10:00-10:30

Panel Discussion: The Status and Future of CXTech

After TADSummit last year we created the term CXTech to better capture the breadth of programmable telecoms. 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. We view this broader category as the future state of the industry. This panel will discuss the current status and possible future states of CXTech.

Panelists:
Jérôme Pascal, CEO, Wazo
Roland Selmer, VP Product at Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform
Abhijeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, Telesign
Jonathan Grant, CEO Babl.biz and CEO Speakserve, previously CEO NewVoiceMedia

Questions:

1. Has the industry lost its way? Given the jabber on APIs, AI, Digital, Transformation, Video, AR/VR, Blockchain, Contextual Comms, Cloud Comms, XaaS, etc.
2. What are the greatest challenges facing CXTech wrt enterprise adoption?
3. What’s your prognosis for the spate of CPaaS acquisitions over the past few years?
4. Will UCaaS ever achieve its dream of becoming THE enterprise communications platform?
5. How will customer communications evolve? Currently it looks like lots of neat ideas, and a big integration headache.
6. Does omnichannel leave customers even more exposed to fraud?
7. Omnichannel is dead! The goal is not to be everywhere, nor is it to be seamless or unified. Those are necessary, but they are not sufficient. How can the CXTech industry deliver harmonized customer experiences. For example, a flight delay notification results in a push message so my airline’s app can fire up with other flight options, while an on-time notification is sent by SMS, and all the bloody email notifications stop!

10:30-11:00

Break

11:00-12:30

Session 2: Closing the Gap on Twilio

11:00-11:25

Challenges Consuming Programmable Telecoms from the Developer’s Perspective

Sebastian Schumann, Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom

1. App development: I just want to make a call
2. Consuming APIs: It’s all fine as long as you know what you want and have done it before
3. App development vs. Telecom App development

11:25-11:50

Improving the Experience of Realizing CXTech Use Cases

Marten Schoenherr, CEO/Founder at Automat Berlin GmbH

1. Addressing a gap consuming Communications Experience Technology today
2. Bridging a powerful open-source world with a diverse enabler ecosystem
3. The Automat open-source approach for rapid user-friendly CXTech going beyond consuming CPaaS

11:50-12:30

Panel Discussion: Crossing the Development Chasm

Panelists:
Steve Goodwin, Marquis de Geek;
Rob Pickering, Founder and CEO Aplisay
Sebastian Schumann, Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom
Marten Schoenherr, CEO/Founder at Automat Berlin GmbH

Questions:

1. Should we just give up trying to catch up with Twilio, let them dominate and overcharge?
2. Where should we begin in closing the gap? / Where to focus given the diversity of developer needs?
3. As a non-telecom / communication geek using telecom / communication APIs what are the biggest barriers in your experience?
4. What are the must-have things missing from most CPaaS offers in your experience?
5. Will CPaaS be swallowed up by Google, Amazon and perhaps even Microsoft?

12:30-13:30

Lunch

13:30-15:00

Session 3: Open Source Telecom Software

Through history there have been tens of open and closed source telecom app servers. IBM (WebSphere) and Sun (project SailFin in GlassFish) were a couple of popular ones over a decade ago. I remember one telecom vendor had three internal SIP application server projects running in parallel, with 2 examining the potential of open sourcing their code base.

Asterisk became one of the popular open source projects, with a number of projects forking from them such as Wazo and XiVO. FreeSWITCH evolved from the Asterisk community, but is a separate project to Asterisk, and proved attractive to some developers. The Janus WebRTC server is evolving SIP capabilities. Kamailio is a popular SIP AS, and is sometimes used in conjunction with FreeSWITCH. Asterisk has recently addressed a number of issues that limited its adoption by some developers. The list goes on of open source telecom app servers including FreePBX, Yate, Telestax, and more.

Open source projects are tough, without an active community and a good balance of investment versus return for everyone involved, the future for any open source project can become uncertain. It’s also important to remember many of the applications of telecom app servers are mission critical, so the platforms need an established and trusted name (think perhaps 8+ years) before enterprise focused companies come on board.

This session will help the audience understand the different projects and where they make most sense today from a project-neutral perspective, simply reporting on how and why people are using different projects. This will be a controversial session, as application server projects try their best to be anything to anyone, when in practice many factors (people, process, technology, and business models) contribute to the use cases that make most sense to implement for each project.

We’ll then discuss how to mitigate the risks and evolution we’re seeing across the open source telecom app server landscape. With a focus on the emerging need of a mediation layer to manage between the web-centric services layer to the underlying telecom app server layer for high availability or utilizing multiple projects. Are we heading to a grand-unifying programmable telecoms architecture? Or an explosion in server projects and architectures?

For any business in the programmable telecoms space, this will be a cannot miss session to understand how the projects are being utilized and how to mitigate emerging risks across the diversity of telecom app servers.

13:30-14:00

Survey results on Open Source Telecom Software

Alan Quayle, Independent

Review of the results from an anonymous survey of open source telecom software. Comparing the different projects, the preferred application areas of the projects, common issues and solutions, sharing where the industry sees these projects in 5 years’ time.

14:00-14:30

Experiences with Open Source Telecom Software in the Contact Center Industry

João Camarate, Chief Development Officer, GoContact

João will frankly share his experiences and recommendations in using open source telecom software in the contact center industry. Reviewing the different platforms, the rationale behind the selection and application focus. How he de-risks decisions to ensure continuity of service. Current challenges and open discussion on the emerging programmable telecoms architecture.

14:30 – 15:00

Panel Discussion: The Future of Open Source Telecom Software

Chair: Sebastian Schumann, Technology & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom

Panelists:
João Camarate, Chief Development Officer, GoContact
Alan Quayle, Independent
Werner Eriksen, CTO WorkingGroupTwo
Benoit Aubas, COO Wazo

Questions:

1. Imagine you are going to start a new product around Telecoms. Considering what you know today would you decide to build your own Telecom stack or use a Telecom API like Twilio ?
2. Is native Cloud really an unpopular choice for open source implementations? Why?
3. Can integrated automation and containerization drive cloud-native deployments?
4. Are we missing the impact of containers/playbooks/recipes on open-source comms software as part of the community output?
5. Could a “simple open-source based CPaaS stack” enable carriers at large to make their network programmable?
6. What’s the impact of WebRTC on classic open-source comms apps? Many new stacks evolved, but how relevant are these?
7. What’s the future of Asterisk and FreeSwitch?
8. As Kamailio and OpenSIPS diverge, will the love remain? Does competition between projects help? Or is it something else?
9. What questions would you like the open source telecom software project survey to ask next time?

15:00-15:15

Break

15:15-15:45

Designing and Deploying Chatbots

David Curran, Machine Learning Engineer at OpenJaw Technologies

David will provide a down-to-earth review of the current status of chatbots based on his extensive experience. No hype, just facts. He will then focus on a number of chatbots case studies given his extensive deployment experience. Explaining the impact of the local culture and language on chatbots. And highlighting some of the unique aspects of chatbots in for example in China compared to the rest of the world that will accelerate the Chinese chatbot industry faster than anywhere else. Could Asia become the chatbot center of the world?

15:45-17:00

Session 4: Industry Innovation Panel

The Industry Innovation Panel is composed of leaders from industries like insurance, healthcare, education, finance, social services, banking, etc. Confirmed panelists include:

• Maarten Ectors, Chief Innovation Officer at Legal & General
• Professor Alistair Moore, UCL School of Management
• Steve Goodwin, Marquis de Geek
• Matt Millar, serial entrepreneur, Founder Updraft (solving expensive consumer debt)
• Miles Cheetham, Head of Propositions at OPEN BANKING (entity set up by the UK Competition and Markets Authority)

15:45-16:00

Solving Harry Potter Problems

Maarten Ectors, Chief Innovation Officer at Legal & General

An inspirational presentation from someone shaking-up the insurance industry.

16:00-16:15

Open Banking

Miles Cheetham, Head of Propositions at OPEN BANKING

A review of the challenges and opportunities facing the banking industry.

16:15-16:30

Challenges in Higher Education

Professor Alistair Moore, UCL School of Management

A review of the challenges and opportunities facing the higher education industry.

16:30 – 17:00

Panel Session: Tell me about your problems…

Chair: Alan Quayle
Panelists:
Maarten Ectors, Chief Innovation Officer at Legal & General
Professor Alistair Moore, UCL School of Management
Steve Goodwin, Marquis de Geek
Matt Millar, serial entrepreneur, Founder Uplift
Miles Cheetham, Head of Propositions at OPEN BANKING (entity set up by the UK Competition and Markets Authority)

The objective is to stimulate discussion on potential solutions to the problems presented, and kick off some projects! Yes, a conference that not only connects people, but stimulated new projects and business!

17:00-20:00

Day 1 Evening Reception sponsored by Sipalto

After a long day and intense Industry Innovation panel we wrap up the day with some drinks (wine, beer, soft) and pizza sponsored by Sipalto to continue the discussions into the evening.

09:00-10:30

Session 5: Case Studies in CXTech (CPaaS, UCaaS CCaaS)

09:00-09:10

Welcome to Day 2 from Alan Quayle

A review of what we covered in Day 1, and what we have planned for Day 2. Plus a buffer for those that think a 9AM start means arriving at 9:10AM 😉

09:10-09:35

Wazo deployment update

Programmable helps build incredible products for productivity & Customer Experience but what about enabling new business models and facilitating your business workflows?
Thibaut Prud’homme, Strategic Business Developer, Wazo

Case Study: How Wazo helps a British company to accelerate its transformation from an unscalable UC outsourcing model to a full end-to-end automated business workflow while enabling next-generation services through programmable capabilities.

09:35-10:00

Cloud-native apps. Do you still need a Middleware for a real-time service?

Grzegorz Sikora, Business Development at OVOO

The TELCO world thinks that the only way to run real-time services is to deploy it on a platform consisting of middeware like an application server. We believe that this is an old way approach and isn’t tailored to the cost-cutting, customers, management demands.

Service Providers are trying to introduce agile service development but they cannot move forward because of heavy legacy solutions. On the other hand, we are about to launch a new service which should be light, low latency and works on the edge of the network. We want to show the journey from platform-centric to the cloud native approach.

10:00-10:30

Identity, Authentication, and Programmable Telecoms

Abhijeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, Telesign

Session is divided into 3 parts, based on use cases:

• Registration fraud. Identifying fake users, preventing bulk account creation, etc.
• ATO (Account TakeOver). Preventing ATO fraud through phone hijacking attacks like SIM Swap, Porting attacks, call forwarding, etc.
• IRSF (International Revenue Sharing Fraud) attacks on enterprises. Registration to SIP trunking.

10:30-11:00

Break

11:00-12:30

Session 6: Latest CXTech Developments

11:00 – 11:30

Building the SureVoIP Notify App

Gavin Henry, SureVoIP.

Gavin Henry, SureVoIP founder, will take you through the various layers needed to deliver real time push notifications via the SureVoIP Notify App. Initially designed for a SureVoIP Mobile SIM, which can have many numbers, but now expanded for calls to any type of SureVoIP number, the problem of not knowing which number was called to reach you is solved. Using open source components, carrier grade open source event driven platforms and various other common open source projects, Gavin will explain how this fits together within the SureVoIP ecosystem.

11:30 – 12:00

Empower Call Agents with a simple Chrome extension

Luis Borges Quina, CEO ottspott

Ottspott started as a cloud phone system for Slack teams, allowing quick integrations with popular CRM and helpdesk apps (Salesforce, Zendesk, Intercom, Pipedrive, Hubspot). Ottspott wanted to go one step further and allow any phone system or CPaaS provider to offer instant integration to their business apps.

In this session, Ottspott will show how a simple Chrome extension can save complicated integrations and give call agents a more productive UI.

12:00 – 12:30

The Trials and Tribulations of Building Calljoy before it even Existed

Karel Bourgois, Founder and CEO Voxist

Voxist progress report: the highs and lows of building an intelligent voicemail agent.

Case Study of adding Voxist to the VoIP Innovations Showroom.

12:30-13:30

Lunch

13:30- 16:30

Session 7: Programmable Telecoms Innovation Afternoon

13:30 – 14:00

By The Numbers: CPaaS, UCaaS, CCaaS Landscapes and Market Sizing

Alan Quayle, Independent

We’re entering a new phase in the democratization of telecoms. Communications is now programmable, its revolutionizing the $2.2T telecoms industry. Enterprises large and small, governments, local businesses, hospitals, dentists, web companies, garden centers are all using communications in new ways to improve their operations and customers’ experiences. There are hundreds of companies around the world that are helping businesses use programmable telecoms.

The aim of this session is to provide an open, independent, and industry-wide review of the impact of programmable telecoms on business. We will cover CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service), UCaaS (Unified Communications Platform as a Service, AKA virtual or cloud PBX), CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), open source telecom software, authentication and customer experience, omni-channel customer communications, WebRTC (Web Real Time Communications) and much more reviewing the landscape and market sizes.

14:00 – 14:20

Will machines ever converse authentically?

Rob Pickering, Founder and CEO Aplisay

Can machine learning ever help virtual agents properly understand what we mean, or are chatbots just an overhyped party trick which provides a steady stream of “epic fail” stories.

There is a strong consensus that conversational interfaces are the future of machine interaction. This vision says that being able to converse naturally using linguistic skills that humans have developed of millions of years of evolution will render clunky data input oriented interfaces we once had to learn obsolete overnight.

Whilst there are multiple challenges in delivering delightful, or even just useable, conversations across diverse media paths, the core problem is one of machines understanding our speech and the thought processes that drive it. Recognising what we want through what we say by following the twists and turns of a conversation is not trivial.

In this session, we will look at both the currently available approaches for developing conversational interfaces and also likely future direction for the technologies involved. It will examine what can be achieved with rigid state machines and decision trees versus pure machine learning approaches and deliver practical advice on how to bootstrap a chatbot initiative using the technology of today whilst capturing and preserving data that you will need to make it better tomorrow.

14:20 – 14:40

Le Voice Lab

Karel Bourgois, Voice Chapter Pilot, Hub FranceIA

Raising French global competitiveness in programmable voice. A group of 20 companies and 10 labs in France working on Voice. Working together to create a marketplace to compete with the privacy-invading internet giants with our own platform. Yes, its David against several Goliaths. But we have to try.

Audience Question: Should the UK do the same?

14:40 – 15:00

Some (Surprising) Discoveries in Applying the as-a-service model in Running a Mobile Core Network.

Werner Eriksen, CTO Working Group Two (WG2)

WG2 has now been running a live mobile core network as a service for some time, and we have learned some interesting and sometimes surprising things that we would like to share.

15:00 – 15:20

Edge IoT and 5G – can WebRTC help?

Tim Panton is CTO at |pipe|

We face a puzzle:
– More and more IoT devices are putting AI the on device.
– Latency is critical to many applications (think warehouses, farms etc)
– The user with their BYOD smartphone is often geographically very close
– Devices need to collaborate locally (collision avoidance etc)

BUT the 5G model has all the traffic traversing the telco core – even when it could have remained in the same cell, adding costs and latency.

WebRTC’s TURN/ICE protocols potentially offer a way to keep local traffic local, without minimal changes to the network/endpoints.

We’ll describe how the pieces might fit together.

15:20 – 15:40

Updraft

Matt Millar, serial entrepreneur, Founder Updraft (solving expensive consumer debt)

15:40 – 16:00

Cloud Control Access: From Hack to Reality

Laura Chirca – NEURER BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

We’ve seen several IoT based door access control hacks over the years at TADHack. INOVO is making this a commercial reality for its customers in Romania and beyond. It’s a great example of the migration from hack to business, and the power of the democratization in telecoms enabling people to create solutions for their customers that fit their specific local needs. The Cloud Control Access System opens doors with cards, codes, phones, and SMS. The prototype starts with physical door controllers (the first release is Arduino-based), then migrates to intermediate building proxies that hold the customers’ database in case the internet goes down (a reality most businesses face several times a year) and them migrating to a scalable cloud authentication and portal layer.

16:00 – 16:40

Closing Keynote: Securing my Space Genitalia

Simon Woodhead, CEO at Simwood Group PLC

Simon will explain how you have no privacy and how, hypothetically of course, he could use that to identify and track you in the name of security. He’ll also rant about why the cloud must die and how the coming edge compute revolution should be rejoiced by makers and open source developers everywhere. Strap on!

16:40-17:00

Break for people to leave / coffee

17:00 – 17:30

TADSummit EMEA Review and Improvement Plan

(only for those that want to)
Discussion on how TADSummit EMEA went and can be improved
Review on the CXTech handle and whether its sticking
Looking forward to TADSummit Asia.

17:30+

Drinks and Dinner for those staying in London