During the CASA25 Showcase Challenge, four strong contenders took the stage to demonstrate how they are shaping the future of communications. The final demo of the session, delivered by Robert Galop of Creo Solutions, didn’t just close the challenge — it reframed how many in the room think about conversations, data, and value creation.

By the end of the session, it was clear why Creo Solutions was later announced as the overall winner. Their demo didn’t focus on a single feature or narrow use case. Instead, it presented a bold but practical vision: conversations themselves are becoming a foundational data layer for enterprises, and the industry needs the infrastructure to manage, govern, and monetize them at scale.

VCONs as a New Industry Catalyst

Robert started by anchoring his story in context. The communications industry has seen a few defining inflection points over the past decades — HTML in the early 90s, SIP in the late 90s, and large language models in the early 2020s. Each of these moments unlocked entirely new business models and ecosystems.

His claim was simple but powerful: 2025 will be remembered as the year VCONs, combined with AI, kicked off the conversation intelligence era.

What makes VCONs different is their scope. Rather than treating conversations as transient events or isolated transcripts, VCONs capture structured, contextual information across the entire customer journey — from voice calls and contact center interactions to meetings, emails, social media reviews, and even legacy channels like fax. In Robert’s view, today’s conversation intelligence tools only scratch the surface of what’s possible when conversations become a shared, interoperable asset.

The Coming Explosion of Conversation Data

Looking ahead to 2026, Robert painted a picture of scale. As telco networks, UCaaS, CCaaS, and enterprise applications increasingly generate VCONs by default, the industry will soon be dealing with billions of conversations created every single day.

That volume raises an obvious question: where do all those VCONs live, and how do they become useful rather than overwhelming?

This is where Creo Solutions’ core proposition comes in.

Introducing the Conversation Intelligence Cloud

Creo Solutions is building what Robert described as a conversation intelligence cloud — a platform designed to ingest VCONs from across the ecosystem and turn them into something operational.

The platform is built to serve multiple constituencies at once:

• Telcos that already carry the conversations across their networks
• Application vendors generating VCONs through UCaaS, CCaaS, and collaboration tools
• Enterprises that want actionable insight, not raw data

At its core, the cloud combines intelligence, media connectivity, and security. But just as importantly, it includes a set of ready-made applications that help customers get started quickly. These apps are not positioned as the end state, but as an on-ramp — something tangible that can be sold, deployed, and understood today, while enabling much richer innovation over time.

Consent, Compliance, and Trust by Design

One of the most compelling parts of the demo was the emphasis on compliance and consent.

Robert shared a real-world example from early deployments where a CSP began sending customer data into the platform — only for Creo Solutions to discover that no proper consent had ever been gathered, and that highly sensitive personal conversations were being processed without visibility or control. The result was a full data purge and a rethink of how consent must be enforced at the conversation level.

From that experience emerged a robust consent control layer. The platform checks whether consent exists, whether callers were notified, and whether consent was withdrawn. It also performs redaction and anonymization where needed, ensuring that conversation intelligence can scale without eroding trust or regulatory compliance.

From Raw Conversations to Usable Experiences

Rather than flooding users with dashboards or transcripts, Creo Solutions focuses on surfacing what actually matters.

Robert demonstrated several “copilots” designed for real-world users — especially SMBs and SMEs who are not living inside enterprise analytics tools:

• First Alert Copilot, which flags high-risk or high-priority conversations, such as customers threatening to churn
• Call Summary Copilot, which extracts key actions and commitments from calls
• Daily recaps delivered via email, so business owners on the road still stay informed

In the live demo, a billing dispute call — scripted using ChatGPT — flowed through the platform. The system automatically detected customer frustration, escalated an alert to the business owner, generated a task list, and summarized the interaction without requiring anyone to manually review the call.

The result is a lightweight but powerful alternative to traditional CRMs: every conversation, every commitment, and every issue captured and tracked — with easy integration into tools like HubSpot or Zendesk when needed.

Querying the Business Through Conversations

Beyond alerts and summaries, Robert hinted at what comes next.

All conversations are stored, vectorized, and made available to large language models. That means enterprises can begin querying their entire conversation history — not just for reporting, but for deeper reasoning, pattern detection, and even business planning.

When combined with concepts like MCP servers and deep reasoning, the idea of running complex analysis across every customer interaction becomes not just feasible, but practical.

A Clear Monetization Story for Providers

The final piece of the demo — and one that clearly resonated with the judges — was the business model.

Creo Solutions makes it easy for providers to integrate through multiple connectivity options. Once connected, telcos and service providers can:

• Upsell copilots alongside UCaaS and CCaaS seats
• Add insight-driven services on top of basic connectivity
• Dramatically increase ARPU without changing core infrastructure

Robert summed it up succinctly: this is a path to more than doubling revenue per customer by adding intelligence to calls that today generate zero value beyond basic connectivity.

When challenged with an elevator pitch to a telco CEO, his answer was equally direct: every call that crosses your network is currently discarded from a value perspective — this platform turns every one of those calls into a monetizable asset.

Why Creo Solutions Took the Win

The Showcase Challenge judges weren’t just looking for interesting technology. They were looking for something that could scale globally, align with telco realities, and solve real enterprise problems.

Creo Solutions checked all three boxes.

By positioning VCONs as a shared foundation, embedding consent and trust by design, and delivering practical applications with a clear revenue story, the team demonstrated not just a product — but a platform with ecosystem-level implications.

It’s no surprise, then, that Creo Solutions was ultimately announced as the winner of the CASA25 Showcase Challenge. Their demo captured both the urgency and the opportunity facing the communications industry as conversations themselves become the next great data frontier.

If this is what the conversation intelligence era looks like at kickoff, the next few years are going to be very interesting indeed.

At CASA25, a standout panel dove deep into one of the most critical—and least understood—aspects of the vCon revolution: how to handle consent, compliance, and data provenance in an AI-driven world.

Moderated by Thomas Howe of Strolid, the panel brought together a mix of perspectives from across the ecosystem: Jason Goecke (Creo Solutions), Nima Golchini (Enea), Tony Nuzzo (Approved Contact), and Ben Curtis and Dean Landsman from JLINC. Together, they explored how programmable trust and verifiable consent are becoming the new foundation of intelligent communications.

From Permissions to Provenance

Tony Nuzzo of Approved Contact opened with a simple but powerful premise: trust starts with permission.

His company’s new Permissions product lets brands validate consent explicitly — not just “we think they agreed,” but clear records of whether customers allow their voice to be used in AI, or whether they want to receive texts or calls.

“You want to be a trusted brand, not just a brand,” Tony said. “And the VCon gives you a way to prove that trust.”

By capturing this consent inside verifiable conversation data, VCons effectively become an insurance policy for brands — proof that engagement is both compliant and authentic.

Security First: Cleaning the Pipeline

Nima Golchini of Enea then connected the dots between consent and cybersecurity.

Enea provides messaging and signaling firewalls that filter spam, block malicious content, and enforce regional compliance rules across operators and CPaaS providers.

He explained how AI models now detect campaign drift — where a registered campaign sends unrelated content — and help enforce national codes of conduct, like France’s restriction on promotional messages during weekends.

“It’s about keeping a clean pipeline,” Nima said. “Security, compliance, and monetization all depend on it.”

JLINC: Proof That Data Stays True

The discussion moved to data provenance, where Ben Curtis and Dean Landsman from JLINC outlined how cryptographic signatures and zero-knowledge auditing can verify the flow of data without ever exposing its contents.

Ben explained how their system ensures that data shared between systems — for example, between AI models or CPaaS platforms — is traceable, trusted, and compliant with privacy regulations.

“We can prove that the data went where it was supposed to go, and came from who it was supposed to — without ever revealing the private data itself.”

Dean added that this capability turns compliance into something verifiable and automatic:

“From the moment data begins to the moment it ends, it still belongs to its originator. That’s the essence of trust under GDPR and every new data law to come.”

Smart Contracts for Consent

When Jason Goecke of Creo Solutions joined the exchange, he described VCons as the foundation for programmable compliance.

“It’s like a smart contract for communication,” he said. “Consent travels with the data itself. That gives you ownership, transparency, and interoperability — the foundation for trusted applications.”

VCons, in this view, turn consent into code — allowing businesses to automate trust, not just declare it.

The New CRM: Conversational and Consumer-Centric

Closing the panel, Dean Landsman reflected on how VCons could transform CRM systems.

Traditional CRMs were designed to collect and exploit data, not to protect it. The next generation, he said, will be conversational and consumer-centric — powered by verifiable, user-owned data.

“CRM hasn’t really had guardrails before. VCons bring them,” he said. “They ensure customer data stays their own — and make the system finally work for the customer.”

From Compliance to Confidence

The message from this CASA25 panel was clear: VCons aren’t just about storing conversations — they’re about redefining digital trust.

They turn compliance into a design principle, enable verifiable provenance for AI, and make consent portable across every layer of the communications stack.

As Thomas Howe closed the session, he summed up the mood perfectly:

“This isn’t about regulation slowing us down — it’s about trust becoming programmable.”

Why CPaaSAA is All-In on vCons — And Why You Should Be Too

Imagine if every conversation your company ever had — by phone, email, SMS, chat, or video — could be captured, structured, and made useful. Not just for compliance or analytics, but to fuel AI, improve customer service, and scale your best people. That’s the promise of the vCon. And at CASA25, it took center stage.

When Kevin Nethercott (CPaaSAA) sat down for a fireside chat with Thomas Howe (Co-Founder of Vconic) at CASA25, it was more than a reunion between two industry veterans — it was a milestone moment. Together, they laid out a vision for how the vCon (short for “virtual conversation”) can become the next foundational standard in communications — following in the footsteps of SIP, HTTP, and other Internet-era breakthroughs.

💬 The Holy Grail: Listening at Scale

Kevin kicked things off with a simple but powerful truth:

“If I could have a 360-degree view of what my customer really thinks and wants — I’d pay a lot of money for that.”

But today, that insight is fragmented across five, ten, even twenty different communication platforms. Email, phone, CRM, live chat, WhatsApp, web forms… they don’t talk to each other. Worse, we don’t really listen — not in a way that’s structured, ethical, and scalable.

Thomas put it bluntly:

“Every time a customer spoke to us, it was like a new day. We didn’t remember the last conversation — but they did.”

So they built vCon: a new file format and open standard, now on track with the IETF (the same body that gave us SIP, DNS, and TLS). A vCon can wrap any interaction — a call, an email thread, a chatbot session — into a single, secure, portable digital record.

Think JPEG for conversations. XLS for communications.

📦 What Exactly Is a vCon?

A vCon is a structured file format that captures:

• Who participated
• When and how they communicated (voice, text, email, etc.)
• The actual content of the conversation
• Metadata about permissions, compliance, and ownership

It’s designed from the ground up to be secure, portable, and privacy-respecting — addressing growing concerns around AI, biometrics, and compliance in a post-GDPR world.

“We didn’t just want to listen to customers — we wanted to do it ethically.”

The vCon standard ensures data control remains with the originator, not locked in a vendor’s silo or swept into a black-box AI model.

🧠 AI’s Favorite Data Format?

The timing couldn’t be better. AI is hungry — but it’s being fed garbage.

Large Language Models are trained on messy, unstructured public data. Meanwhile, telcos and communication platforms sit on oceans of valuable, structured, first-party data — but it’s locked in silos.

“VCons are robot food,” said Kevin. “They’re secure, accurate, and ethical. Small language models, not large ones. That’s the future.”

And it’s already happening. VConic’s first large implementation — for Strolid, a car sales company talking to 250,000 customers a month — uses vCons to scale their coaching and agent support. The internal project was affectionately named “Papa in a Box”, after Strolid’s founder’s father who once coached every sales call — until the business grew too fast for human memory.

Now, vCon-based copilots help every agent, every time.

🔄 Standards Create Value

Both Kevin and Thomas have seen this movie before. SIP, once an obscure acronym, became the backbone of VoIP and unified communications. Now it underpins an industry worth hundreds of billions.

“In five years,” Thomas predicted, “we’ll see widespread adoption of vCons in customer-facing applications — starting with compliance and governance, then moving into AI and service creation.”

vCons break open the walls between providers, networks, and apps — enabling true interoperability of conversations. That’s when things get really interesting.

“Today, most companies analyze the conversation and the AI in the same place. That’s like AOL in the 90s — one closed system. But tomorrow? You’ll move conversations between AI agents across networks. Just like the web broke AOL, vCons break the silos.”

🚀 CPaaSAA Is All-In

As Kevin closed the session, he made it clear:

“We’re not just interested — we’re committed. CPaaSAA sees vCons as the foundation of a trillion-dollar opportunity for our industry.”

The math checks out. If SIP helped create $700–800 billion in value over two decades, vCons could easily surpass that, especially as enterprises move toward AI-native communication models.

Already, CPaaSAA members are experimenting with vCon implementations — for compliance, AI training, smart routing, customer intelligence, and more. Some report 2x to 3x revenue growth from existing customer bases just by unlocking conversation data.

🌍 What Comes Next?

Following the fireside, a panel explored specific use cases, from healthcare to finance to telco B2B — all showing how vCons create value while respecting trust, privacy, and data rights.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway was this:

VCons are not about tech. They’re about listening.

At scale. Ethically. Intelligently.

And just like the early days of SIP, the industry now has a choice:

Be an early mover. Shape the future.

Or wait — and pay to catch up.

At CASA25, we are looking beyond the buzz to focus on the building blocks that will shape the future of programmable communications. One of the most important of those building blocks is vCon—a new open standard for representing conversations.

Why does this matter? Because as AI begins to transform communications, it needs structure. Large language models are powerful, but without a consistent way to capture and exchange conversational data, they struggle to deliver enterprise-grade results. vCon provides exactly that: a standardized “container” for conversations, whether voice, chat, or video.

The Power of a Definition

Last week, we published a guest blog by Thomas Howe, one of the driving forces behind the vCon standard and the vCon Foundation. In his blog, The Power of a Definition, Thomas explained how having a shared definition of what a conversation is can unlock an ecosystem of AI-driven innovation.

At CASA25, Thomas will take the stage for a keynote session to explain why vCons matter, and why they are a cornerstone for agentic AI in communications. His talk sets the tone for a series of deeper dives:

Panel discussions will explore real-world use cases, from customer engagement to compliance and regulatory requirements. A hands-on workshop will give a small group of participants the chance to dig deeper into the standard and its practical implications.

The vCon Foundation and CPaaSAA members are already working together to turn this definition into impact. That means moving from theory to practice—building AI-ready communications that enterprises, service providers, and telcos can trust.

In short: vCon is the missing link. It connects the messy, human side of conversations with the structured, machine-readable world AI needs to thrive.

At CASA25, you’ll hear directly from Thomas and other pioneers shaping this future. Join us in Amsterdam this September to be part of the conversation—and to help shape what comes next!

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.

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.