Welcome to TADSummit Asia 2021 + Programmable Communications Review

Thank you for joining us for TADSummit Asia 2021. Since 2013 TADSummit has focused on programmable communications. This year we have special themes on conversational intelligence, identity and fraud, open source, and quantum computing.

There’s no registration, content is freely available. Everything will be posted on the agenda: https://blog.tadsummit.com/2021/02/16/tadsummit-asia-2021-agenda/.

Presentations are pre-recorded, released one per day through May 2021. Q&A is in the comments section of the weblog devoted to each presentation, or on social media, or contact the presenters directly. Please ask questions!

I’ve published this presentation early to raise awareness and give people a chance to understand the importance of programmable communications: telecoms / communications done in a web way.

Telecoms done in a Web Way

In 2021 across the main programmable communication categories, total revenue is $75B+ across (revenue), growth:

  • UCaaS ($33B), 5%
  • CCaaS ($18B), 20%
  • CPaaS ($11B), 36%
  • Business Messaging ($6B), 30%
  • Identity verification ($4B with TAM of $25B – $55B as its all about customer experience), 60%+
  • Automation tech ($6B with TAM of $30B), 60%+

We’ve seen unprecedented M&A through 2020 into 2021, mainly within programmable communications. We’re going to see in the coming years more enterprise / web companies joining this spree. Will Okta need more than 2FA for mobile authentication?

Think of Programmable Communications as telecoms done in a web way, hence why programmable communications will become the target for web / enterprise-focused companies. It’s on a different trajectory to telcos.

Trends: Customers get to what they want faster

  • SMS and voice will remain in rude health (there’s still growth).
  • Social messaging is necessary, but it’s only part of the answer (don’t trust Facebook).
  • Recognizing it’s a smartphone (voice, camera, browser, messaging, contextual information) remains a massive gap.
  • Wholesale voice/SMS consolidation will continue and margins will be squeezed (in the medium to long term). But keep an eye on telco price rises in A2P SMS impacting growth.
  • Applications are necessary for margin growth.
  • Atomic API focus will move into conversations, insight, and customer experience (customers get to what they want faster). With the result the contact center evolves into the customer experience center.
  • Programmable communications will continue to live in interesting times, even after the pandemic!

Additional Information

My weblog: https://alanquayle.com/blog/. CXTech newsletter, weekly programmable communications news with opinion

TADSummit weblog: https://blog.tadsummit.com/. All the TADSummit content, videos, slides, and reviews .

From the TADSummit Agenda you can find all the TADSummit content for each event:

If you’re looking for independent analysis, insight, advice, strategy, thought-leadership, business / market development for anything communications / telecoms related. Please get in touch!