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Brian Phillips, Director of Product Marketing at HP, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, on opening day of ISE to discuss HP’s latest collaboration announcements and the strategy unifying its product portfolio around AI-enabled hybrid work. Phillips explained that HP’s collaboration roadmap is centered on enabling effective communication across a wide range of work environments—from home offices and hoteling desks to meeting rooms, training spaces, and immersive collaboration settings. Rather than deploying AI for its own sake, HP is embedding machine learning and cloud-based intelligence into collaboration solutions to tangibly improve meeting quality, clarity, and engagement. “We’re putting AI into action in collaboration in a way that makes meetings more effective and more lifelike,” Phillips said, emphasizing HP’s focus on real-world value. A key highlight at ISE was the introduction of next-generation HP Poly Mission headsets, designed to support hybrid and high-noise environments with advanced AI noise reduction. Phillips noted that the new headsets can isolate a speaker’s voice even in challenging settings such as cafés or open offices, while maintaining strong privacy protections. “AI is being used to deliver better experiences, but we’re not tracking conversations or personally identifiable information,” he said. The new lineup also reflects HP’s effort to streamline its headset portfolio, reducing SKU complexity and making it easier for resellers to quote and recommend the right solution for each user. On the meeting room side, HP unveiled advancements in Poly VideoOS 5, the collaboration operating system that powers HP Poly video devices. The update brings support for Android 13, extended certification with partners such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet, and lays the foundation for long-term investment protection with support planned through 2032. New capabilities include multi-camera experiences that dynamically frame participants from multiple angles, ensuring everyone in the room is clearly seen and heard. Phillips also highlighted HP Dimension with Google Beam, a hyper-realistic 3D collaboration solution designed to deliver an “across-the-table” experience for remote participants. The system combines spatial video and audio to create an immersive, lifelike presence suited for executive meetings, negotiations, and high-impact conversations. Live demonstrations were available at ISE, with broader availability planned later this year through HP and Google experience centers. More information about HP’s collaboration portfolio and hybrid work innovations is available at https://www.hp.com/us-en/home.html.

Dan Rosenrauch, CEO of Viirtue, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss Viirtue’s newly released AI voice agents and why compliance—not demos—is the real differentiator in AI voice. Viirtue is a white-label VoIP platform built specifically for service providers, MSPs, and telecom resellers. Its core strength is a quote-to-cash platform that automates the operational realities of selling voice services, including usage-based billing, tax automation, USF contributions, FCC compliance, and required filings such as Form 477. Rosenrauch explained that many AI voice tools entering the market overlook the fact that voice is a federally regulated industry. While AI agents may work in isolation, providers are often left to manually stitch together billing, compliance, and reporting—creating risk as they scale. Viirtue’s AI voice agents are integrated into the same lifecycle that has long supported UCaaS, from quoting and provisioning through billing, taxation, and audit-ready reporting. “AI voice doesn’t change the rules of voice,” Rosenrauch said. “If you’re not doing compliance right from day one, you’re setting yourself up for problems that can kill your business—or its value—later.” The platform’s multi-tenant design allows partners to deploy AI voice agents quickly across customers of any size, while still enabling hands-on tuning and optimization—an area where resellers can deliver meaningful differentiation and better customer outcomes. Compliance, Rosenrauch noted, is no longer just a regulatory issue but a business equity issue, as acquisition deals increasingly fail when unresolved tax or regulatory gaps surface during due diligence. Viirtue’s goal is to remove that risk by making compliance automatic, scalable, and built in from the start. Learn more: https://viirtue.com/

Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightyear, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how Lightyear is redefining enterprise telecom management through AI-native automation, data transparency, and end-to-end lifecycle control. Thankachan explained that Lightyear positions itself as a “telecom operating system” for the enterprise, automating the full lifecycle of telecom services—from procurement and installation to inventory management, expense tracking, renewals, and decommissioning. The platform integrates with enterprise systems via APIs and provides a single system of record for services, circuits, costs, and contracts. In 2025, Lightyear expanded this vision with the launch of its AI-native telecom expense management offering, designed to modernize a category long dominated by legacy, invoice-centric tools. Telecom billing, Thankachan noted, remains uniquely complex and error-prone, with multi-carrier invoices, usage-based charges, taxes, and frequent discrepancies obscuring true costs. Lightyear’s AI-native approach goes beyond invoice digitization by categorizing charges, reconciling invoices against verified network inventory, auditing discrepancies, opening tickets, and enabling natural-language queries such as cost analysis by site or service. “We’re not just answering questions,” Thankachan said. “We also take the action—buying circuits, managing installs, paying invoices, and handling tickets.” By combining AI tooling with first-principles software design and a large, continuously growing dataset spanning quotes, carrier performance, and billing history, Lightyear delivers both operational automation and actionable intelligence. Enterprises typically see meaningful ROI within the first year, with ongoing savings driven by reduced manual effort, improved visibility, and proactive cost control. The conversation also highlighted Lightyear’s strong business momentum. Following record customer growth and product expansion, the company secured additional funding at a higher valuation, enabling increased investment in engineering, AI-driven R&D, customer support, and go-to-market efforts. According to Thankachan, this capital ensures that “everything we do for the enterprise will get better and stronger.” More information about Lightyear’s platform and its AI-native telecom expense management capabilities is available at https://lightyear.ai/.

Ori Bendet, Vice President of Product Management at Checkmarx, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss how the acquisition of Tromzo strengthens Checkmarx’s agentic application security strategy and reflects a broader shift in how organizations secure software in an AI-driven development era. Bendet explained that Checkmarx, a pioneer in application security with more than two decades of experience, has traditionally focused on helping organizations identify vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). However, the rapid adoption of AI-generated code has fundamentally changed the AppSec landscape. “The industry used to be fixated on finding vulnerabilities,” Bendet said. “Now the real challenge is fixing them at scale, in context, and without slowing developers down.” The Tromzo acquisition builds on Checkmarx’s existing family of agentic tools, Checkmarx Assist, which already provides real-time remediation inside the developer IDE. Tromzo extends these capabilities deeper into the SDLC, enabling automated remediation at the repository and pull-request stages. Together, the technologies aim to “complete the loop” by delivering consistent, trusted remediation from early development through later stages of deployment. Bendet noted that AI is widening the gap between development velocity and security oversight, as significantly more code—and therefore more vulnerabilities—is being produced. At the same time, the application footprint itself is evolving to include AI components such as large language models, agents, and third-party AI services. “There is now a new AI element inside the application,” he said, “and organizations need AppSec solutions that understand and protect that expanded footprint.” Auto-remediation, once viewed skeptically by developers, is now gaining acceptance as AI agents gain a deeper understanding of application context. According to Bendet, modern agentic tools can remediate vulnerabilities while preserving business logic and minimizing disruption. “Developers no longer need to spend days undoing fixes that broke functionality,” he said. “The agent can understand the blast radius and refactor automatically.” Looking ahead, Bendet described a future where AppSec becomes more autonomous, with agents continuously testing, fixing, and validating applications while developers shift toward higher-level architectural and review roles. With proper guardrails in place, this evolution promises to reduce alert fatigue and allow teams to focus on innovation rather than remediation backlogs. More information about Checkmarx and its agentic application security approach is available at https://checkmarx.com/, with additional developer-focused resources at https://checkmarx.dev/.

Chris McHenry, Chief Product Officer at Aviatrix, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to discuss the launch of Aviatrix 8.2 and how the company is redefining zero trust security for modern cloud-native environments. McHenry explained that as critical business data and AI workloads increasingly reside in public clouds such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, traditional perimeter-based security models are no longer sufficient. Aviatrix has spent the last decade building its Cloud Native Security Fabric, a platform designed specifically for cloud operational models rather than retrofitted on-premises approaches. With release 8.2, Aviatrix significantly expands its “zero trust for workloads” capabilities, focusing on Kubernetes, serverless environments, and AI-driven applications. A central theme of the conversation was the evolution of zero trust from a networking concept into a workload-centric security strategy. McHenry noted that recent supply-chain attacks have shown how quickly cloud-native environments can be compromised if basic network controls are missing. Aviatrix 8.2 introduces deeper Kubernetes awareness, policy-as-code integration, and initial native support for securing AWS Lambda, allowing organizations to apply micro-segmentation and least-privilege access directly to modern workloads. McHenry emphasized that cloud security must also evolve operationally. Security teams can no longer rely on slow, ticket-based firewall processes while developers deploy infrastructure at machine speed. Aviatrix 8.2 supports a DevSecOps-friendly model that enables developers to manage zero trust policies within guardrails defined by security teams. As McHenry put it, “If your workloads get more modern but your controls don’t, security gets worse without you touching anything.” The discussion concluded with guidance for CIOs and CISOs preparing for the next wave of cloud and AI-driven threats: assess whether existing network security tools truly understand cloud-native workloads, modernize security operations alongside development practices, and prioritize platforms that unify cloud, network, and security teams. More information on Aviatrix 8.2 and the Cloud Native Security Fabric is available at https://aviatrix.ai/.

Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Jonathan Homa, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing at Ribbon Communications, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping carrier network design, funding priorities, and long-term infrastructure investments in 2026 and beyond. Homa explained that while Ribbon is widely known for its heritage in voice and telephony, the company has evolved into a broader networking provider serving service providers, enterprises, governments, and critical infrastructure operators. Following its acquisition of ECI Telecom, Ribbon now spans IP, optical, and voice networks, with software, automation, and AI increasingly acting as the connective tissue across its portfolio. AI is fundamentally altering traffic patterns on global networks. Instead of primarily “north-south” traffic between users and data centers, AI workloads are driving massive “east-west” traffic flows between data centers for training and inference. This shift is forcing carriers and data center operators to invest in higher-capacity optical networks, greater agility, and continuous optimization. As Homa noted, “AI is increasing traffic volumes, changing traffic behavior, and demanding thicker pipes with far more flexibility than traditional networks were built for.” Homa outlined four key trends accelerating in 2026: ultra-high-speed coherent pluggable optics, IP and optical convergence, optical network disaggregation with open line systems, and AI-driven automation with closed-loop control. Together, these trends are flattening network architectures, improving economics, and enabling operators to dynamically adapt bandwidth and performance in real time. Ribbon, he said, is positioning itself at the intersection of all four trends as the industry moves toward autonomous, AI-driven networks. Summing up Ribbon’s direction, Homa emphasized the company’s long-term vision: “Our focus is giving customers a clear path to autonomous networks—bringing together advanced optics, converged IP and optical platforms, and AI-powered automation to meet the demands of an AI-driven internet economy.” For more information, visit https://ribboncommunications.com/.

Recorded live at Cloud Connections, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Kevin Nethercott, CEO, and Robert Galop, Chief Product Officer at Tresic, following the company’s first public debut after operating in stealth mode. Nethercott and Galop described Cloud Connections as the ideal venue for Tresic’s introduction to the market, noting strong engagement from CSPs, MSPs, and channel partners eager to understand how AI can be applied practically to communications. Drawing on decades of industry experience, the Tresic team positioned its mission at the intersection of communications, AI, and monetization—helping partners unlock new revenue using assets they already own. At the core of Tresic’s offering is the Tresic Intelligence Cloud, a platform designed to treat conversations—across voice, messaging, chat, and social channels—as first-class business data. Rather than delivering generic AI summaries or call detail records, Tresic focuses on transforming unstructured conversational data into actionable intelligence that directly drives business outcomes. Galop explained that recent advances around “beacons” enable conversations to be analyzed in real time and after the interaction concludes. Tresic’s After Call Co-Pilot and First Alert Co-Pilot address two critical business questions: what actually happened in a conversation, and what commitments or signals now require action. The platform automatically surfaces follow-ups, obligations, sentiment, and key moments that would otherwise be lost—routing that intelligence directly to the right people inside an organization. By doing so, Tresic effectively closes the gap between communications and systems of record such as CRMs. Every conversation becomes a source of structured actions, alerts, and insights without relying on manual data entry or post-call administration. This gives businesses a 360-degree view of customer interactions while accelerating revenue-generating workflows. Both executives emphasized that Tresic’s AI is not generic. Models are trained using partner and customer data, enabling vertical-specific insights that reflect how each business actually operates. This approach allows CSPs and MSPs to differentiate their offerings with intelligence tailored to their customers’ industries, rather than one-size-fits-all analytics. In closing, Nethercott and Galop underscored Tresic’s partner-first strategy. The company goes to market exclusively through CSPs, MSPs, and channel partners—organizations that already own the customer relationship. Tresic’s goal is to help those partners add a new intelligence layer on top of existing services, enabling them to double or even triple revenue without replacing their current platforms. More information about Tresic and its partner-driven AI communications platform is available at https://www.tresic.cloud/.

Recorded live at Cloud Connections in Delray Beach, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Mark Vange, Founder & CEO of Autom8ly, about how AI voice agents are reshaping complex, regulated, and high-value communication workflows. Vange explained that Autom8ly specializes in building AI solutions for partners and service providers that serve customers with nuanced and often highly regulated requirements. Rather than focusing on generic AI reception or basic appointment setting, Autom8ly targets verticals where complexity, compliance, and scale intersect—use cases where off-the-shelf AI voice agents fall short. One of the company’s primary areas of focus is the collections market. Autom8ly is deploying AI voice agents to handle high-volume, routine collections calls while allowing human agents to concentrate on more complex, high-stakes cases. Early observations suggest that consumers may respond less defensively to AI-initiated outreach than to human collectors, particularly for smaller or straightforward obligations such as missed payments, parking fines, or one-time healthcare balances. In these scenarios, the AI agent can confirm details, negotiate payment terms, and securely process payments, while automatically escalating more complex disputes to human staff. Vange emphasized that Autom8ly’s AI agents are designed with strict boundaries. They do not cross regulatory red lines, attempt legal persuasion, or handle cases involving attorneys, court orders, or disputed liability. Instead, they address the majority of routine interactions that consume time and resources but generate limited strategic value when handled by humans. From an operational standpoint, AI voice agents offer significant efficiency gains. Human collectors often achieve utilization rates as low as 25–30 percent due to unanswered calls, breaks, and administrative overhead. AI agents, by contrast, operate at near-100 percent utilization, reducing cost per dollar collected while accelerating time to revenue. Autom8ly has also engineered its platform to meet PCI and compliance requirements, ensuring sensitive payment data is never exposed to large language models or unsafe systems. Beyond collections, Vange highlighted broader opportunities for MSPs and channel partners. Autom8ly has delivered AI voice agents for underserved language communities, including healthcare environments where providers lack staff fluent in languages such as Haitian Creole. By combining language capability with cultural awareness and compliance controls, AI agents can expand access to essential services while reducing operational strain. For MSPs and service providers, Vange positioned AI voice agents as a “high-value voice” opportunity—particularly in industries such as healthcare, utilities, finance, and public services, where multilingual communication, compliance, and scale are critical. When interactions move beyond simple scripts and require deep customization, Autom8ly’s partner-led model is designed to fill that gap. More information about Autom8ly and its AI voice agent solutions is available at https://autom8ly.com/.

Recorded live at Cloud Connections in Delray Beach, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Jon Brinton, Chief Revenue Officer at Crexendo, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping voice communications—and why 2026 may mark a turning point for the industry. Brinton described what he sees as a “renaissance of voice.” After years in which enterprises attempted to push customer interactions toward chat, email, and other less personal channels, advances in AI are restoring the central role of voice conversations. Modern AI applications, he noted, are making voice interactions more natural, more efficient, and more valuable—reintroducing clarity and immediacy into customer communications strategies. That vision is reflected in Crexendo’s recent product launch: CAIRO, an AI-powered receptionist and operator introduced earlier this year. Integrated directly into the NetSapiens platform, CAIRO is designed to give organizations of all sizes access to a highly capable, natural-language AI voice interface. Unlike generic AI assistants trained on external datasets, CAIRO is driven by each organization’s own data, enabling fully customized interactions for businesses ranging from medical practices and school districts to local retailers. Brinton explained that CAIRO supports real-time, conversational voice interactions in multiple languages, including English and Spanish, with the flexibility to switch languages during a call. The AI can answer questions, route callers to departments, and assist with tasks such as scheduling—while always allowing seamless escalation to a human when needed. This blend of automation and human handoff reinforces voice as a core channel rather than a legacy one. From a channel perspective, Brinton emphasized that CAIRO represents a significant opportunity for Crexendo’s partners. The solution is available both within Crexendo’s VIP offering and to its global NetSapiens licensee community, which includes approximately 240 service providers serving more than seven million users worldwide. Partners can brand and bundle CAIRO as part of their own UCaaS offerings, creating new value-added revenue streams while enhancing customer experience. CAIRO is commercially available today and includes advanced features such as transcription and sentiment analysis, giving organizations deeper insight into customer interactions even after calls are completed. More information about Crexendo and its AI-powered communications solutions is available at https://www.crexendo.com/.

Don Witt of the Channel Daily News, a TR publication, interviews Kevin Nethercott, CEO of Tresic, to discuss the company’s focus on bringing intelligence to the mid-market through CSP partners. Kevin Nethercott Kevin explains Tresic’s mission to leverage AI for conversational intelligence, offering products like After Call and First Alert that provide automated transcription, to-do item tracking, and keyword alerts for businesses. Kevin highlights Tresic’s partnership with service providers like NetSapiens and their ability to quickly deploy solutions for mid-market companies. Kevin also shared his background in communications technology and expressed excitement about Tresic’s potential to transform business operations through AI.   Mid-Market AI Solutions for Frontline Workers Kevin explains Tresic’s focus on mid-market businesses, which represent 60% of US businesses and a larger percentage globally. He emphasizes that mid-market companies need easy-to-use AI solutions to help frontline workers improve customer interactions and competitiveness. Before: missed moments. After: action is already done. Promises, risks, and buying signals show up in conversations. Most of that intelligence disappears into notes and follow-up gaps. Tresic makes it usable – and immediate! For more information, go to: Tresic

Recorded live at Cloud Connections, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Sabeeh Hameed, Founder of Sabrhub and a newly announced member of the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA). The conversation focused on how service providers can offset declining voice revenues by accelerating business messaging adoption—while navigating the growing complexity of 10DLC registration. Hameed explained that Sabrhub was built to address a fundamental shift in the market. As industry reports continue to show declining voice revenues and tightening margins, messaging has emerged as a critical growth opportunity for CSPs and service providers—especially when messaging is enabled on existing voice numbers. However, the introduction of mandatory 10DLC registration has transformed what was once a simple service into a major operational bottleneck. Rather than viewing 10DLC as a barrier, Sabrhub treats it as an opportunity. Hameed noted that many service providers experience campaign rejection rates as high as 70–90 percent, often due to incomplete or improperly structured submissions. Each rejection adds weeks of delay, additional fees, and customer frustration. Sabrhub’s platform uses AI to pre-vet campaigns before submission, dramatically increasing approval confidence and reducing onboarding time. According to Hameed, Sabrhub has reduced the brand registration process from hours—or even weeks—down to approximately 15 minutes, with approvals often completed within 24 hours and a reported 99 percent success rate. The platform abstracts away the complexity of use cases, opt-in requirements, privacy policies, and legal disclosures, presenting the process in a customer-friendly format that improves both speed and experience. While AI powers the platform, Hameed emphasized that Sabrhub is not “selling AI” as a product. Instead, AI operates behind the scenes to eliminate friction, guide brands through compliance requirements, and enable service providers to bring messaging services to market faster and more reliably. For MSPs, channel partners, and voice service providers attending Cloud Connections, Hameed positioned messaging compliance as a direct revenue opportunity. By simplifying 10DLC registration and accelerating time to service, partners can increase ARPU, reduce churn, and offer differentiated messaging solutions without taking on regulatory complexity themselves. More information about Sabrhub and its AI-driven 10DLC solutions is available at https://www.sabrhub.com/.

Recorded live at Cloud Connections, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, sat down with Jeff Pulver, CEO (Chief Evangelist Officer) of the vCon Foundation, to discuss why vCon represents a foundational shift at the intersection of artificial intelligence and communications. Pulver describes the conversations at Cloud Connections as a “ground zero” moment—one where a new industry is beginning to take shape. Drawing a parallel to the early days of VoIP and the first VON conferences in the 1990s, he argues that vCon is enabling a similar inflection point, this time driven by AI. At its core, vCon introduces a standardized way to capture and structure conversations—across voice, video, messaging, email, and more—so they can be securely stored, analyzed, and shared. According to Pulver, this standardization is transformative for AI. Large language models perform best when fed consistent, structured data, and vCon provides a common format that eliminates the fragmentation caused by proprietary conversation systems. By doing so, vCon enables interoperability and allows organizations to extract meaningful intelligence from conversations regardless of platform or application. Pulver outlines three pillars defining the emerging AI communications industry: high-definition voice, memory, and trust. High-quality audio improves transcription accuracy for AI analysis. Memory comes from virtualized conversations that preserve context and history. Trust is established through built-in compliance features, including consent tracking, purpose limitation, and the ability to revoke or manage permission—capabilities that are increasingly critical as AI regulations evolve globally. Reflecting on past regulatory battles during the rise of internet telephony, Pulver notes that compliance pressures are inevitable during periods of disruption. He believes vCon offers a proactive solution by embedding compliance directly into the communications infrastructure, allowing organizations to demonstrate consent and governance rather than retrofitting controls after the fact. Pulver also highlights the commercial implications. With an open standard now taking shape through the IETF process, he expects 2026 to mark the emergence of a full ecosystem of products, services, and revenue opportunities built on vCon. Service providers, vendors, and entrepreneurs who engage early, he says, will be well positioned to define new offerings that were previously impractical or impossible. To learn more about vCon and the work of the foundation, visit https://www.pulver.com/vconfoundation.

Recorded live at Cloud Connections, the Cloud Communications Alliance event in Delray Beach, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Bill Placke, Co-Founder & President, Americas at SecurePII, about one of the most pressing challenges facing AI-driven communications today: how to scale AI while complying with global data privacy regulations—and how that challenge can become a competitive advantage. Placke explains that SecurePII was formed to address a growing structural problem in AI adoption. While organizations are eager to deploy AI and train large language models, regulatory uncertainty around personally identifiable information (PII) has stalled progress. Citing industry research showing that more than 60 percent of AI initiatives have been paused due to data privacy concerns, Placke argues that governance policies alone are not enough. Instead, SecurePII takes an architectural approach. At the core of SecurePII’s solution is data minimization at the point of ingestion. The company’s technology prevents sensitive information—such as credit card numbers, names, addresses, or social security numbers—from ever entering enterprise systems. SecurePII’s existing PCI-focused offering already removes cardholder data from call flows, keeping organizations out of PCI scope entirely. The same approach is now being extended to broader categories of PII, enabling AI systems to operate and train on clean data streams that are free from regulated information. Placke emphasizes that this upstream architectural design fundamentally changes the compliance equation. Regulators and plaintiff attorneys, he notes, care about outcomes—not intent. If sensitive data never enters the system, compliance scope, audit costs, breach exposure, and regulatory risk are dramatically reduced. “Downstream controls don’t scale with AI—architecture does,” Placke says, positioning data minimization as a foundation for both trust and growth. The discussion also highlights the role of consent and customer trust in an AI-enabled world. Rather than asking customers to consent to broad data use, SecurePII enables enterprises to clearly state that sensitive information is neither seen nor stored, while still allowing AI to learn from outcomes and sentiment. This approach removes what Placke calls the “creepy factor” associated with AI and personal data, while aligning with emerging frameworks such as the EU AI Act and long-standing NIST guidance. For MSPs, UCaaS providers, and channel partners, Placke frames compliance not as a cost center but as a revenue opportunity. By embedding privacy-preserving architectures into voice, AI, and communications solutions, service providers can differentiate themselves as trusted advisors—helping customers deploy AI safely, reduce regulatory exposure, and accelerate adoption. To learn more about SecurePII and its privacy-first AI architecture, visit https://www.securepii.cloud/.

In a recent sit-down with Senior Editor Moshe Beauford for the Technology Reseller News podcast, Brandon Thomas, RingCentral vice president of channels, outlined what he sees as a massive opportunity for partners to evolve from resellers into strategic trusted advisors. According to RingCentral’s forthcoming 2026 Agentic AI Trends Report, 97% of organizations have adopted AI, yet many are stalled by integration complexity. Thomas noted this creates a high-value opening for partners to deploy RingCentral’s AI Conversation Expert (ACE) as the connective tissue to bridge organizational silos. RingCentral’s report also found that by unblocking the 80% of business intelligence currently trapped in voice and video, partners can help clients realize a 61% increase in productivity and a 49% improvement in customer experience. Thomas emphasized that the real value lies in moving beyond basic automation toward full workflow orchestration. In a market projected to reach $305 billion by 2031, Thomas further maintains that partners should leverage AI that maintains human oversight for high-stakes decisions while automating the manual data entry that plagues traditional CRMs. This shift enables partners to offer richer consulting services, using AI to predict elements like churn and employee turnover. RingCentral’s report will go live at the end of February. Visit www.ringcentral.com

Recorded live at the Cloud Connections event in Delray Beach, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Darin Gull of C3 Complete about the growing importance of compliance, cyber resilience, and partner-centric security services in today’s cloud and UCaaS ecosystem. Gull describes C3 Complete as an “anything IT” company with a clear mission: to complete a partner’s portfolio without ever competing with it. Working exclusively through channel partners, C3 Complete focuses on filling gaps—particularly in security and compliance—while preserving partner ownership of the customer relationship. “We’re here to complete, but never compete,” Gull explains, emphasizing the company’s commitment to protecting partner equity. A central theme of the conversation is compliance, which Gull frames less as a punitive obligation and more as an education and awareness challenge. C3 Complete leads with what it calls cyber resilience—helping organizations understand what they are required to do, why it matters, and how to consistently track and maintain compliance over time. “Most compliance failures aren’t bad actors trying to break rules,” Gull notes. “It’s usually a lack of awareness.” C3 Complete’s approach begins with deep listening and discovery. By understanding a client’s operational realities and pain points, the company’s subject-matter experts—guided by its security leadership—identify shortfalls, improve efficiency, and develop clear, actionable roadmaps to move customers from their current state to their desired level of compliance and security maturity. Gull also reflects on the relevance of the Cloud Communications Alliance community, noting that many of the challenges facing today’s UCaaS and cloud providers—particularly around security, governance, and AI—mirror those seen in earlier phases of the industry, albeit at greater scale and complexity. As AI adoption accelerates, he sees compliance and governance as unresolved but critical questions that service providers must address proactively. Looking ahead to 2026, C3 Complete plans to expand its partner ecosystem, deepen its security offerings, and continue delivering what Gull calls “white-glove service without the insane price.” For MSPs and service providers lacking a full security stack, C3 Complete positions itself as a trusted extension of their business—stepping in when needed, then stepping back to ensure partners retain the customer relationship. More information about C3 Complete is available at https://c3-complete.com/.