James Pearce, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello and welcome to TelecomTV. I'm James Pearce and I'm in Amsterdam for CASA26, and I'm delighted to be joined today by Brian Beutler, who is the founder and CEO of Alianza. Thank you so much for joining us today, Brian. Let's start by looking back a bit. It's been a year since you announced your intelligent communications fabric. A year on, can you share any updates on this, be it its performance or the response from the market?

Brian Beutler, Alianza (00:28):
Yeah, it has been almost exactly a year, James, and the market response has been phenomenal. It's really our vision of this category for defining what the modern telco network needs to look like in this age of AI-infused communications. And the market response, like I said, has been fantastic. I mean, one of the things I love about it that our customers have been raving about is how it gives them the optionality to deploy infrastructure in a model and in a way that makes the most sense for them, whether that be on-premise with our core offering, in a full cloud operating environment with Alianza One, or with our hybrid offer called Fusion. So that optionality has been really great and I think it really helps operators meet this moment.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (01:10):
I recently heard you refer to the cognitive communications era, but what does that actually mean?

Brian Beutler, Alianza (01:16):
Yeah, James, the cognitive communications era needs to be framed in the historical context. The first era of communications was connected communications. It was the last 130 years of service providers connecting people across continents, across oceans, putting telephone lines into every home, every business, and every pocket. And about 30 years ago, things started to change with the rise of unified communications, video conferencing, and service providers started to connect applications. And so we have this new way of communicating across video that's much richer than just basic voice conversations. And so we went from connected communications to connected applications, and now we're talking about connected intelligence, and that's the cognitive era that we're entering. Really, this era is about how AI and intelligence infuses conversations in ways that add value to a conversation. Instead of just Brian and James talking, now it's about Brian and James talking, but with AI that helps understand sentiment and intentionality and context, and AI can take action and derive insights from this conversation in ways that are powerful and hopefully make this conversation a durable artifact instead of something that's fleeting the moment we hang up.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (02:30):
So you've talked also about the collision course between AI and telecoms and how this will fundamentally change the way we communicate. Can you maybe dig into that a little bit more? How can telcos make sure they come out on top of this collision?

Brian Beutler, Alianza (02:43):
Yeah, so there's really two questions in there. What does cognitive communications mean and how do telcos benefit from it? This collision course of AI with the telco networks is both a threat and an opportunity for operators. It's a threat because there's a change taking place from horizontal generic voice services that we've all consumed for 150 years, and they're being turned inside out and augmented by these vertical applications where voice is a feature, not a service in and of itself. And depending on how these application developers interact with the network will determine whether operators win or whether operators lose, whether these new AI-based communications capabilities are built on top of the network or around the network. So I think this is a really important question that operators are facing because it will determine the future of their participation in this value creation. Down one path, they will spectate and watch as the value gets created outside their network.

(03:42):
And down the alternative path that Alianza is advocating for is one where service providers participate actively and their voice networks become the foundation for this artificial intelligence being built on top of the voice network.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (03:56):
You recently launched Alianza Crux, which is your big new play. So tell us what is the play and why launch it now?

Brian Beutler, Alianza (04:02):
Yeah, Alianza Crux is really meant to meet this moment of cognitive communications. Anytime a market goes through massive disruption, there's a need for massive solutions. And Alianza Crux is our solution to the market that bridges this need to connect operators' networks where these conversations are taking place with the intelligent applications that are being built that need access to conversations. Alianza Crux is an open platform and a two-sided ecosystem. So the platform is where independent developers can build to in order to gain access to the conversations taking place over global operator networks, and then operators interface once into that network and can gain applications across their entire footprint.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (04:47):
One of the big challenges facing operators at the moment is where to prioritise their focus and also their investments. So make the pitch for why AI voice should be high up on that agenda.

Brian Beutler, Alianza (04:56):
If we look at where operators have been focused to date, so much of their energy around AI has been driving internal efficiencies, operational synergies, driving costs out of the network. I think now as service providers start to get clarity into what those roadmaps look like, they've started executing against those priorities, delivering those synergies and cost savings into their network. They're now turning their attention and saying, "Hey, how can I actually drive new incremental revenue on top of these new capabilities?" And that's where Crux comes into play and I think it's directly aligned with service providers' need to think about value being created on both of these axes. One, efficiencies and cost reduction, but also revenue growth and customer experience and making sure that that relationship you have with the customer is durable and sustainable and making sure that they're positioned in a way to win is a really critical part of their strategy.

James Pearce, TelecomTV (05:50):
Excited to see how it all plays out. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brian Beutler, Alianza (05:52):
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.