Sponsored by

TADSummit is the event for programmable communications, since 2013. All presentations below were given during the month of May 2021. Click on a presentation of interest in the TL;DR agenda to see the outline of that session, and then click on the > Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A < to go to the weblog with all the content.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) Version of Agenda

• Welcome. Programmable Communications Review, Alan Quayle, independent
• Keynotes
  • Mindful Connections, Sami Mäkeläinen, Telstra
  • Accelerating Women Tech inclusion with effective usage of Telco API, Sammani Kusaladharma, Dialog Axiata
• Applications
  • Airtel IQ: Transforming customer engagement by embedding real-time communications, Ankit Goel and Ishan Bansal, airtel X Labs
  • Evolution of Telecommunication Service Providers, from Legacy to Digital, Namal Jayathilake, Axiata Digital Labs
  • Intelligent Call Center Software to Empower Your Business, Arpit Modi, iNextrix
  • Unlocking the Internet of Things with telco APIs: Telstra’s Track and Monitor, Michelle Howie and Lauren Demarchi, Telstra
  • Delivering the Future of Networking with Hyper-scalable Connectivity, Liang Dong, Epsilon
  • CPaaS Analytics – Insights into the Long Tail, Sandarenu Madan Arachchige, hSenid Mobile
  • Next gen tech for business and telecom service providers, Raman Singh, Cloud Connect
• Conversation Intelligence
  • How Not to Build a Chatbot, Muzzamel Mazidee, UIB
  • Pitfalls and potholes of content moderation for chatbots, Elayne Ruane, LERO Centre
  • Voice technology for healthcare, Dr. Shona D’Arcy, CEO Kids Speech Labs
  • The award winning chatbot platform EVA from Sri Lanka for any business to increase the brand reputation and customer satisfaction, Ruwan Dissanayaka and Thushara Rankothge, Extrogene Software
  • Conversation Intelligence for Developers, Neeraj Choudhary, Symbl.ai
• Identity and Fraud
  • TeleSign’s Findings on the Future of Digital Identity, Guillaume Bourcy, TeleSign
• Open Source.
  • Web is Communications, Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C
  • Introduction of ASTPP – A Smart TelePhony Platform, Samir Doshi, ASTPP Community Leader
  • Tools for Offensive RTC security. Introducing SIPVicious PRO and the demo server, Sandro Gauci, Enable Security
  • OpenSIPS. Or How One Open Source Software Project Disrupts all Telecom Customs! Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, OpenSIPS Project
  • Introducing Cloud APIs for jambonz, Dave Horton: Creator of jambonz and drachtio
• Workshop. My Two Bits on Qubits, Craig Richards

Welcome

Programmable Communications Review

Alan Quayle, independent consultant, founder TADSummit & TADHack

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• Welcome to TADSummit – how it works.
• Landscape, Market Sizing, and Growth
  • CPaaS, business messaging (wholesale and enterprise), UCaaS, CCaaS, and more.
• Trends and Strategy
  • Solutions and Consolidation
  • Simple programmable communications model: Applications versus Aggregation
• 2020 Review + Q1 2021, outlook for the rest of 2021 and 2022

Keynotes

Mindful Connections

Sami Mäkeläinen, Head of Strategic Foresight at Telstra. Technologist | Humanist | Pragmatist

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• Are we breeding complexity or simplicity?
  • Position: Indiscriminately gluing everything together with IOT and APIs, especially when in search of efficiency, can breed (and has bred) systems that are fragile, unsafe, and inherently dangerous.
• Are we coupling things that are best left uncoupled?
  • Position: some things are better left uncoupled, or coupled with slack in them. This does not come naturally to systems engineers, so some thoughtful consideration needs to go into the process.
• We need to connect the right things and connect them right.
  • Start with pre-mortems, and more holistic systems analysis.

Accelerating Women Tech inclusion with effective usage of Telco API

Sammani Kusaladharma, Specialist at Ideamart, Dialog Axiata

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• Ideamart started back in 2013. It is the start-up ecosystem of Dialog Axiata PLC, making available telco APIs allowing any 3rd party, technopreneur or Entrepreneur with an idea to join, use unutilized telco assets, and monetize their own ideas by creating mobility services.
• Ideamart for Women initiative started to give equal opportunities to women by understanding the existing gender gap of the ideamart eco-system and to create more female success stories within the ecosystem.
• Through the program, we focus on increasing the female participation and revenue by female, empower entrepreneurial women and increase the API usage to increase their tech skills.
• Ideamart for Women follows an end-to-end empowerment journey to create positive business and social impact.
• To date, program enabled boosting Ideamart female community by 4x, aiding more than 20 new startups and created 5 millionaires.
• Ideamart For Women has created many success stories by making a positive impact on the Sri Lankan female community . Most women requires dedicated support and guidance to thrive the tech field.
• It is not just the motivation they require, necessary tools, platforms and real life success stories are required for them to be inspired and empowered.
• Any organization who can provide the above can make use of the resources effectively to empower women to become successful.

Applications

Airtel IQ: Transforming customer engagement by embedding real-time communications

Ankit Goel, VP & Head Engineering – Digital Enterprise Business at airtel X Labs
Ishan Bansal, Engineering at airtel X Labs

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

Airtel IQ is the first Telco grade unified cloud communication suite, that drives customer engagement – anytime anywhere.

• Customer experience – the brand differentiator
• Why Airtel – Challenges with existing Cloud communication platforms, market opportunity and Airtel advantage
• Make Marketing Smarter, Personalise Customer Experience, Make Operations Intelligent
• The platform – Robust, Intuitive, Secure (features under each capability area)
• How we did it with Product and Engineering partnership – Customer first mindset, incubation program
• Tech journey – Asterisk, Kamailio – 100% home grown
• Customer credentials – couple of complex customer use cases we pulled-up
• Future plans

Evolution of Telecommunication Service Providers, from Legacy to Digital

Namal Jayathilake, VP Engineering – Emerging Technologies, Axiata Digital Labs

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• Why Telcos need to be digitally enabled
• Typical challenges of a traditional Telco
• The evolution of traditional telco – Technology architecture evolution
• The evolution of traditional telco – Role of tech teams in a digital Telco
• Emerging digital business models and how to leverage those

Intelligent Call Center Software to Empower Your Business

Arpit Modi, Cofounder of iNextrix Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• What is a call center solution?
• What is an intelligent call center software solution?
• What are the key features of an intelligent call center solution?
• What are the common challenges faced by businesses?
• How intelligent call center software resolve the challenges faced by businesses?
• What are the major benefits of using an intelligent call center solution in your business?
• What is iCallify?
• What makes iCallify standout among other call center solutions?

iCallify empowers thousands of businesses of different sizes. It comes with some amazing features that introduce automation to improve customer experience, boost team productivity, and improve ROI. Some of the popular features of this software include: predictive dialer, sticky agent, skill based call routing, soundboard avatars, and remote agents.

Customer experience is the driving factor of success in businesses, call center solutions have gaining the center stage in the business toolkit. The intelligent call center software is the most advanced call center solution in the industry at the moment. To explore more information about one of the leading intelligent call center solutions, visit https://inextrix.com/icallify.

Unlocking the Internet of Things with telco APIs: Telstra’s Track and Monitor

Developer Advocate Michelle Howie and Track and Monitor Product Owner Lauren Demarchi, Telstra

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

As Australia’s longest serving telco, Telstra is expanding their developer program to provide the APIs and IoT offerings that can leverage the century of investment in our mobile network and the growing IoT ecosystem.

With our asset tracking solution; Track and Monitor, Telstra is connecting businesses to the largest coverage IoT network in Australia, and giving them the tools to innovate and create experiences on top of it.

Hear from Telstra’s Developer Advocate and Track and Monitor API Product Manager how Telstra is changing the game in IoT APIs for established telcos by focusing on the Developer Experience.

Delivering the Future of Networking with Hyper-scalable Connectivity

Liang Dong, Senior Product Manager, Epsilon

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

In recent years, Service Providers across Asia are looking at capturing new growth opportunities fuelled by the rapid pace of digitalisation in the region. This has led to an increased adoption of some form of cloud services and hybrid cloud strategies. However, it can be a challenge when connecting these infrastructure without the right networking expertise and cloud knowledge.

Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) addresses this challenge through software-defined networking or programmable networking, by enabling connectivity through the platform and the use of API. This presentation will cover the challenges of accessing and connecting to Asian markets and how service providers can leverage on NaaS to deliver connectivity on-demand. You will also learn about:

• Landscape of complexity for service providers in Asian markets (including Mainland China)
• Traditional networking vs NaaS model
• API and Networking – Introduction to Epsilon’s NaaS platform, Infiny
• Use case – DCConnect
• Infiny demonstration

CPaaS Analytics – Insights into the Long Tail

Sandarenu Madan Arachchige, Software Architect, hSenid Mobile

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• hSenid Mobile has been the silent provider of the technology – our CPaaS, where with our Telco partners in the forefront, created eco-systems that have innovated and brought localized services needed by the community from the community.
• Our CPaaS platforms made it possible for anyone to create applications using Telco APIs. Success of Ideamart in Sri Lanka and bdApps in Bangladesh which are powered by hSenid CPaaS shows the impact of Long-Tail to CPaaS and Telcos.
• Running a Long-Tail platform involves its own challenges mainly on developer screening and content governance.
• Integration of advanced analytics and machine learning models helps us to mitigate the risks associated with the platform.
• With a continuously growing ecosystem, CPaaS analytics has provided the insight to manage quality at all levels
• Learn how analytics in our CPaaS has been a catalyst to improve developer engagement as well as customer satisfaction

Next gen tech for business and telecom service providers

Raman Singh, Chief Innovation Officer, CloudConnect

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

CloudConnect is a DOT Licensed Virtual Network Operator offering a lot more than just India’s first PBX on Mobile for SMBs. CloudConnect gives you the advantage of a comprehensive, and secure mobile-first Business Communication Systems which include cloud PBX system, Business IP phone service, and Unified Communications and Collaboration for small businesses.

• This presentation will cover:
• Emerging trends: How CloudConnect can help
• CloudConnect’s offerings
• UCaaS:sensible, effective, and immediately deployable
• Customization, verticals, and ecosystem
• CloudConnect platform architecture
• Product overview and unique value
• Omni-channel and voice bot examples
• Auto-config, auto scaling, self-healing

Conversation Intelligence

How Not to Build a Chatbot

Muzzamel Mazidee, Director of Partnerships UIB

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

We try to understand, from the consumer’s perspective, why chatbots fail to deliver a good experience and what thought processes need to be considered when venturing into such deployments.

Pitfalls and potholes of content moderation for chatbots

Elayne Ruane, PhD researcher in QA of Conversational AI at LERO Centre

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• Chatbots can provide a fast and convenient experience to customers who need to solve a problem, complete a task, or get some information.
• The promise of the speed and availability of a machine combined with the conversation and accessibility of a human is an attractive solution.
• But what about when chatbots fail to live up to those expectations, the user gets frustrated, and the conversation gets heated?
• Abusive messages from users towards chatbots are not uncommon and moderation efforts are fraught with unintended consequences.
• This presentation will discuss approaches to content moderation for chatbots, common pitfalls, and some recommendations for handling abusive messages.

Voice technology for healthcare

Dr. Shona D’Arcy, CEO Kids Speech Labs

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

Speech Recognition is often seen as the holy grail for healthcare, imagine removing all the form filling that is currently taking up clinicians valuable time. In this talk I will try to answer a few pertinent questions:

• Why aren’t all hospitals completely voice enabled?
• What are examples of interactive voice applications that are working in healthcare and delivering value?
• What does the future hold for interactive voice applications in healthcare?

The award winning chatbot platform EVA from Sri Lanka for any business to increase the brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

Ruwan Dissanayaka, Co-Founder/CEO at Extrogene Software Pvt Ltd.
Thushara Rankothge, Co-Founder/CTO at Extrogene Software Pvt Ltd.

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

EVA – Extrogene Virtual Assistant is an award winning chatbot platform for any business where it supports many use cases of businesses to automate the conversations on facebook messenger.

The Presentation will include the details about EVA chatbot platform and how it can be used for businesses to increase their brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

Conversation Intelligence for Developers

Neeraj Chaudhary, Solutions Engineer, Symbl.ai

<Link to video, summary and Q&A>

Symb.ai is an API platform to analyze voice, text, and video conversations in real-time using artificial intelligence and machine learning. You don’t need to build any machine learning models. Symbl.ai can contextually understand conversations for your applications. The platform will also work on pre-recorded content (async), not just real-time conversations.

They’re also a sponsor of TADHack Global 2021 in September, more coming on that very soon.

The contextual understanding of a conversation is a significant acceleration for developers as training a model requires gathering data, cleaning it so the data trains the model accurately. With Symbl.ai you can skip this step, which for a hackathon is really handy ?

Identity and Fraud

TeleSign’s Findings on the Future of Digital Identity

Guillaume Bourcy, Data Growth and Strategy at TeleSign

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• COVID-19, A sign of What’s to Come: Accelerated Digital Transformation brings vulnerabilities, even with basic mitigation practice.
• How Fraud is Endemic: Shifting from offline to online increases the need to establish trusted digital identities in real-time.
• Today weaknesses, myth and reality of current solutions: Evolving government regulations have a serious impact on global industries.
• Mitigating friction, while adhering to regulation and enhanced security processes, can be challenging.
• Rising need for Ubiquity: A single, reliable partner to enable engagement and provide security insights.

Open Source

Web is Communications

Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C, Web Technology Expert & Software Engineer

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

Beyond WebRTC, the Open Web Platform expanding capabilities are helping make Web browsers a key component of existing and future communication systems: this presentation will review the ongoing work in W3C that paves the way for what future Web-based communication systems may look like.

Introduction of ASTPP – A Smart TelePhony Platform

Samir Doshi, Open Source VoIP Expert, ASTPP Community Leader, Cofounder of iNextrix Technologies Pvt. LtdCo-Founder and Director, iNextrix Technologies

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• What is ASTPP?
• What makes ASTPP a Smart TelePhony Platform?
• What is the Role of FreeSWITCH and OpenSIPs in Making ASTPP Highly Robust and Scalable?
• Why people love open source version of ASTPP smart VoIP telephony platform?
• Which are the common challenges each business faces?
• What is the Role of ASTPP in resolving challenges faced by businesses?
• What are the key features of ASTPP?
• How to deploy open source VoIP solution version of ASTPP?
• What are the major use cases of this smart VoIP telephony platform?

For more than 16 years, ASTPP caters to global VoIP businesses as an open source VoIP billing solution. Now it offers several other VoIP solutions, which hold smart features and functionalities. Some of the most popular VoIP solutions available as add-ons of ASTPP are:

• Multi tenant IP PBX solution
• Fax server solution
• Technical support ticket software
• Fraud detection solution
• DID and calling card management systems

To know more about ASTPP, you can visit https://www.astppbilling.org/.

Tools for Offensive RTC security. Introducing SIPVicious PRO and the demo server.

Sandro Gauci, CEO / Senior Penetration Tester / Chief mischief officer at Enable Security GmbH

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

In Sandro’s previous talk for TADSummit EMEA Americas 2020, he spoke about why it is critical to take an offensive approach when dealing with RTC security.

In this presentation, he shows how tools can help in testing RTC security as well as in learning more about offensive security for RTC.

After a general overview of the landscape, he will focus on the work that his team has done on SIPVicious PRO and the target demo server that helps learn and show vulnerabilities in a lab environment.

OpenSIPS. Or How One Open Source Software Project Disrupts all Telecom Customs!

Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, Founder and Developer at OpenSIPS Project

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

The Open Source Software paradigm is revolutionizing the telecoms world; in terms of IPR, licensing, and market value. Witness the explosion of new enterprise communication service providers such as RingCentral, 8X8, Talkdesk, Twilio, and many more; all using open source software.

To remain competitive in a fast changing telecoms market requires a change in ideology. Open Source Software helps realize the benefits of that change in ideology.

OpenSIPS, an open source VoIP software, is accelerating this ideological change. It is one software able to deliver almost the full spectrum of VoIP solutions: from SBCs, SoftSwitches to Virtual PBXes.

Come learn how OpenSIPS will help you compete over the coming decade.

Introducing Cloud APIs for jambonz

Dave Horton: Creator of jambonz (open source CPaaS) and drachtio (open source SIP server and Node.js application library)

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

jambonz is the open source CPaaS designed for the needs of communication service providers and available under the MIT license to run on your own or hosted infrastructure. jambonz allows service providers to easily plug in their own carriers and speech services, and is designed specifically for privacy-conscious service providers that want to minimize the exposure of their customer’s data to third-party platforms.

In this talk, Dave will review the key features of jambonz and introduce jambonz cloud APIs, which are currently in private beta and scheduled for public release at the end of Q2. Using the cloud APIs via the hosted jambonz service is a great way to get familiar with the platform and start running some traffic. Dave will walk through the complete process of provisioning a service and bringing up applications using the cloud APIs.

Workshops

My Two Bits on Qubits

Craig Richards, TADSummit and TADHack supporter since the beginning of TADS.

> Link to slides, video, summary and Q&A <

• What is Quantum Computing
• The huge potential for Quantum Computing
• How is Quantum Computing Different
• What problems can Quantum Computing Solve
• Quantum Computing is real and it is here now!
• Quantum Computing Realities
• Applications in Communications

End of Agenda