AI – Page 2 – CASA26

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[ August 29, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

CASA25 Preview: Jonathan Bean on Intelligent Engagement and AI

With CASA25 just around the corner, we sat down with Jonathan Bean, Chief Marketing Officer at Sinch, for the latest CPaaSAA Talk. As one of the industry’s leading voices, Jonathan shared his views on the state of CPaaS, the role of AI, and what to expect when the ecosystem gathers in Amsterdam this September.

The Value of Coming Together

Jonathan highlighted the importance of convening the global CPaaS community at CASA25. “I’m very much looking forward to meeting the entire CPaaS ecosystem down in Amsterdam at the end of September,” he said. For him, these gatherings are about more than just networking; they are a chance to align on strategy and accelerate collaboration.

Intelligent Engagement: CPaaS Meets AI

The conversation quickly turned to the theme of intelligent engagement — the convergence of CPaaS, network APIs, and AI. Jonathan cautioned against the wave of superficial “AI washing” seen across industries.

“In CPaaS, we power trillions of interactions every year and connect more than seven billion people around the world,” Jonathan noted. “That makes us the infrastructure — and that means our responsibility is to adapt that infrastructure to the needs of AI, rather than just sprinkling AI features on top.”

This perspective sets CPaaS apart: rather than bolting on technology, the sector has a foundational role in making AI useful, scalable, and trusted.

From Human to Hybrid to Agentic

Jonathan also pointed to the hybrid future of digital engagement. While today’s world is largely human-driven, we are entering an era where agentic AI — autonomous digital agents acting on behalf of individuals or enterprises — will play an increasing role.

“Of course, it won’t happen overnight,” he explained. “For some time, it will be a hybrid world, where human interactions and AI-driven interactions coexist. The challenge for providers like Sinch is to build the infrastructure that can bridge these worlds seamlessly.”

This balanced view underscores both the scale of change and the practical reality: businesses will evolve step by step into agentic AI, and CPaaS must provide the enabling foundation.

Looking Ahead to CASA25

For Jonathan, CASA25 comes at the right time. With intelligent engagement as a headline theme, he sees it as the perfect forum to:

Discuss how CPaaS infrastructure can adapt to AI’s demands.
Explore real-world use cases that go beyond hype.
Strengthen collaboration across telcos, vendors, enterprises, and innovators.

The event will not only showcase vision but also demonstrate the concrete steps being taken to deliver value through CPaaS and AI.

Final Thoughts

Jonathan’s insights highlight both the scale of responsibility and the scale of opportunity for the CPaaS industry. As the invisible infrastructure behind digital engagement, CPaaS providers like Sinch are uniquely positioned to ensure AI moves from buzzword to business impact.

CASA25 will be a chance to see these ideas take shape — and to explore together how intelligent engagement can transform communications in the years ahead.

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[ August 10, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

From CPaaS to AI APIs: The Next Leap in Intelligent Engagement

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.

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[ July 2, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Why CASA25 Matters Now More Than Ever: A Conversation with Mike Mills, Managing Director at Gamma

With innovation accelerating and change reshaping every layer of the communications stack, industry leaders are seeking clarity, collaboration, and momentum. That’s exactly why CASA25 is shaping up to be the event of the year for the cloud communications and CPaaS ecosystem.

In a recent CPaaSAA Talk, we sat down with Mike Mills, Managing Director at Gamma, a gold sponsor of the event, to explore why this moment—and this event—matter so much.

🔄 A Changing Landscape Demands a Fresh Perspective

From Mike’s perspective, CPaaS isn’t just another growth area—it’s central to Gamma’s long-term service provider strategy. Over the past decade, Gamma has supported the evolution of CPaaS from simple messaging infrastructure to customer engagement platforms and intelligent, AI-driven experiences.

Joining the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance earlier this year was a natural fit. Sponsoring CASA25 takes that one step further: “For us, it’s about showing that we’re a key part of the CPaaS supply chain, that we understand the business model, and that we’re investing in building capabilities that support the ecosystem at scale,” said Mike.

🌍 Building a Pan-European Powerhouse — With Germany at the Core

Gamma’s recent moves make it clear they’re not just expanding—they’re orchestrating. Over the past 18 months, the company has:

Acquired Placetel from Cisco, adding 260,000 cloud UC seats across 35,000 German SMEs.
Acquired STARFACE Group GmbH, a leading IP telephony and PBX provider, adding another 210,000 cloud PBX seats.
Integrated Coolwave, bringing in global telco and number capabilities.
Built a modern wholesale network tailored to CPaaS, CCaaS, and cloud providers.
Expanded enterprise offerings via BrightCloud and other acquisitions.

Together, these moves create a flexible, regionally attuned go-to-market engine. As Mike explained, “Germany is a huge opportunity—but also a tough one. You need real scale and local credibility. With Placetel and STARFACE, we now have both.”

CASA25 will be one of the first opportunities for the ecosystem to see how these acquisitions fit together—and how Gamma is turning them into a platform for global CX enablement.

🧠 Trends Driving Transformation: APIs, Automation, and Agentic AI

When asked about the key trends shaping the channel and partner landscape, Mike didn’t hesitate. First, he pointed to the growing importance of Network APIs as a way for telcos to finally monetize core infrastructure—and how Gamma is focused on enabling real-time, API-first number provisioning and messaging orchestration.

“CPaaS and CCaaS providers are demanding deeper automation,” he noted. “They want to go from order to delivery in minutes, not days.”

But perhaps the biggest shift? The rise of agentic AI—not just as a CX disruptor, but as a driver of consolidation, optimization, and entirely new operating models.

Mike sees AI driving:

Automation across the entire comms stack.
Fraud detection and security in telco networks.
Smarter, faster network provisioning and scaling.
Increased productivity through tools like Copilot at the individual level.

“We’re already using AI to shape strategic plans, define operating models, and free up teams from repetitive tasks,” he shared. “The compound impact of that across an organization is enormous.”

📣 CASA25: The Right Conversations, With the Right People

For Gamma, CASA25 is more than a speaking opportunity—it’s a platform to engage with peers, partners, and innovators at a moment of inflection.

“This event brings together CPaaS players, telcos, CX platforms, and AI innovators all in one place,” Mike said. “That’s where the future is being built.”

From network APIs and channel transformation to customer engagement, automation, and AI readiness, CASA25 is where the real conversations will happen—away from vendor booths and hype decks, and closer to what actually matters.

🎟 Join the Conversation

Gamma will be on stage, on site, and in the mix at CASA25 this September in Amsterdam. With two days of deep-dive workshops, high-impact sessions, and the industry’s most forward-thinking voices, this is one event you don’t want to miss.

If you’re a service provider, platform builder, or telco leader looking to stay ahead of the curve—we’ll see you there.

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[ June 29, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

vCon Foundation Joins CASA25: Shaping the Future of Conversation Intelligence

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.

Conference

[ June 24, 2025 by Rob Kurver 0 Comments ]

Intelligent Engagement: The Core Theme Driving CASA25

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.