Voice Security in Customer Engagement Has Missing Pieces

by orumohiuddin, posted in Communicate, Secure
A professional portrait of a woman with long black hair, wearing a patterned blouse and a pearl necklace, against a plain background.
O. Mohiuddin

Summary Bullets:

• AI is driving up voice traffic while also making voice more vulnerable, so voice security needs urgent attention.

• The building blocks are in place, but solutions are fragmented. Voice security needs to be integrated on the carrier network level and backed by strong verification at the business.

Voice security is of paramount importance today. Advances in AI are affecting voice in two ways. First, AI is improving the voice experience as it becomes more interactive, which is expected to increase overall voice traffic. Second, AI can be used to bypass security barriers, significantly raising the threat level. The threat landscape varies depending on the call type, recipients, and network routing (such as international borders); this blog focuses on voice security within customer engagement (particularly contact centers), predominantly in the US.

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nexfibre and Netomnia: Is Bigger Better for UK Fiber Competition?

by Brendan Swan, posted in Communicate
A professional headshot of a man smiling, wearing a dark suit with a light pink shirt, set against a neutral background.
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• The UK’s Competition and Market Authority released its interim findings on nexfibre’s proposed acquisition of Netomnia, in which it raised concerns that the acquisition could reduce wholesale competition.

• Deploying multiple overlapping networks have put smaller altnets under financial pressure, with consolidation seemingly the only way forward.

It’s been humorously said that the UK has roughly one altnet for every postcode – well over 100 to be exact – each armed with big ambitions and a digger. It’s therefore no surprise that consolidation is now firmly on the agenda, with M&A activity set to reshape the alternative network landscape. The market that emerges could look very different from the landscape we see today. With the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) releasing its interim findings on nexfibre’s proposed acquisition of Netomnia, raising concerns that the deal could reduce wholesale competition, particularly where the two networks overlap. Yet consolidation could create a larger stronger challenger to take on BT’s Openreach. Though this raises the broader question: Does the UK need more fiber networks, or fewer but stronger networks capable of competing at scale with Openreach?

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Agentic AI Transforms the Marketplace UX as Infra Services Become Consumable Products

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data
Close-up portrait of a smiling woman with blonde hair and earrings, in a softly lit setting.
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• AI-driven conversational discovery experience boosts the relevancy of marketplaces among broader audiences.

• Network services evolve into consumable and programmable products via enterprise agents.

Agentic AI innovations have boosted hyperscaler marketplaces’ relevance, and global telecommunications giants are taking notice.

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Chinese Cloud Giants Close Enterprise AI Platform Gap with Global Hyperscalers, but Execution Lags

by Alfie Amir, posted in IT Leader
A smiling man in a formal suit and red tie, set against a white background.
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Chinese providers are catching up with global leaders in three areas: generative AI, operationalized solutions, and agentic AI, giving enterprises broader options to diversify their AI partners.

• However, gaps in go-to-market, professional services, and model development remain large – crucial areas to drive adoption and accelerate deployments.

AI demand continues to grow rapidly. GlobalData Market Opportunity Forecasts to 2030: Artificial Intelligence (published on June 30, 2026) forecasts the global AI market to increase at 48.2% five-year-CAGR to reach $1.3 trillion in 2030. This is also reflected by 88% of the 3,069 global enterprises interviewed by GlobalData, who increased their AI budget this year (source: GlobalData ICT Customer Insights Survey 2026. Asia-Pacific shows a similar trend with a 48.6% CAGR, accounting for 36.2% of the global AI market in 2026. While growth is reported across the stack from the GPU to the application layer, cloud-based enterprise platforms remain crucial to drive adoption by providing broad and flexible capabilities to develop, govern, and scale AI deployments. GlobalData’s recent updates on Cloud-Based Enterprise AI Platforms: Competitive Landscape Assessment (September 17, 2026) shows that global hyperscalers (Google and Amazon) continue to lead the market, followed closely by Microsoft and IBM. However, Chinese players including Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, and Tencent are closing the gap. This is important especially in markets like Asia where these players already have a strong presence. This gives enterprises broader options to diversify their AI partners, but also attracts cost-sensitive customers through their cost-leadership strategy.

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Systems Integrators Adopting the FDE Model with a Focus on Business Outcomes

by siowmeng, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Secure
A professional man with dark hair and a slight smile, wearing a suit jacket over a light blue shirt, standing in front of a blurred glass background.
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

• Technology vendors are investing in forward deployed engineers to adapt AI solutions to meet customer needs.

• Systems integrators are working alongside their technology partners to help enterprises accelerate their AI adoption and ensure business outcomes are met.

It is widely reported that only a small percentage of firms that have conducted AI pilots are moving them into production. Even fewer enterprises have been able to scale their AI initiatives across multiple business functions. Based on GlobalData’s observations and discussions with enterprises, there has been greater success in AI implementations among large enterprises that have engaged a systems integrator or consulting firm to work alongside their technology partners, including hyperscale cloud providers and AI model companies (e.g., Anthropic and OpenAI).

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Agentic AI May Give IP Voice a New Lease on Life as Legacy Decline Continues

by Gary Barton, posted in Big Data
Research Director, Enterprise Technology and Services

Summary Bullets:

• While IP voice is less ubiquitous, when it matters it, it really matters

• Agent-to-agent communication adds a new paradigm to IP voice services

Calling IP voice a legacy service is a little unfair, but only a little. Innovation in this arena is still happening as can be seen by BT’s recent launch of its automated UC edge platform designed to help enterprises move numbers between UC platforms automatically. However, a recent and stark counterpoint to this is Lumen’s decision to exit the IP voice market.

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Meta Will Need to Shed its Consumer-centric Image to Gain Ground in Enterprise AI

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data
A woman with long, dark hair wearing a gray blazer, smiling at the camera.
R. Bhattacharyya

Summary Bullets:

• Meta will need to shed its consumer-centric image to gain traction in the business market, even if it only targets smaller organizations.

• Convincing organizations that they can trust Meta to secure personal information and corporate intellectual property will take time and effort.

On Monday September 28, 2026, Meta announced plans to enter what is already a crowded enterprise AI market. It will develop Meta Enterprise Platform, a collection of tools and services that will help business customers implement their own AI strategies. Few details were shared other than the platform will incorporate Muse agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, Muse Code, and other solutions.

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Australia’s Cable Wars Are Heating Up: Thanks, AI

by Brendan Swan, posted in Network
Professional headshot of a man with short hair, smiling, wearing a black suit and a pink shirt against a gray background.
B. Swan

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping Australia’s fiber map, driving investment beyond city limits and into emerging data center locations.

• Route diversity is becoming strategic, with terrestrial and subsea network providing greater resilience and flexibility for future digital workloads.

Australia’s fiber build-out is getting a second wind – and this time, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the rules of the game. In the same week, Vocus and SUBCO announced new terrestrial and subsea cable projects demonstrating that Australia’s connectivity investment cycle is picking up speed. But this is about more than adding fiber. AI, cloud and data center expansions are changing where capacity is required and creating demand for networks with diverse, resilient routes that can withstand outages, congestion and other disruptions.

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Google is Keeping Workspace on the Cutting Edge

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Big Data, Communicate
A close-up portrait of a smiling man wearing glasses, with a neutral background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• Three voice-activated features coming to Google Workspace reflect a broader trend of AI becoming incorporated into everyday workflows.

• The features also mirror how vendors are opening their team collaboration platforms to support the multi-platform environment in which their users operate.

Google recently announced three voice-activated AI features coming soon to Google Workspace. ‘Gmail Live’ lets users ask conversational questions to retrieve information from their Gmail inbox such as “What’s my flight’s gate number?”. Users can talk to ‘Keep Live’ to capture ideas that cross their mind and turn them into organized, actionable notes. With ‘Docs Live’ users can engage in real-time conversation to create documents on the fly. Although Workspace users cannot avail themselves of the features quite yet, ‘Gmail Live’ and ‘Keep Live’ are available to Google AI subscribers on the Plus, Pro, and Ultra plans while ‘Docs Live’ is reserved for Pro and Ultra subscribers.

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Beyond the Hype: The Reality of CX Agentic Orchestration

by orumohiuddin, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Secure
A woman with long dark hair wearing a colorful patterned top and a pearl necklace, smiling softly at the camera.
Oru Mohiuddin

Summary Bullets:

• Agentic orchestration has been dominating vendor narratives as growing complexity in the CX space is driving the need for a sophisticated coordination system.

• CX agentic orchestration remains fragmented as there are still infrastructural gaps, and trust remains a major issue for customers.

Agentic orchestration has been increasingly occupying CX vendor narratives in recent years, so it is time to take a deep dive into what orchestration is and why it is becoming relevant. Simply put, orchestration is bringing people, workflows, and technology together to achieve an outcome. Depending on how far we stretch the concept, orchestration is not new, and even a deterministic call routing can be described as orchestration. The question is, what is new today and why is orchestration increasingly dominating vendor narratives?

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