Summary Bullets:

• Slack has been given a new lease on life from its parent Salesforce, serving as a frontend for the platform.

• It is not yet time to include Slack in the discussion along with rivals, but the company merits keeping a close eye on.

When Slack was acquired by Salesforce in July 2021 for nearly $28 billion, the smart money said that Slack would slide into obscurity. After all, Slack was a second-tier player in the team collaboration space while Salesforce was a premier provider of customer resource management (CRM) technology and a captain of industry at large. Surely, the acquisition would follow the familiar pattern of so many, which preceded it with a ‘big fish’ gobbling up a ‘little fish’ never to be heard from again. For certain, Slack would be stripped of its brand name, and its technology capabilities absorbed into Salesforce’s massive stockpile. Well, quite the opposite happened. Slack has not only survived – it has been granted a new and better life by its parent.

Salesforce has kept busy adding features to Slack, repositioning it as the frontend for Salesforce’s AI ecosystem. The poster child for this transformation is Salesforce Agentforce. It allows users to build specialized, task-specific AI agents that operate directly in Slack, handling everything from simple support queries to executing complex processes. The agents have access to company and customer data stored in Salesforce and are integrated with messages, files, and workflows residing within Slack. As a result, the agents provide responses that are highly tailored to the user’s work environment.

At a higher level, Slack is increasingly becoming embedded into Salesforce’s broader product fabric. For example, Salesforce recently announced a comprehensive update that creates a unified space in which teams can collaborate and act without leaving the flow of work. At the heart of the update is a new type of Slack channel labeled ‘Salesforce Channels’. Salesforce Channels reflect Salesforce’s broader strategy to consolidate applications, workflows, AI agents, and data into a single environment. Salesforce Channels connect directly with Salesforce records such as accounts, opportunities, and custom objects. Because Salesforce Channels are bi-directional, being accessible from either Slack or Salesforce with no loss of context, they reinforce Slack’s evolving role as the default collaboration interface for the Salesforce platform.

Not only has Slack evolved from a product perspective, it has evolved from a management perspective as well. In January 2023, Lidiane Jones, an EVP and GM at Salesforce, succeeded Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield as CEO. Only 10 months later in November, Jones was replaced by Denise Dresser, a long-time Salesforce executive. Dresser departed in late-2025 and Rob Seaman, Slack’s CPO has been acting as interim CEO since.

Slack has come a long way bit by bit since Salesforce purchased it, but it is not yet time to include them in the discussion with competitors such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom. Rival organizations have kept busy accumulating AI-driven features across their platforms, not only for team collaboration but for contact center as well, and they have generated substantial brand equity in the process. However, as a central interface into the Salesforce platform, a foundational tool for corporate America, Slack merits keeping a close eye on.

Summary Bullets:

• SubCo will establish a trans-pacific submarine cable project dubbed ‘APX East’ that will directly connect Australia with mainland US.

• While Australia already has sovereign owned cables, it’s crucial that this type of infrastructure remains in domestic ownership to ensure data sovereignty is met.

Over the last few years, international connectivity strategies have largely been driven by scale – favoring bigger pipes, alternative routes, and the assumption that capacity would keep pace with demand. However, with the rise in data traffic contributed by AI, data-intensive workloads, and diminishing tolerance for outages, this is forcing carriers to rethink how international networks are designed and evaluated.

In that context, submarine network developer and operator SubCo, based in Australia, announced that it would build the APX East cable, directly linking Australia to the US by 2028. This can be viewed as a significant step forward in strengthening Australia’s national telecommunications resilience. As data continues to become a core and strategic national asset, a sovereign-owned international cable offers Australia greater control over how its critical information is transmitted, secured, and governed – reducing reliance on foreign-controlled infrastructure at a time of rising geopolitical and cyber risk. While this project is a commercial infrastructure, it will also be a nation-building digital backbone. Given cables are tied to national security and strategic importance, the Australian government should take steps to encourage local investments and ensure ownership for securing Australia’s digital future.

SubCo plans to establish a direct trans-pacific optical link connecting Sydney (Australia) to San Diego, California (US) using a 16 fiber-pair design with no intermediate landings. The system is expected to cost $500 million (AUD747 million). At an estimated length of 12,000 to 13,000 km (7,500 to 8,075 miles), the cable is expected to be the longest continuous subsea optical route in the world. The project is intended to support the rapid growth of AI infrastructure in Australia, where hyperscalers and emerging neocloud providers are expected to deploy up to 3GW of AI ”factories” in the coming years. This cable will complement the company’s existing Oman Australia Cable (OAC) connecting Perth (Australia) to Muscat (Oman), which was launched in late-2022. It is worth noting that both Vocus and Telstra (including Endeavour to Hawaii) have already built their own cables, which demonstrates that private businesses are ready to invest in the country’s digital backbone. As the importance of this infrastructure grows, ensuring continued domestic ownership of future investments is critical.

As highlighted in GlobalData’s recent subsea cable report (AI Growth Collides with Infrastructure Limits, December 19, 2025), governments are increasingly intervening in the development and operation of cable systems due to digital sovereignty concerns. These concerns directly affect government services, defense, healthcare, and other critical industries. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly important that Australia exercises greater control over how sensitive data is routed and protected, reducing exposure to foreign jurisdictions, commercial priorities, and strategic interests of foreign-owned hyperscalers. In an era of heightened cyber risk and geopolitical uncertainty, ownership and control of digital pathways are as important as capacity.

Governments already co-invest in critical infrastructure such as roads, power, ports, and defense assets. Subsea cables should now be recognized with the same category. The government could show support in various ways from co-investment, underwriting – it could even have long-term capacity commitments. The goal is not to remove private capital; rather, targeted public participation can help ensure that national security, resilience, and data sovereignty are met. As the window narrows for Australia to shape its digital future, projects like APX East will determine who controls the arteries of the nation’s digital economy.

Summary Bullets:

• Agentic AI will help document dwindling tribal knowledge

• Vibe coding will become mainstream

The industry should expect a lot more formalization of vibe coding capabilities leading to greater opportunities among non-coders across enterprise business units. Interesting applications resulting from agentic AI will help enterprises solve age-old problems such as the loss of institutional knowledge among an aging workforce. Plus, traditional automation platforms will get a major boost from agentic AI advancements. These are among just some of the 2026 GlobalData Predictions within the category of agile automation.

Agentic AI solutions address extinction of institutional knowledge

GlobalData predicts that in 2026, platform providers will discover new opportunities to apply their range of app development and agentic AI services towards addressing the growing loss of tribal knowledge (i.e., valuable expertise developed over many years of real-world experience). GlobalData anticipates several new comprehensive solutions which provide enterprise customers with training and collaboration mechanisms that address the growing extinction of institutional knowledge. Specifically, across various business units, people’s knowledge could be captured through conversational aspects of GenAI, and stored in systems that leverage AI to train the next-generation of workers. Agents would provide additional instructions relevant to a particular job role.

Vibe coding will become mainstream

In 2026 the industry will gain greater access to mainstream quick-start app development functionalities as part of their business tools. Next-generation UIs will bring with them new business opportunities for non-coders to create and even market attractive application options which go beyond traditional applications. New vibe coding features will present users with more specific and timely apps that improve their day to day lives and work productivity. Examples of types of apps built from vibe coding include business tools, productivity tools, and educational tools. Popular vibe coding apps especially for beginners include ChatGPT, Claude, Lovable, and Zapier Agents. Bolt is popular among developers, as is Cursor and Windsurf. Expect deeper integration of these innovations in traditional business apps.

IPA leaders to disrupt rivals via agentic process automation (APA)

GlobalData predicts that in 2026, intelligent automation leaders will release next-generation agentic AI solutions, or APA, building on evolving GenAI-injected workflow platforms. The APA solutions will disrupt the current state of the agentic AI market through capabilities that include agentic integration, agent builder tools, agent orchestration, and AI gateways to ensure governance guardrails during LLM interactions. APA represents a shift from RPA-based deterministic, predictable, and rules-based workflows to dynamic business processes that are autonomously supported and focused on business outcomes, with the ability to reason and adapt by leveraging the intelligence of LLMs.

For more on agile automation predictions for 2026, please see 2026 Enterprise Predictions: Agile Automation.

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Summary Bullets:

• While the escalation in cybersecurity cuts leveled off in 2025, the ISC2 survey showed economic instability is keeping IT budget expansion in check, which is a cause for concern that organizations will hold off on making needed investments in cybersecurity.
• AI is changing the IT industry as a whole, and cybersecurity specifically. Seen as both an offensive weapon and a potential defensive shield, security professionals see the technology as opportunistic for their careers rather than a threat to job security, offering them a chance to hone their skills and improve their professional trajectory.

One of the most significant challenges in cybersecurity is the resource constraints and skills gaps that plague so many organizations. Add to the mix technologies like AI that enterprising threat actors are all too eager to insert into their arsenals, and the issue of staff limitations is magnified. In its 2025 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, the non-profit association uncovered a profession balancing the struggle to keep ahead of increasingly sophisticated adversaries while also savoring the chance to leverage AI and other technologies to elevate their defenses. The annual study of industry workplace trends, which surveyed 16,020 security professionals globally, found resource constraints are front and center in impacting the cybersecurity workplace.

Budget cuts are having a material impact on staffing levels, with 33% acknowledging they don’t have adequate security personnel. Twenty-nine percent don’t have the budget to employ staff with the required skills. That said, 55% said they currently have the appropriate security staff in place to protect their enterprise assets from incidents in the next two to three years.

The research participants see a direct correlation between having sufficient security staff in place to mounting an effective defense. Seventy-two percent said cutting staff pointedly creates an environment vulnerable to attack, with 76% calling for organizations to face consequences if they suffer a security incident after laying off cybersecurity professionals.

Having staff skills match organizational priorities is essential, with AI topping the list and 41% saying knowledge of the technology is critical. Experience in cloud security is crucial to 36% of organizations, followed by risk assessment expertise (26%) and a strong knowledge of application security (28%). Having security engineering experience and a working history navigating governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) are also important, with 27% citing both.

As defensive tools, AI-powered solutions promise to lessen repetitive manual interventions, freeing up time for security practitioners to focus on more strategic tasks. Twenty-eight percent have integrated AI security tools into their ordinances, with another 41% either actively testing them or in an early evaluation phase of AI-driven security tools.

Experiences with security solutions built on AI has been positive, as 63% said they have substantially increased their productivity.

Security professionals expect AI to have the most immediate positive security impact on network monitoring (40%), followed suit by security operations and testing – 30% for both. Other areas the respondents cited as presuming to benefit from AI include vulnerability management (29%), threat modeling (28%), and endpoint protection (also 28%). ISC2 researchers pointed out that these are all time-consuming activities that are also ripe for automation.

While AI is widely perceived in many sectors as a threat to job security, that isn’t the case with cybersecurity professionals. Seventy-three percent expect AI to open the door for more specific cybersecurity pathways, and 72% believe the technology will require more strategic approaches. Sixty-six percent also see AI adoption as driving the need for more communication skills.

Summary Bullets:

• The technology industry can do better.
• Let’s just hope that the uneasy feeling about the AI bubble everyone is experiencing is just a bit of leftover holiday undigested beef, blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato (with apologies to Dickens).

Festivus took place on December 23, 2025, but despite being late, there are grievances to air in regard to the technology industry as it relates to enterprises in 2025. So, let’s start. “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!”

Artificial Intelligence
Let’s start with the biggest and likely the most diaphanous super-elephant in the room, the current AI boom/craze/bubble. Everyone in the technology industry has been affected by AI. Talk about AI is ubiquitous. Every technology product or service launch prominently mentions AI. Of course, the talk is two-fold. First, it’s about how much money everyone is going to make with AI. Second is the talk about how much money everyone is spending on AI, including all the letters of intent, acquisitions, stock trades, and projected spending.

Any dissent is quickly quashed – AI is the future. AI is all. AI will make everyone so much money. How? Well, of course, there is talk about AI coding, automation, agentic AI, and reducing staff headcount with AI. That last bit isn’t often talked about on the technology side – but it sure is in boardrooms and on Wall Street. The problem with these use cases is that nobody can seem to point to success, outside of a few highly orchestrated pilots. The grievance is that the enterprise technology industry isn’t being fair to its customers when it comes to AI. There is SO MUCH investment money involved in AI, and so many promises that technology vendors and service providers have a near-fatal case of FOMO, the fear of missing out.

It’s hard to see a path to profitability for AI companies, considering the amount they need to spend in order to make large language model (LLM) AI work. It’s equally hard to see a path for enterprises to the rich gains or savings they were promised – these use cases are either not working out or were specious in the first place.

Is the AI boom a bubble? I’m a technology guy, not a finance guy. But even as my hands itch for a soldering iron rather than the complexities of finance it seems pretty clear that there is an alarming amount of money being poured into AI companies. These companies are not profitable. Nor does there seem to be a path to profitability, considering the staggering amounts of money invested. It is more than a little reminiscent of the dot.com bubble and ensuing financial downturn. Oh, and to those that dismiss the dot.com bust with “well it all worked out”? Clearly, you didn’t live through it or were lucky enough to be insulated from it, because there was real harm done. Businesses died, jobs were lost, careers were ruined, and everybody suffered from the economic recession the dot.com created. Let’s just hope that the uneasy feeling about the AI bubble everyone is experiencing is just a bit of leftover holiday undigested beef, blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato (with apologies to Dickens).

Customer-First
Every technology vendor wants to tell customers that they are the vendor’s first priority. Well, there is plenty of grievance to air on this point. More and more, the technology industry is valuing its financial gain over what is right for their customers. Subscription services are now the norm, and the party benefiting from those is rarely the customer. Mega merger/acquisitions result in wide-spread reorientation of the acquired firm to just its most profitable customers. New terms and conditions, increased prices, forced bundling sold as added value, and long-standing product lines ended, longer support queues, and disruption for the customer. Sure, there are good use cases for subscription services and for acquisitions, but the needs of the customer are getting lost more and more.

This extends to changes to foundational software and services. New releases with radically different user interface that simply don’t have a better workflow than the previous user interface, and now have to be learned. Unasked for features, including AI features, that cannot be turned off. Unnecessarily forcing products to constantly connect across the internet to the vendor, and cannot be shut off. Moving critical management tools to the cloud, but not giving enterprises a way to self-host. Forced arbitration agreements that more often than not only benefit the vendor or service provider.

The technology industry can do better. It has in the past, and the technology industry needs to move back toward a system in which power is more equal and both parties have the goal of providing each other with a square deal.

This Industry Analyst
Of course, I’m not going to leave myself out of the grievances. There are more use cases for technology than anyone can keep in their head, and I’m no exception. I need to be more accepting and expansive about possible use cases and less quick to focus on the negative side. I need to help our customers more by refreshing the love of technology that got me here in the first place and letting that enthusiasm lend wings to my writing and humor to my demeanor. I need to ask more questions, probe deeper when speaking with enterprises, vendors, and service providers. I need to let the worry wane so I can see the sun again and regain the wonder I used to have for technology.

I wish you all a safe, happy, healthy, and prosperous 2026.

AI has been the rage for at least three years now, first just generative AI (GenAI), and now agentic AI. AI can be pretty useful, at GlobalData we’ve done some very cool things with AI on our site. Strategic things, that serve a defined purpose and add value. The use of AI at GlobalData hasn’t been indiscriminate – it has been thought through with how it could help our customers and ourselves. Even this skeptical author can appreciate what’s been done.

But a lot of what is happening out there with AI is indiscriminate and doesn’t attack problems in a prescriptive way. Instead, it is sold as a panacea. A cure for all business and IT ills. The claims are always huge but strangely lacking in detail. It’s particularly true for agentic AI where only in the last month managed to get MCP into the Linux Foundation as a standard. The security issues of agentic AI are still largely unaddressed and certainly not addressed in any standardized fashion. It’s not that agentic AI is a bad idea, it’s not. But the way it’s being sold has a tinge of irrational hysteria.

Sometimes when a vendor introduces a new capability that proudly uses agentic AI, it’s not clear why that capability being ‘agentic’ makes any difference than just AI. New AI features are appearing everywhere, with vendors jamming Ai in every nook and cranny, ignoring the privacy issues, and making it next to impossible to avoid or turn off. The worst part is often these AI features are half-baked ideas implemented too quickly or even worse, written by AI itself and all of the security and code bloat issues that ensue.

The prevailing wind, no scratch that, the hurricane force gale in the IT industry is that AI is everything, AI must be everywhere, and *any* AI is good AI. Any product, service, solution, or announcement must spend at least half of its content on how this is AI and how AI is good.

AI *can* be a wonderful thing. But serious enterprise IT administrators, coders, and engineers know a few things:

1. In a new market like AI, not every company selling AI will continue to sell AI. There will be consolidation, especially in an overhyped trend. Vendors and products will disappear.2. Version 1.0 hardly ever lives up to its billing. Even Windows wasn’t really minimally viable until 3.1. 3. Aligning IT/business value received vs. costs to implement/continue is a core component to the job.4. The bigger the hype, the bigger the backlash.5. The bigger the hype, the bigger the fear of missing out (FOMO) amongst senior management.6. The problems are in the details, not in the overall concept.

So let’s all slow our roll when it comes to AI. More focus on what matters, what can *demonstrably* provide value vs. what is claimed will provide value. Implementation costs as well as one year, three year, and five year costs. Risk assessment from a data privacy, cybersecurity, and regulation standpoint. In short, a little bit more due diligence and a lot less FOMO. AI is going to happen; that’s not the issue. The issue is for enterprises to implement AI where it will help, rather than viewing it as a panacea for all problems.

Summary Bullets:

• DXC has created AdvisoryX, a global advisory and consulting group to help enterprises scale their AI deployment and create business values.
• Besides leveraging AI to drive innovation with customers, DXC is also adopting AI internally to gain productivity and embedding AI into its services.

DXC has made significant progress expanding its AI capability throughout 2025. The company recently launched AdvisoryX, a global advisory and consulting group designed to help enterprises address their most complex strategic, operational, and technology challenges. This is a positive move that can help enterprises accelerate their AI journey and achieve better outcomes. While enterprises are eager to implement AI, most of them do not have a well-thought-out strategy and operating model, or the necessary expertise to deploy AI successfully. What happens typically is departments working on siloed projects, without organization-wide collaboration, resulting in inefficiencies and governance issues. DXC’s AdvisoryX helps to overcome key challenges from getting started to the full lifecycle management.

DXC’s AdvisoryX offers five integrated solutions, which include DXC’s AI Core (i.e., the foundation including data, modeling, governance, and platform architecture); AI Reinvent (i.e., proven industry use cases across human-assisted, semi-autonomous, and autonomous operating models); AI Interact (i.e., redesigned workflows for collaboration between people and AI); AI Validate (i.e., continuous testing, observability, and governance); and AI Manage (i.e., production operations and lifecycle management).

With AdvisoryX, DXC has strengthened its position as a partner for AI innovation and allows the company to counter efforts by competitors to drive mindshare in the AI space. This is also a buildup of efforts the company has undertaken to develop its AI capabilities. In October 2025, DXC announced Xponential, which is an AI orchestration blueprint that has already been used by global enterprises to scale AI adoption. Xponential provides a structured approach to integrating people, processes, and technology. There are five independent pillars within the blueprint, including: ‘Insight’ (i.e., embedded governance, compliance, and observability); ‘Accelerators’ (i.e., tools to speed up deployment); ‘Automation’ (i.e., agentic frameworks and protocols); ‘Approach’ (i.e., collaboration of skilled professionals and AI to amplify outcomes); and ‘Process’ (i.e., delivery methodology). The company has indicated Singapore General Hospital as a client who has leveraged DXC’s expertise to develop the Augmented Intelligence in Infectious Diseases (AI2D) solution. This solution helps to guide antibiotic choices for lower respiratory tract infections with 90% accuracy and improve patient care while combating antimicrobial resistance.

In April 2025, the company introduced DXC AI Workbench, a generative AI (GenAI) offering that combines consulting, engineering, and secure enterprise services to help businesses worldwide integrate and scale responsible AI into their operations. The company has named Ferrovial, a global infrastructure company, as a customer reference that has leveraged DXC AI Workbench. The customer developed more than 30 AI agents making real-time decisions to optimize field operations, elevate safety measures, manage business knowledge, analyze competition, and assess regulatory impacts.

The company has identified AI as a key driver for business growth. Equally, it sees opportunities to apply AI internally for productivity and to gain experience from the technology. For example, DXC’s finance teams have used AI to transform back-office activities and eliminate repetitive processes; its legal department uses AI for legal research, drafting, and document preparation; and its sales and marketing teams deploy AI to automate workflows, generate proposals, etc. The company is also leveraging AI to enhance its service offerings. For example, it has partnered with 7AI to launch DXC’s agentic security operations center. These examples underscore DXC’s experience and capability in creating business values with AI.

That said, DXC is not the only systems integrator using AI to drive a with an AI advisory and consulting practice. While the company is showing traction and building customer case studies, competitors are also moving rapidly to engage clients in AI innovation and implementation. Accenture, for example, has nearly doubled its GenAI bookings in FY2025 to $5.9 billion from FY2024 and tripled its revenues to $2.7 billion. Tata Consultancy Services has also created a dedicated Tata Consultancy Services AI business unit, and it is driving transformation through a ‘responsible AI’ framework.

While DXC has introduced AdvisoryX, there is a lack of details in terms of the size of the group, areas of focus (e.g., geographical regions and industry sectors), and the assets underpinning its five integrated solutions. This makes it harder to see the differentiation against other providers that are also scaling their AI consulting practice. The company should also consider following up with announcements to highlight how AdvisoryX has made a difference in helping clients achieve their AI goals. This can be across the five integrated solutions, especially AdvisoryX’s AI Reinvent and AI Interact, which address many challenges related to human collaboration and business processes.

It is still early days in the adoption of AI, and competition in the AI space will become more intense. To stay competitive, service providers need to continue to strengthen their ability to help clients align business goals, industry-specific processes and challenges; enhance their AI platforms and tools; and expand their AI partner ecosystem. They also need to build more customer case studies to highlight success and gain credibility.

Summary Bullets:

• Mitel CX 2.0 raises Mitel’s stature in the contact center space and its competitive standing in general.

• Mitel has continued to blossom since completing the acquisition of Unify just over two years ago.

Mitel has launched Mitel CX 2.0, an upgrade to its Mitel CX customer experience (CX)/contact center platform introduced in March 2025. Mitel CX 2.0 is significant for the impact it has on Mitel’s position in the contact center space and the role it plays in Mitel’s evolution as a company.

GenAI virtual agents reside at the core of Mitel CX 2.0. They complement human contact center agents, handling basic requests while funneling off more complex ones to the employee best-equipped to handle them whether they reside within the contact center or back-office. The virtual agents also tackle workflows on behalf of human agents such as ordering items, issuing trouble tickets, sending customer notifications, or initiating approvals. Mitel CX 2.0 can be deployed in private cloud, hybrid, or on-premises environments.

The arrival of Mitel CX 2.0 serves as a contemporary signal of the market momentum Mitel has been steadily generating since completing its Unify acquisition in October 2023.

That acquisition more than doubled Mitel’s customer base to over 75 million, broadened its geographic footprint to north of 100 countries, and married its strength serving mid-market customers with Unify’s expertise in the large enterprise space. Since that time, Mitel has reoriented its go-to-market stance from ‘all things to all people’ to a solutions-led approach. Mitel has also restructured its finances by successfully emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Most significantly, the company has reinforced its governance and leadership by installing a fresh board of directors and onboarding a new CEO, Mike Robinson, who succeeds Tarun Loomba after roughly four years at the helm. Robinson is charged with tapping his experience guiding companies through post-restructuring phases to sustain Mitel’s corporate progression.

In addition to being a notable step in Mitel’s metamorphosis, more importantly it marks a meaningful leap forward for the company in the contact center space. In the last few years, contact centers have profoundly transformed, steadily yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience’. Contact centers are converting from featuring live agents to also including AI agents, from reactive to proactive, from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented, and from generic to deeply personalized. Mitel and its rivals continue to implement capabilities to help their customers make the transition.

With respect to rivals, Mitel CX 2.0 meets but does not exceed what is offered by the likes of Cisco, Zoom, and RingCentral. However, that does not erase the fact that Mitel is a markedly different company than just two years ago, one that continues to mature and blossom. With a new CEO installed, Mitel has officially launched the next chapter in its transformation. To be continued…

Summary Bullets:

• Cisco AGNTCY will be key for infrastructure multi-agentic AI frameworks leveraging security, identity, and interoperability.

• Solo.io highlighted progress in three high-profile agentic AI projects: Kagent, Agent Gateway, and Agent Registry.

The industry’s fall technology conferences have drawn to a close. Dominant themes included agentic AI integration, ecosystem partnerships to fill AI gaps, observability consolidations, and emerging open-source software (OSS) alternatives for enterprise developers.

One of the industry’s mega, multi-vendor conferences, KubeCon, held in Atlanta, Georgia (US) in November 2025, promoted each of these themes in response to the ongoing complexities surrounding Kubernetes-enabled digital transformations. This blog will focus on OSS technology advancements in particular. (For analysis on broader app modernization and KubeCon themes and news, please see: KubeCon Atlanta 2025: Agentic AI Era Gains Momentum via OSS and Power Partnerships, December 10, 2025).

Open-source technology remains an important approach among developers and DevOps team members in general for several reasons, including access to affordable community-driven collaboration and the experimentation of emerging AI technologies; providing flexibility and customization to agentic AI development tools; easing feature and systems integrations; and streamlined deployment of modern apps across distributed environments.

Over the past year, early agentic OSS tools became available to enterprise developers, such as Microsoft AutoGen, conversational agents; Google’s agent development kit, a Python-based tool for creating AI agents; and LangChain, framework for building LLM-powered apps and agents.

Multiple noteworthy OSS agentic AI events and projects were rolled out this fall and during KubeCon. Of particular interest among DevOps teams, cloud-native networking company Solo.io highlighted its progress in three high-profile agentic AI projects: Kagent, an agentic AI framework for building and running production agents in a cloud-native environment, including security and observability features; Agent Gateway a networking component which complements MCP and A2A protocols, to securely observe enterprises’ entire AI ecosystems; and Agent Registry, a centralized repository for AI applications and agents.

Other noteworthy Kubernetes and agentic OSS projects, which DevOps teams will be closely following in 2026, include:- Cisco AGNTCY, an infrastructure multi-agentic AI framework leveraging security, identity, and interoperability.- Cisco OTel Injector, for zero-coding, automation instrumentation of application observability data.- AIBrix and llm-d, for streamlining the building/scaling process associated with inference systems.- Kube Resource Orchestrator (KRO), a collaboration between AWS, Google, and Microsoft to abstract infrastructure complexity for developers to enable self-service, auto-provisioning of the underlying application stack.- Open Source Project Security (OSPS) Baseline framework for tiered security controls. -OpenFGA, providing developers with fine-grained authentication controls.-Cedar OSS, an Amazon sandbox project to enforce fine-grained access controls.

Progress in these OSS efforts among various infrastructure and app platform participants will dominate investment and news in 2026, as technology providers seek to improve customers’ business transformation requirements.

Summary Bullets:

• Boomi has developed a platform to help connect systems, manage data, and deploy AI agents more effectively.
• Boomi is expanding its customer base and partner base in Asia-Pacific; adding global systems integrators will help to drive penetration in the large enterprise segment.

Boomi highlighted at its Boomi World Tour event in Sydney (Australia) that without connectivity, context, and control, there will be no business impact. This epitomizes the challenge for businesses as they continue to pursue agentic transformation, especially with the recent focus on various AI technologies to drive new operating and business models. As enterprises shift their focus toward agentic AI, they often look at the tasks they can automate with AI agents.

However, the bigger picture is about business impact: Businesses should focus on reimagining their workflows and business operations. This requires communication between systems and application programming interfaces (APIs), which is the backbone for communications between enterprise systems connecting applications, data, and AI agents. The ability to extract data across an organization is key as it adds context for decision-making. Moreover, it is essential for businesses to have the right control over their integration, use of data, and the access rights of AI agents.

It is against this backdrop that Boomi has developed its platform to enable effective management of integration, APIs, data, and AI agents. While Boomi’s business has been anchored on integration and automation, it has made significant investments and efforts to enhance data management, API management, and AI agent management. For example, the acquisitions of Rivery and Thru have added data integration and managed file transfer capabilities respectively. While Boomi now has a compelling API management solution, it has added an AI gateway that sits between applications and AI model to check AI requests, manage costs, apply security rules, and route requests to the right model. These are crucial functions to manage the costs of using AI models that use token-based pricing, provide a layer of security to prevent prompt injection, and process streaming responses.

Boomi’s Agentstudio provides AI agent lifecycle management, allowing users to create, govern, and orchestrate agents. Its customers have deployed over 50,000 agents and nearly 350 AI-powered solutions on Boomi Marketplace. The company continues to enhance Agentstudio to meet customer demand. In particular, Boomi is supporting context engineering (e.g., GraphRAG), open-source (e.g., MCP client/server), agent governance (e.g., multi-provider support, FinOps), management of AI agent access (e.g., delegated authorization), and more. All these capabilities – from AI agent management to integration & automation, data management, and API management – are now available through a single Boomi Enterprise Platform.

Boomi’s platform and its AI approach are well-received by enterprise customers. For example, Greencross Pet Wellness Company, Australia’s largest pet wellness organization, leverages Boomi Enterprise Platform to support data integration and business transformation across its inventory systems, HR platforms, warehousing, and digital services. Boomi’s platform also enabled the company to develop its digital pet profile platform, which allows customers to build personalized profiles, receive timely reminders for treatments, view tailored product recommendations, and access relevant services based on their pet’s needs.

Serco Asia-Pacific is another customer in the Asia-Pacific region that has deployed Boomi’s platform and achieved productivity with Boomi’s AI capability. In particular, the company has reduced dramatically the time for a developer to build and document an integration, using Boomi’s DesignGen (creating integration with prompts) and Scribe (generating summaries, descriptions, and documentation) AI agents. Serco now sees Boomi as a crucial partner for its digital transformation, leveraging Boomi Enterprise Platform for integration as well as data management and API management.

Partners play a part in promoting Boomi’s solutions while helping enterprises transform their business. Example of partners in Asia-Pacific include Adaptiv, Atturra, and United Techno, who have been leveraging Boomi for their data and integration business. Atturra is a business advisory and IT solutions provider in Asia-Pacific with a strong industry focus (e.g., logistics, education, financial services, and more). Adaptiv is an ANZ provider of data integration, analytics and AI services. United Techno has a stronger focus on data management and AI solutions especially within the retail, e-commerce, and logistics sectors.

Boomi also engages global systems integrators to promote its solutions to large enterprises for their digital transformation. The company formed a strategic partnership with DXC in August 2025, focusing on application modernization and agentic AI. Particularly for AI projects, consulting services can make a difference in helping enterprises drive more successful outcomes. Systems integrators have been strengthening their consulting capabilities aligned to industry verticals, which can be pivotal in helping companies reimagine their business workflows, implement the right solutions, and measure the business outcomes effectively. They also have existing relationships with many large enterprise customers. Ultimately, the enterprise technology environment is becoming more complex with the need to manage an ecosystem of different technology vendors. Boomi wants to be the glue connecting different technologies, but it also needs partners to bring it all together. Continuing to expand its go-to-market partners and adding more global/regional systems integrators is crucial to penetrate the large enterprise segment across Asia-Pacific.

Summary Bullets:

• Microsoft Teams is front and center at Microsoft despite a very limited number of related announcements made at the event.

• Pairing team collaboration and productivity tools provides Microsoft a distinct competitive position.

Microsoft has officially closed the doors on its annual ‘Ignite’ event, a showcase of enhancements across the entire Microsoft portfolio. Only a handful of Microsoft Teams-related announcements were made, giving the impression that Microsoft Teams has taken a back seat to other Microsoft initiatives. In reality, much the opposite is true. The features unveiled were merely the tip of the iceberg, a small subset of a lengthy and diverse list of improvements that appeared in a Microsoft Teams blog.

While the actual depth of Microsoft Teams introductions might have come as a surprise, what shouldn’t be a surprise is that the introductions were infused with AI. Some examples bear this out.

The user interface for Microsoft Copilot in Teams AI-powered assistant is being unified across chats, channels, and meetings. Deploying a unified front across different functions is reminiscent of the familiar menu structure that cuts across Microsoft’s productivity apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The power of this approach allows users to quickly learn a new app based upon their experience with an app they are already familiar with. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft is taking knowledge gained during its ‘Microsoft Office’ era and applying it to ‘modern’ times in the form of the AI-infused Microsoft Copilot. On top of the updated interface, Microsoft Copilot in Teams can now also analyze chat history, meeting transcripts, and calendar content and generate recaps, rewrite messages, and surface insights; this experience is generally available for chat and channels and is rolling out to public preview for meetings.

Providing the ability to collaborate with external users is a growing trend. Microsoft has launched a public preview of several features that enhance interaction between Microsoft Teams users and vendors, clients, partners, and the like. Among other features, Microsoft Teams users can launch a chat, share a file in a chat, and view and respond to Microsoft Teams activity in other accounts and organizations.

A persistent collaborative space is now available from within Microsoft Teams chat and channels, helping organize information and co-create content. The space comes in the form of two features, ‘Pages’ in channels and ‘Notes’ in chat. Taken together, the features mimic the Zoom Docs capability from Zoom. So, although Microsoft is not scoring points for originality, it is introducing some very valuable functionality.

One especially intriguing aspect of Microsoft Ignite 2025 lies beyond the inventory of enhancements revealed, exposing something fundamental to Microsoft. Microsoft is taking a holistic approach to providing team collaboration capabilities. That approach spans Microsoft Teams software, device hardware such as video bars, and security, for instance, blocking files that pose a security risk such as executables before they reach a chat or channel. Normally such an ‘all points covered’ approach would provide Microsoft a unique competitive position, however it does not. Cisco mirrors Microsoft in employing deep lineups of software capabilities, devices, and security. Both companies are setting a tone that others will need to follow to compete in the space; rivals certainly have their work cut out for them.

Collectively, all the new features further cement Microsoft’s position as a leading vendor in the team collaboration/hybrid work arena. With AI touching multiple points of its portfolio including the latest Microsoft Ignite announcements, Microsoft has taken the ‘permeate the platform’ approach to AI adopted by competitors such as Cisco, Google, Zoom, and RingCentral. Coupled with its portfolio of ‘Office’ productivity tools, Microsoft has achieved a degree of differentiation that is largely unmatched.

Summary Bullets:

• Amdocs has broad capabilities for B2B operators.

• The solutions can accelerate their telco-techco transformation journeys across different markets.

At the recent Amdocs Analyst Conference in APAC, the company shared its latest capabilities and directions covering not only its core areas (i.e., OSS, BSS, MVNO platform, and 5G), but also emerging technologies such as AI, autonomous networks, and its integration across the portfolio. This report focuses on Amdocs’s offerings for telco B2B that can accelerate operators’ enterprise telco to techo transformation journeys.

Amdocs Portfolio for Enterprise Telecom
Enabling telcos to transform in the enterprise segment remains a key focus area for Amdocs. Amdocs CES is a leading solution for telcos digital transformation (for more, please see Digital Transformation Platforms: Competitive Landscape Assessment, July 11, 2025). It provides extensive B2B capabilities for telcos, ranging from catalog management to IoT, commerce and care, monetization, service and network automation, data, and AI. The solution can be deployed on-premises or on major hyperscale cloud environments, providing wider options for operators in managing their complex network and IT architecture. Key components of Amdocs CES include:

• Catalog: Enables operators to bundle solutions, including connectivity, products, and digital services from in-house as well as third-party providers and partners. While this is essential for SMBs, solution bundles can be positioned for larger enterprises, for example, as SD-WAN or NaaS underlay.
• Customer Engagement Platform: Provides a full customer lifecycle from marketing and sales to ordering, fulfillment, and customer support. This enhances the configure, price, quote (CPQ) process through automation and cuts down the order-to-activation time from months to days or hours. This benefits low-touch segments (SMBs) while also improving platform and self-serve portal capabilities (e.g., provisioning and change requests) for larger enterprises.
• Monetization Suite: Focuses on diverse monetization options, which includes connectivity as well as 5G services, QoS, APIs, satellites, AI, and more. This is critical for operators to capture market opportunities by driving monetization of their 5G network assets.
• Intelligent Networking Suite: An intent-based orchestration platform spanning across the network, edge, and cloud as well as inventory and assurance. This is vital for operators to accelerate their journey toward an autonomous network and strengthen their enterprise network and cloud offerings such as cloud-connect, SD-WAN, and NaaS. This enables operators to enhance network design and planning for enterprise customers especially for complex requirements, to address the growing enterprise need for agile networking and seamless integration across hybrid cloud and multi-location deployments, and to gain a competitive edge.
• MarketONE: A marketplace featuring hundreds of pre-integrated partners’ offerings, including content, applications, digital services, IoT, and industrial applications. This component is crucial for operators’ platform strategy, enabling adjacent services and providing wide vendor options to meet diverse market needs. For example, SASE, firewall, private 5G, IoT, and cloud services are integrated with NaaS services.
• amAIz Suite: Amdocs’s AI/GenAI and data platform that touches all other components. AI and analytics have been embedded across Amdocs’s entire portfolio, including Catalgo, Customer Engagement Platform, Monetization, and OSS. It enables workflow automation, zero-touch processes, an AI assistant, and analytics. This enables operators to address market demand more efficiently (e.g., personalizations) as well as gain a competitive advantage through AI-driven use cases.

Besides, Amdocs also offers a comprehensive services portfolio – Amdocs Studios, designed to bridge the experience, outcomes, and technology gaps. Amdocs Studios provides a range of service capabilities spanning consulting, experience design, data and AI, cloud services, and quality engineering. The service layer is essential for B2B operators to address not only their legacy infrastructure and systems, but also drive change management to overcome operators’ legacy cultures (e.g., siloed organization) that can slow down innovations. Amdocs Studios is shifting its services layer to agentic services to enable key oeprational enterprise workflows such as application modernization, cloud migration, and quality engineering.

Accelerating Enterprise Telco-Techco Transformation
Operators have been expanding their portfolio beyond connectivity for years to meet enterprise demand and to offset declining legacy service revenue. GlobalData forecasts ICT markets (e.g., cloud, data center, security, AI, and IoT) to grow at strong double-digit CAGRs Further, telcos are also well-positioned in the market. GlobalData research indicates that over half of enterprises prefer telcos as their ICT providers due to brand reputation and existing relationships. While leading operators like SK Telecom, Singtel, NTT, have advanced their transformation, many telcos in emerging markets (e.g., ASEAN) are still in the early stages.

Nevertheless, Amdocs’s capabilities can address telcos across the entire telco-techno transformation journey. Most advanced operators have already developed platform and marketplace capabilities and have integrated enterprise ICT offerings (e.g., network, cloud, security). They can also leverage Amdocs Monetization Suite to fully capitalize on their 5G-Advanced networks such as with network slicing and APIs. Besides, these operators can alsoe leverage Amdocs amAIz Suite to boost operational efficiency through workflow automation. This can accelerate operators’ solution development and time-to-market. Meanwhile, for emerging telcos, capabilities like Amdocs Catalog and Amdocs MarketONE offer higher impact. Many operators in ASEAN are aggressively expanding their ecosystem, but most services remain silo for enterprise customers. Amdocs MarketONE enables operators to address integration challenges across multiple services. This can drive operators’ operational efficiency and customer experience. Besides, given that connectivity is still a key growth driver, Amdocs Catalog is key to developing an innovative bundling strategy.

Conclusion
Amdocs’s comprehensive Amdocs CES and Amdocs Studios portfolios provides the necessary technological and service foundation to empower operators across the entire telco-to-techco transformation stages. By addressing critical areas like ecosystem integration (via Amdocs MarketONE), 5G monetization, and AI-driven automation, Amdocs is well-positioned as a key strategic partner for operators to accelerate their transformations and to capture high-growth enterprise ICT opportunities.

Summary Bullets:

• IBM leads the quantum compute (QC) race with its 156-qubit machine leading, yet the technology is also causing significant cybersecurity concerns.

• While IBM is driving IBM Quantum Safe, investments in other areas are also important for addressing the ‘Known, Unknowns’ with managing emerging security threats.

IBM leads the QC race with its 156-qubit machine leading major rivals such as Google, Fujitsu, and Rigetti.

This latest machine can dimensionally space of 2 to the power of 156 states at the same time, which equates to a 47-digit number. QC is less of a novelty and gradually becoming commonplace. Unlike conventional computing, QC utilize the quantum mechanical principle of superposition, which stipulates that the quantum qubits, ‘qubits’, can be simultaneously in the states 0 and 1 and everything in-between unlike classical computers, which have only two possible binary states of 0 and 1. And through a process of entanglement, QC can see relationships between qubits, impossible on classical computers. This fresh approach brings massive parallelism to computing and promises to accelerate advances research into domains such as science and medicine as well as accelerating AI research.

The Threat to Cyber Defenses
The major discussion however has been the threat to cybersecurity. Namely, the fear that RSA 2048, a 2048-bit encryption key (a top standard for cryptography), for example, could be broken by Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQC) through massively parallel factorization using Shor’s algorithm on a day that is often referred to as “Q-Day”. This would take the best classic computer perhaps a billion years to do and speculatively months or days for QC. Who knows? There is fear that QC can escalate cyberattacks through fraudulent authentication accessing data, systems and applications. It can forge digital signatures, fake records, and compromise blockchain assets. And while nothing is on the market today, cyber adversaries can potentially steal sensitive data now as well as store and decrypt sensitive data when QC is mature.

IBM’s Approach for IBM Quantum Safe
The conversation is recognition that QC is evolving much faster than any previous time. IBM estimates its superconducting QC are between 1,200x to 70,000x cheaper to run, and between 400x to 2,000x faster than ion trap quantum computers. And while IBM is ahead in terms of having the largest computers, it is working with other businesses, government, and regulatory bodies to raise awareness. It is also looking to standardize quantum resistant algorithms. IBM, for example, played a leading and foundational role in three of four proposed NIST standards for post quantum cryptography (PQC). There is also quantum key distribution (QKD) to ensure the secure exchange of information between two or more parties continues in the quantum world. NIST has a 2030 recommendation for new quantum resistant cryptography to be in place. The EU, for example, is coordinating its Quantum roadmap. The switch over to post quantum is likely 2035.

While the impact of securing infrastructure and key distribution for all scenarios – Quantum Safe – will be far reaching, the IBM play is leadership in building the fastest quantum computers, including the processors, hardware, software, and middleware. This is also the experience in supporting industries, especially those regarded as critical national infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, energy, utilities, banking, and payments), which tend to be highly regulated, rely on legacy systems, and require extra levels of security protection for compliance considerations.

IBM is working with enterprise on mapping cryptographic footprint and assets across systems and applications (e.g., source code, libraries) and network protocols (SSL and TLS). This is to better understand vulnerabilities, dependencies, current posture, before understanding where and how to apply IBM Quantum Safe principles. This is often done to align with compliance laws specific to industry verticals, including critical infrastructure. The company has 160,000 global consultants, has vibrant partner ecosystem working with the likes of Palo Alto Networks, for example, on threat detection and management. The vendor also has a play for quantum readiness.

While leading in overall quantum R&D is important, investments in adjacent many areas such as hybrid cloud, agentic AI, including multi-agent orchestration, will also have big implications for security as much as everything else. In the era of disaggregation, multi-domain experience and optionality will be important for tackling multiple issues, including the challenges with quantum. IBM is supporting its customers goals of being rigid on security, yet flexible on IT strategy and business agility.

Summary Bullets:

• Telecom companies are facing many challenges moving beyond their legacy business and adopting digital solutions including AI to drive business transformation.
• Amdocs is helping telcos to drive transformation with AI and its consulting-led services play a key role to accelerate the process from customer engagement to backend operations.

Telecommunications companies (telcos) are in various stages of transforming their businesses. The industry as a whole faces several challenges that have hindered progress.

These include regulations (e.g., to meet quality of service, data privacy, consumer protection, etc.); the need to constantly invest in their networks (e.g., upgrading mobile networks to 5G and 5G-A), legacy systems, and processes (including IT, network, and operations support system); and growing competitive pressures from traditional competitors to new telco start-ups and disruptive players (e.g., over-the-top providers, cloud providers, LEO satellite companies, etc.). They also have a huge workforce that may not be ready to transition into new technology areas such as AI, data science, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. While telcos’ leadership teams are well aware of the opportunities of emerging technologies, they have to take a more holistic approach in transforming the business, not just adding new digital capabilities. They need to reimagine their business (i.e., define the core business and operating model), right-size the organization with the right talent, adjust the company culture, and ensure effective change management.

This means opportunities for technology services providers including consulting firms, systems integrators, and other telco vendor partners to help telcos modernize their technology and transform their business. Amdocs is a key player within the telco partner ecosystem. It already serves 350 communications and media providers across more than 85 countries, including many tier-1 telcos (e.g., AT&T, BT, Telefonica, and Globe) with long-standing relationships. The company offers a range of products for catalog management, commerce and customer care, billing/monetization, network deployment and optimization, service & network automation, and more. Amdocs has also embedded AI (including GenAI and agentic AI) into its solutions. For example, its customer engagement platform is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution to deliver AI-driven customer journeys and personalized services serving both consumer and B2B customers. This is developed in partnership with Microsoft, leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure, verticalized for telecoms by Amdocs. Amdocs amAIz suite lays the foundation for telco data management, AI control and governance, and AI application and AI agent deployment. More importantly, since Amdocs is already embedded in telcos’ operations, the company has a deep understanding of the telco business and operational requirements. This places the company in a better position to help telcos adopt AI, particularly agentic AI, to automate workflows (from IT operations to business operations and network operations) to deliver the desired business outcomes.

However, due to the aforementioned challenges, many telcos are facing in transforming their business: They are not merely looking for more technologies but partners that can help them drive business outcomes. Many technology vendors choose to partner with service providers to help telcos close their capability gaps, recognizing the need to work across technologies from different vendors, which may require systems integration. Amdocs has taken a different approach by building a more comprehensive set of services to support telco customers, which it can also extend to customers in more verticals over time. Besides services to support network management and operations, the company is also helping telcos to transform various aspects of their business from CX to the modernization of backend systems. This is through Amdocs Studios, which has broad expertise across cloud services (e.g., strategy, migration, and operations), data and AI (e.g., data strategy, AI & analytics, and GenAI), and consulting services (e.g., experience design, product development, cybersecurity, and risk management). Amdocs is developing agentic services to support operational aspects of the Amdocs Studios’ main practices, including application modernization, data modernization, quality engineering, and more. The company has an extensive partner ecosystem to deliver the right outcomes for customers. For example, it has strategic partnerships with AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle, and Red Hat to offer cloud services.

Consulting services in particular are crucial in aligning technologies with business outcomes and helping drive change especially in using cloud, data, and AI to improve customer experience, employee experience, and operations experience (the processes involved to facilitate the interaction between a customer and a brand). Successful implementation will require enterprises to focus on the experiences they want to deliver and the brand image they want to establish. In particular, a human-centered design is crucial especially in AI initiatives to promote trust and focus on the benefits to enhance human capabilities (not to replace them).

Amdocs has invested significantly to develop experience design capabilities, which will be pivotal to compete with other service providers. Some global systems integrators also have strong creative design consulting capabilities (e.g., Accenture Song, Deloitte Digital, and TCS Interactive). As businesses are adopting digital solutions to drive business and operational changes, it is imperative for service providers to have an industry-focused approach for their go-to-market. This is already the case for most global systems integrators. While Amdocs does not have the scale of some of the largest global systems integrators, it has deep expertise in the telco sector. However, the company will continue to face stiff competition from systems integrators, especially Accenture, Infosys, and HCLTech, which have made acquisitions, high-profile customer examples, and extensive partnerships with vendors important to telcos.

Summary Bullets:

• The combination of omni-channel capability, effective data management, and AI will drive better customer experience.
• As Twilio’s business evolves from CPaaS to customer experience, the company focuses its product development on themes around trust, simple, and smart.

The ability to provide superior customer experience (CX) helps a business gain customer loyalty and a strong competitive advantage. Many enterprises are looking to AI including generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI to further boost CX by enabling faster resolution and personalized experiences.

Communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) vendors offer a platform that focuses on meeting omni-channel channel communications requirements. These players have now integrated a broader set of capabilities to solve CX challenges, involving different touch points including sales, marketing, and customer service. Twilio is one of the major CPaaS vendors that has moved beyond just communications applications programming interfaces (APIs), including contact center (Twilio Flex), customer data management (Segment), and conversational AI. Twilio’s product development has been focusing on three key themes: Trusted, Simple, and Smart. The company has demonstrated these themes through product announcements throughout 2025 and showcased at its SIGNAL events around the world.

Firstly, Twilio is winning customer trust through its scalable and reliable platform (e.g., 99.99% API reliability), working with all major telecom operators in each market (e.g., Optus, Telstra, and Vodafone in Australia). More importantly, it is helping clients win the trust of their customers. With the rising fraud impacting consumers, Twilio has introduced various capabilities including Silent Network Authentication and FIDO-certified passkey as part of its Verify, a user verification product. The company is also promoting the use of branded communications, which has shown to achieve consumer trust and greater willingness to engage with brands. Twilio has introduced branded calling, RCS for branded messaging, Whatsapp Business Calling, and WebRTC for browser.

The second theme is about simplifying developer experience when using the Twilio platform to achieve better CX outcomes. Twilio has long been in the business of giving businesses the ability to reach their customers through a range of communications channels. With Segment (customer data platform), Twilio enables businesses to leverage their data more effectively for gaining customer insights and taking actions. An example is the recent introduction of Event Triggered Journey (general availability in July 2025), which allows the creation of automated marketing workflows to support personalized customer journeys. This can be used to enable a responsive approach for real-time use cases, such as cart abandonment, onboarding flows, and trial-to-paid account journeys. By taking actions to promptly address issues a customer is facing can improve the chance of having a successful transaction, and a happy customer.

The third theme on ‘smart’ is about leveraging AI to make better decisions, enable differentiated experiences, and build stronger customer relationships. Twilio announced two conversational AI updates in May 2025. The first is ‘Conversational Intelligence’ (generally available for voice and private beta for messaging), which analyzes voice calls and text-based conversations and converting them into structured data and insights. This is useful for understanding sentiments, spotting compliance risks, and identifying churn risks. The other AI capability is ‘ConversationRelay’, which enables developers to create voice AI agents using their preferred LLM and integrate with customer data. Twilio is leveraging speech recognition technology and interrupt handling to enable human-like voice agents. Cedar, a financial experience platform for healthcare providers is leveraging ConversationRelay to automate inbound patient billing calls. Healthcare providers receive large volume of calls from patients seeking clarity on their financial obligations. And the use of ConversationRelay enables AI-powered voice agents to provide quick answers and reduce wait times. This provides a better patient experience and quantifiable outcome compared to traditional chatbots. It is also said to reduce costs. The real test is whether such capabilities impact customer experience metrics, such as net promoter score (NPS).

Today, many businesses use Twilio to enhance customer engagement. At the Twilio SIGNAL Sydney event for example, Twilio customers spoke about their success with Twilio solutions. Crypto.com reduced onboarding times from hours to minutes, Lendi Group (a mortgage FinTech company) highlighted the use of AI agents to engage customers after hours, and Philippines Airlines was exploring Twilio Segment and Twilio Flex to enable personalized customer experiences. There was a general excitement with the use of AI to further enhance CX. However, while businesses are aware of the benefits of using AI to improve customer experience, the challenge has been the ability to do it effectively.

Twilio is simplifying the process with Segment and conversational AI solutions. The company is tackling another major challenge around AI security, through the acquisition of Stytch (completed on November 14, 2025), an identity platform for AI agents. AI agent authentication becomes crucial as more agents are deployed and given access to data and systems. AI agents will also collaborate autonomously through protocols such as Model Context Protocol, which can create security risks without an effective identity framework.

It has come a long way from legacy chatbots to GenAI-powered voice agents, and Twilio is not alone in pursuing AI-powered CX solutions. The market is a long way off from providing quantifiable feedback from customers. Technology vendors enabling customer engagement (e.g., Genesys, Salesforce, and Zendesk) have developed AI capabilities including voice AI agents. The collective efforts and competition within the industry will help to drive awareness and adoption. But it is crucial to get the basics right around data management, security, and cost of deploying AI.

Summary Bullets:

• Huawei aims to accelerate Digital Africa with wider connectivity, 5G, and sustainability.

• Industrial 5G, especially in mining, can drive 5G monetization in Africa. This is supported by Huawei’s broad portfolio and ecosystem.

Huawei held its MBBS Africa in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2025. As one of the leading telecom network vendors, Huawei shared its regional vision – to drive ‘Digital Africa’ through wider connectivity, 5G, and sustainable solutions.

GlobalData’s Africa & Middle East Mobile Broadband Forecast shows that mobile data subscription has been growing steadily at high single-digit rates over the past several years and is expected to rise at a 7.2% CAGR over the next five years. While 5G adoption is increasing, the penetration rate is still low compared to other regions. Huawei highlighted its initiatives and broad capabilities to accelerate growth in Africa. These include multi-band massive MIMO for additional capacity, active antenna solutions for efficient and flexible deployments, FWA for new use cases, cost-efficient solutions for rural deployments, and various energy-saving technologies such as adaptive power backup. Several operators including Telkom SA, Safaricom Kenya, and Airtel Tanzania showcased how they are leveraging these technologies in their networks. Huawei is also transforming its engagement model with African operators, moving beyond the role of a network vendor to become to a digitalization partner by delivering innovative solutions aligned with business needs and monetization strategies.

As 5G deployment gathers pace, monetization will become critical for operators. GlobalData research estimates 5G users will account for 7.1% of all mobile users by the end of 2025 and will grow to 26.7% by 2030. However, 5G monetization remains a global challenge even in advanced markets. The challenge will be an even bigger hurdle for African operators due to slower overall adoption and the relatively lower spending power. This makes the importance of enterprise 5G as a key monetization engine. Horizontal services such as FWA, private 5G, and IoT are essential. These use cases can help enterprises address various needs such as increasing reliability and security for critical applications, agile connectivity for temporary sites (e.g., events, remote operations), SD-WAN underlay, and large-scale IoT deployments. Meanwhile, 5G-enabled industrial solutions represent an even larger opportunity. Mining and resources, one of the region’s largest sectors, can benefit from applications like autonomous drilling, remote operation/maintenance, and worker safety. Globally, 5G adoption in mining is maturing and widely adopted. GlobalData’s 5G & Private Network Deployment Tracker shows that 7% of global deployments are in the mining sector. Other major verticals are construction, tourism, and hospitality are among other major verticals in the region. There is a growing number of use cases including drones and surveillance, digital twins, and safety in construction; and mixed reality, robots, and smart facilities in tourism/hospitality.

While the opportunity for 5G-enabled industrial services is increasing solidly, the solutions are far more complicated. They span across broader ICT stacks and require IT-OT integrations. Nevertheless, this plays to Huawei’s strengths. The vendor has comprehensive portfolio from cellular and fixed networks, to cloud, server, end points, AI, and industrial capabilities. For example, autonomous drilling in mining requires private network, but also edge computing, AI/analytics, and vertical expertise. Besides, the company has wide partner ecosystem including industrial players and end-point manufacturers. And more importantly, Huawei has extensive references and experience delivering these solutions cost-effectively in other emerging markets like Asia and South America. It can showcase its other successful deployments to gain market trust and drive its brand share in the enterprise 5G space.

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Summary Bullets:

• To protect an expansive mobile environment attack surface in the face of a very dangerous threat environment, organizations are ramping up their security investments, with 75% of the 762 polled in a recent Verizon study reporting they had increased spending this year.
• But concerns still loom large threat actors using AI and other technologies and tactics to breach the enterprise; and only 17% have implemented security controls to stave off AI-driven attacks.

Mobile and IoT devices play an essential role in most organizations’ operations today. However, the convenience and flexibility they bring comes with risk, opening new points of exposure to enterprise assets. Organizations that were quick to embrace bring your own device (BYOD) strategies often didn’t have a solid plan for safeguarding this environment when so many of these devices were under-secured. Enterprises have made progress in layering their defenses to better protect mobile and IoT environments, but there is still room for progress.

In Verizon’s eighth annual Mobile Security Index report, 77% of the people surveyed said deepfake attacks that tap AI-generated voice and video content to impersonate staff or executives, and SMS text phishing campaigns are likely to accomplish their objective. Approximately 38% think AI will make ransomware even more effective.

Despite the increase in cybersecurity spending in most organizations, only 12% have deployed security controls to safeguard their enterprise from deepfake-enhanced voice phishing. Just 16% have implemented protections against zero-day exploits.

Enterprise employees are welcoming AI-driven apps to their mobile devices – with 93% using GenAI as part of their workday routine. They raised red flags, with 64% calling data compromise via GenAI their number one mobile risk. Of 80% of enterprises that ran employee smishing tests, 39% fell for the scam.

AI aside, user error is the most frequently noted contributor to breaches in general, followed by application threats and network threats. Some 80% said they had documented mobile phishing attempts aimed at staff.

While prioritizing cybersecurity spending is important, organizations need to look at whether they are allocating this investment on the right areas. Just 45% said their organization provides comprehensive education on the potential risks mobile AI tools bring. Only half have formal policies regarding GenAI use on mobile devices, and 27% said they aren’t strictly enforced.

Summary Bullets:

• Don’t use AI browsers or AI browser extensions – the loss of privacy isn’t worth the functionality.

• AI companies mean well, but the privacy implications of these products are unsuitable for enterprise or personal use.

“If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” – Andrew Lewis (blue_beetle), MetaFilter comment (2010)

It’s not news that AI is being talked about everywhere. It’s also not news that the websites and applications you use regularly are doing their level best to spy on you or obtain data that can be used internally or be sold to advertisers. Nor is it news that the state of privacy laws across the world is pretty poor, despite the EU giving its best attempt and the US pretending that three lines of legalese in a 15-page disclaimer somehow magically sets the ‘informed’ flag on users.

But the latest trend involves AI companies either creating browser extensions or, in at least one case, creating their own browser. OpenAI is touting its AI-enabled browser called Atlas, designed to both remember all activity, search that activity, chat, and do any number of AI-enhanced things. OpenAI rival Perplexity has a browser product called Comet. There are even sidebar browser extensions for Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini. Some browsers, such as Firefox and Brave, come with an AI sidebar but uses your choice of LLM.

The first problem is an AI watching everything – your passwords, all text you type, your URLs… everything. Then that data isn’t stored locally; it’s stored with the AI. The problems here are no different than the problems with Microsoft Recall, an AI-driven search and backup feature that Microsoft released earlier in 2025, much to the consternation of pretty much everyone. All these AI companies have multiple safeguards to protect data, have stated policies on how such data can be used and where, and are being pretty upfront about how and when they use your data. They allow end users to pick and choose when the AI is available or even forget that data after a session. Companies adding these AI features to the browser are legitimately trying to make the lives of users easier with AI and protect user privacy.

They are adding other safeguards as well. OpenAI says that its Atlas AI browser cannot access other applications, download files, and cannot install extensions. Technological limits to prevent AI browsers and extensions from becoming security risks are being taken.

But giving any corporation a detailed record of all activities conducted on the internet, including every click, search, text, or picture and the metadata around it could have disastrous consequences in the long term. Hackers could gain access to the data. Governments could seize the data and use it against a populace or an individual. Companies get bought, end user agreements change, or investors could simply demand that all that personal data is monetized. If companies go out of business, what happens to the data? A fair amount of the world doesn’t have any legal mechanism to force businesses to delete data either.

Then there are the other issues, regarding security on your desktop. Social engineering or AI chat window spoofing is a real issue. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Every individual and every enterprise have the choice to decide whether the risks are worth the utility of having AI integrated into your browser. Everyone wants tools that work better; some of the features in AI browsers are impressive, and likely even more features will be coming. But that shouldn’t be at the expense of risking all your personal data or risking the company’s internal data, no matter how nice the tools look or how much you trusts a given AI vendor. This is about ensuring personal privacy and the data security of enterprises. Take a pass on AI browsers and AI browser extensions. Nobody would stand for being under video and audio surveillance every second and everywhere. Don’t allow the same to happen to your digital life.

Summary Bullets:

• Oracle shifts pitch from technology to outcomes, driven by AI-injected tools.

• Oracle APEXLang, slated for 2026, to modernize Oracle’s development practices.

Last week’s Oracle AI World couldn’t have been timelier, attended by customers and partners still buzzing from a corporate earnings report, which triggered the tech giant’s stock to soar based on its mounting investments in AI and cloud infrastructure.

Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison’s high-level keynote speech included profound possibilities and some examples of a variety of outcomes that AI advancements can have on global enterprises. Executives continued to carry his message in other keynotes, noting the company’s shift in focus from CIOs to CEOs through conversations that emphasized outcomes versus products. For example, in one case, Oracle’s ability to apply AI-injected applications, app platforms, and data platforms to a particular healthcare clinic resulted in productivity gains, which saved individual health workers 100 minutes per day.

He and other executives further described situations involving various medical diagnostic imaging and genetic testing with examples of how AI will diagnose, treat, and cure health issues at significantly greater levels and speeds through modernized code bases, medical systems, and ecosystems.

Oracle announced new functionality across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) comprehensive cloud offering, spanning its developer portfolio: AI Agent Studio, Fusion AI Agent Marketplace, and Agent Hub (preview) AI tools for business users. Oracle’s AI agent studio has been enhanced to build and deploy AI agents across the enterprise including Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle’s new AI agent marketplace extends the company’s LLM ecosystem and third-party agent-building resources. Ellison noted that Oracle’s low-code and automation technology, Oracle Application Express (APEX), will continue to demonstrate a growing role in AI code generation of applications connected through workflows and shored up by security. Advancements will make applications developed more scalable and reliable. This led to other application development discussions throughout the week, including some on the future of Oracle APEX.

A little-known app development tool, Oracle APEXLang, shows promise in modernizing and extending Oracle’s current development practices. Set for 2026 release, the Apex extension uses a structured, file-based format to build and format Oracle APEX applications, specifically to enable app development to be integrated with enterprises’ latest digitization practices.

Oracle APEX, traditionally used in a browser-based, declarative environment over the past five years, is valued by enterprise developers for its low-code cloud service advantage, traditionally used to build apps on Oracle databases. Oracle APEXLang represents a significant shift for these traditional developers. Features include version control support (e.g., Git) and tools to adhere to CICD pipelines for improved automated test and deployment. It works with developers’ app platforms of choice including code assistants, because the new file-based approach is particularly well suited for GenAI and LLMs. Oracle research notes Oracle APEXLang is not a replacement for Oracle APEX, SQL, or JavaScript, but an enabler for defining components of applications.

Summary Bullets:

• ANS’ acquisition of Sci-Net Solutions expands its portfolio of value-added enterprise technology solutions in a highly competitive UK B2B market
• AI is a hook everyone latches on to – there are even products and solutions out there – but this is an acquisition of a service provider with current revenues

The ANS acquisition of Sci-Net Business Solutions is positioned as a complement to previous acquisitions such as Makutu as part of the ANS strategy to exploit and deliver the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI). Sci-Net is an Oxford-based business solutions specialist with expertise in ERP, CRM, and cloud infrastructure solutions (e.g., 365 Business Central, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, CRM, and Microsoft Azure).

With ANS already having a strong relationship with Microsoft (Services Partner of the Year in 2024 and over 100 certified Microsoft specialists), the combination makes sense and grows the ANS talent base to over 750 including 65 technology consultants from Sci-Net. It offers opportunities to cross- and up-sell to the companies’ existing customer bases, and to continue to move up the value chain as a managed services provider (MSP).

The move also underlines some key trends in the UK marketplace. Competition remains fierce, so being able to act as a trusted advisor is becoming more important to win and retain business. At the same time, technology continues to become more complex, therefore offering a full portfolio of services ‘above and beyond’ connectivity is vital. MSPs and value-added resellers (VARs) recognize this and represent an ever-stronger force in the market as they can work closely with customers to develop technology solutions that directly address their business needs.

That is not to say that the ‘Big Three’ B2B service providers – BT, Vodafone, and O2 Daisy – do not also recognize this. All of them are positioning to become more solutions-oriented with a focus on areas like cloud, security and, increasingly, AI. They have the advantage of significant existing customer bases, deep human and partnership resources, strong brands, and nationwide fixed and mobile networks from which to deliver their services. By contrast, the likes of ANS and other VARs/MSPs can exploit their agility to differentiate themselves in the market.

It will continue to be a highly competitive market to win the custom of enterprises of all sizes in the UK, which is a tough challenge for all service providers. But it is good news for UK plc as businesses stand to benefit from innovation and value.