CASA25 Sponsors (to date)

• Vonage – One of the industry’s most recognized names, with deep expertise in CPaaS and network APIs.
• Gamma – A European leader in UCaaS and cloud communications, focused on next-gen collaboration.
• Crexendo – North American UCaaS/CCaaS innovator with enterprise-ready solutions.
• McKinsey & Company – Strategic powerhouse helping define the telecom and AI landscape.
• Infobip – Global platform helping enterprises and telcos drive customer engagement.
• Radisys – Pioneering open telecom solutions and programmable infrastructure.
• GSMA – Industry-wide champion of Open Gateway and network API adoption.
• Sinch – Cloud communications leader enabling personalized customer experiences.
• 2600Hz (an Ooma company) – Empowering service providers with open, modular voice platforms.
• KPN – Dutch telco leaning into network innovation and open collaboration.
• CM.com – Messaging and payments platform bridging customer experience and communication.

🔥 Why It Matters

These sponsors represent the full ecosystem—from infrastructure and platforms to consulting and customer experience. Together, they’re not just supporting an event—they’re committing to a new phase of collaboration, innovation, and real-world execution in CPaaS, AI, and telecom.

🧭 What to Expect at CASA25

Visionary Keynotes – Hear from the leaders defining what’s next in communications, APIs, and AI. Workshops That Build – Leave the slide decks behind—these are hands-on sessions for co-creation and strategy. Real Conversations – No sales fluff, just direct, practical dialogue between insiders.

CASA25 is where the future of communications takes shape—and with partners like Vonage joining, the momentum is undeniable.

Let’s build what’s next. Together.

At CASA, we don’t do hype. No flashy expo booths. No sales slides. No filler.

Just real conversations with the people shaping the future of communications.

But who exactly are these people?

We looked back at the attendees of CASA23 and CASA24. And while we always knew the vibe in the room was special, the data confirms it.

🧠 A Gathering of Senior Minds

CASA isn’t just another industry event. It’s where the decision-makers show up:

• 67% of participants held senior roles — C-level execs, VPs, founders, or heads of strategy, product, and innovation.
• Another 18% were experienced mid-level leads — the people turning strategy into execution.
• Junior attendees? Just 3%.
• The remaining 12% included expert advisors, consultants, or industry analysts.

This level of seniority makes CASA truly unique. You’re not explaining ideas to the room — you’re shaping them with peers who can drive change.

📚 Curated Content. Zero Sales Slides.

We keep the quality high on purpose:

Every session is moderated by independent analysts from firms like STL Partners, IDC, Mobilesquared, S&P Global, and more. Speakers are chosen for what they’ve built, not what they’re selling. It’s strictly a no sales decks zone — just insight, stories, and hard-earned lessons.

🧬 Real Cross-Functional Collaboration

Unlike single-track tech expos or go-to-market meetups, CASA creates cross-functional collisions:

• 42% of attendees were technical leaders: CTOs, engineers, architects, and product heads.
• 39% were commercial minds: marketing, partnerships, CX, and growth leads.
• 19% came from broader functions: investment, regulation, consulting, and transformation.

The best results? They came from companies who sent both commercial and technical leads — who left CASA aligned and already acting on what they heard.

🕯️ It Starts Before Day One — At the CAVE Dinner

The most strategic conversations often start the night before CASA even begins — at the CAVE dinner, our private pre-event gathering for senior members and special guests.

No microphones. No formality. Just unfiltered dialogue between the people driving transformation across CPaaS, AI, cloud comms, and the broader telco ecosystem.

It’s where partnerships form, ideas are challenged, and where the tone for the rest of CASA is set.

🌍 Diverse, Curated, and Always Evolving

Across CASA23 and CASA24, we welcomed over 120 companies from:

• Tier-1/2 telcos, CSPs and CPaaS platforms
• Global hyperscalers and AI startups
• Security, orchestration, and CX leaders
• Strategy firms, investors, and regulators

Every edition is intentionally sized, with a curated guest list. It’s not about quantity. It’s about quality and conversations that matter.

🚪What’s Next?

CASA25 is happening this September in Amsterdam.

If you’re building what’s next — in telco, AI, communications, or cloud — you’ll want to be in the room. Not just to listen. But to participate, shape, and connect.

And don’t come alone.

Bring your product lead. Bring your commercial lead. Bring your partners.

The more perspectives you bring, the more value you unlock.

This isn’t a conference.

It’s where the future gets debated — and decided.

We’re thrilled to announce that the vCon Foundation is joining CASA25 as an official sponsor—joining the ranks of other ecosystem pioneers like GSMA Open Gateway—to lead the charge on a technology that’s quietly becoming one of the most transformative forces in communications: virtual conversations (vCons).

At this year’s CASA25, the vCon Foundation will be on stage, in the workshops, and in the conversations that matter most—introducing the vCon standard to the CPaaS and cloud communications community, and showing how this deceptively simple innovation could redefine how we store, share, and build on business conversations.

And we’re not exaggerating when we say: this could be as big as SIP, SMS, or CPaaS itself.

What Are vCons—and Why Should You Care?

A vCon is a structured, portable, and machine-readable container for all the data around a conversation: audio, transcripts, participants, metadata, and even AI insights like summaries or sentiment. Think of it as the PDF or vCard for business conversations.

Today, most calls, messages, and meetings are lost to siloed systems, raw audio files, or disconnected transcripts. vCons change that. They allow platforms, enterprises, and AI tools to treat conversations as first-class data objects—with context, structure, and continuity.

And that changes everything.

Why It Matters to the CPaaS Ecosystem

At CPaaSAA, we believe that AI is only as powerful as the data it learns from. And right now, conversation data is mostly unstructured and unusable. vCons unlock that value.

For CPaaS and CCaaS providers, vCons enable:

Plug-and-play conversation intelligence: Any AI model, from any vendor, can read and analyze vCons—accelerating innovation without locking customers in. Unified customer journeys across voice, chat, video, and messaging. Compliance and governance by tracking consent, redacting sensitive data, and storing audit-ready records. Interoperability that breaks down vendor silos and unlocks new business models. And perhaps most importantly: AI with memory.

As we shift from automation to autonomy, the ability to give AI agents persistent, structured memory across interactions becomes the foundation for everything else. vCons are that memory layer.

Why CPaaSAA Is Getting Behind This

As with Network APIs, CPaaSAA believes the real opportunity isn’t just in the tech—it’s in how we connect it to ecosystems, use cases, and adoption at scale.

That’s why we’re excited to welcome the vCon Foundation to CASA25—not just as a sponsor, but as a co-creator of the next wave of programmable communications.

Throughout CASA25, the vCon Foundation will:

Speak on the main stage about the business impact of vCons and real-world use cases already underway. Host a hands-on workshop showing developers and vendors how to build with vCons. Meet with key CPaaSAA members to discuss integration paths, pilots, and co-investment opportunities.

We’ve seen this movie before: standards start quietly, get adopted by a few visionary players, and then become the foundation for multi-billion-dollar ecosystems. That’s what happened with SIP. With SMS. With WebRTC. With CPaaS itself.

vCon is next.

Join Us in Amsterdam

CASA25 is where insiders shape what comes next. We’re proud to have the vCon Foundation as a partner on that journey—and we invite you to come learn, build, and help define the standards that will power the future of voice, video, messaging, and AI.

If you’re building anything in communications, customer experience, or AI-driven engagement—you need to understand vCons.

Let’s make it happen, together.

Intelligent Engagement isn’t just a theme for CASA25—it’s becoming the strategic north star for the entire cloud communications industry. Whether you’re building CPaaS platforms, launching new AI experiences, or orchestrating APIs and workflows across channels, the message is clear: real-time, context-rich, intelligent interactions are what set the next generation of communication apart.

That vision got a powerful boost this month with RingCentral’s new whitepaper, Beyond CPaaS: Harnessing the Full Potential of Integrated Communications Platforms. It’s packed with data showing how integrated, AI-powered platforms aren’t just nice-to-have—they’re measurably transforming business outcomes.

💡 From CPaaS to Intelligent Engagement

According to RingCentral:

“The fundamental value of CPaaS lies in its ability to transform communications into a strategic business asset. By providing a flexible, scalable platform for integrating various communication channels into existing applications and workflows, CPaaS enables businesses to create tailored experiences for both customers and employees.”

That’s exactly the foundation Intelligent Engagement is built on: combining APIs, automation, and AI to deliver real-time decisions, deeper customer relationships, and faster go-to-market execution. The report notes:

• Up to 45% cost savings vs. traditional communication tools
• 72% faster time-to-market for new features
• 10,000+ daily SMS messages and 1,200+ digital faxes automated by just one user (Senderra RX)

🎯 Why It Matters for CASA25

At CASA25, Intelligent Engagement will serve as the connective tissue across all themes—from Telco APIs and AI orchestration to security, trust, and convergence. You’ll hear from members and partners who are applying these principles across every layer of the stack:

AI: from contact center automation to intelligent routing and conversation intelligence Network APIs: providing the underlying signals that make engagement contextual and real-time CPaaS/UCaaS/CCaaS convergence: not just stitched together, but natively intelligent

🔁 Real Use Cases, Real Impact

This isn’t theory. It’s happening now—in healthcare, financial services, retail, and education. RingCentral’s examples show how intelligent engagement works across industries. And at CASA25, we’ll see new demos, share results from working groups, and explore what comes next—from agentic AI to programmable customer journeys.

Now What?

So if you’re still thinking of CPaaS as just APIs, or AI as a chatbot plugin—it’s time to zoom out. Intelligent Engagement is the new lens for strategy, investment, and innovation in cloud communications.

See you in Amsterdam. This year, we’re not just talking—we’re doing.

The countdown to CASA25 has officially begun—and we’re excited to share the first wave of confirmed sponsors and speakers helping us kick things off.

We’re proud to welcome Gamma, Twilio, McKinsey, Radisys, GSMA and Five9 as our first sponsors. It’s a powerful mix of innovation, strategy, and global influence—and it sets the tone for what CASA25 is all about: creating real impact in a fast-changing communications landscape.

From advanced cloud communications to strategic insight and telco transformation, these sponsors aren’t just backing the event—they’re shaping the future of CPaaS, network APIs, and AI-driven engagement.

Speakers

And to match that energy, we’re also confirming our first four speakers:

• Mike Mills – MD Service Providers at Gamma
• Hélène Vigue – Identity & Data Director at GSMA
• Al Balasco – SVP Communication Solutions at Radisys
• Ferry Grijpink – partner at McKinsey, specializing in Network APIs and ethical AI

Expect sharp insights, bold ideas, and fresh perspectives from these industry leaders. Each of them brings a unique angle to the CASA25 themes, including agentic AI, go-to-market evolution, programmable networks, and intelligent engagement.

This is just the beginning. More speakers and sponsors will be announced in the coming weeks, but if this early lineup is any indication, CASA25 is going to be unlike anything we’ve done before.

We’ll be back soon with more updates—including how to join, participate, or bring your team.

In a world where industry events can sometimes feel like a parade of pay-to-play sponsor presentations, CASA25 takes a different approach.

While we absolutely love our C-level participants and sponsors for their incredible insights, we also believe in balancing the program with perspectives and panel sessions from top industry analysts and impact-driven consultants. This helps us keep the focus on learning, sharing, and connecting—rather than presenting and selling—and ensures our attendees walk away engaged and with fresh ideas and real value.

And let’s be honest, the fact that these world-class analysts choose to partner with us? That speaks volumes about the quality and impact of the event!

We’re thrilled to welcome an incredible lineup of analysts this year, including:

• Raul Castanon – S&P Global
• Melissa Holtz – IDC
• Darius Singh – STL Partners
• Andrew Collinson – Connective Insight
• Nick Lane – MobileSquared

These brilliant minds bring a wealth of insight and energy, helping shape conversations that push our industry forward.

Alongside them, we’re lucky to work with some fantastic advisory partners who are all about making impact happen. These include Mach49, Match-Maker Ventures, Creo Solutions, The Next Cloud, and McKinsey. They’re committed to helping our members turn inspiration into action—with strategies that work and stories that resonate.

Together, this vibrant mix of analysts and consultants transforms CASA25 into something more than a conference. It becomes a hub of collaboration, innovation, and momentum for the future of communications.

Stay tuned for more updates!

We’re excited to announce that Today Digital is joining CASA25 as an official media partner! This is a big step forward for our member-only event, as it means that for the first time, the broader industry will get a glimpse into what makes CASA special—through editorial coverage on the UC Today, CX Today, and AI Today platforms.

Over the next few months, we’ll be working closely with their editorial team to spotlight our CASA25 sponsors, explore key industry trends, and shine a light on the people and ideas shaping the future of CPaaS, AI, and Intelligent Engagement. And during the week of CASA25 in September, they’ll be reporting live from the event, sharing highlights and insights with their global audience.

This partnership is about more than visibility—it’s also about celebrating excellence. As part of the collaboration, Rob Kurver, founding partner of CPaaSAA, is joining the jury for the UC Awards 2025. This year’s awards will include a dedicated CPaaS category, and we’re inviting our members to participate!

To support this, we’ve secured a special 10% discount on entry fees for CPaaS providers who want to submit their solutions for consideration. Winners will not only receive industry-wide recognition, but we’ll also spotlight them during CASA25—giving them an extra boost within our growing ecosystem.

👉 Use discount code UCA25RS when submitting your entry for the UC Awards CPaaS category.

The CPaaSAA community continues to grow and mature, and partnerships like this one help connect our member-only initiatives with the broader market. We look forward to seeing our members take the stage—both in the UC Awards and at CASA25 this September.