Channel Smart | Ecosystem Acceleration
Channel Smart | Ecosystem Acceleration
AI in the Fast Lane: Precision, Speed, and Smart Moves in the Cloud Channel
In this power-packed episode, we connect with Clark Peterson—one of the most connected minds in cloud communications and Chairman of the Cloud Communication Alliance—to uncover how forward-looking vendors are putting channel-first thinking behind their AI strategies. From smarter partner targeting to AI-optimized go-to-market plays, this conversation delivers insights that help partners, resellers, and tech companies future-proof their positioning in an increasingly intelligent ecosystem.
Clark and Janet unpack how members of the Cloud Communications Alliance are integrating AI beyond the hype—to improve customer experiences, enable faster support, optimize sales, and even redefine distribution.
📅 Upcoming Must-Attend
Cloud Connections 2025
📍 St. Petersburg, FL | April 14–16, 2025
The most strategic event in the cloud communications space—zero pay-to-play, 100% C-level candor, and insights you won’t hear anywhere else.
Register at https://www.cloudcommunications.com/connections
We know you will find this episode enlightening and informative. To delve deeper into the world of channel strategy and gain more valuable insights, we invite you to visit our website.
For additional information, feedback, questions, or comments, don't hesitate to reach out to us at info@jsgnow.com. Tune in to Channel Smart and stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of business partnerships.
Janet Schijns (00:07.202)
Hey everybody, great to see you again. Janet Schijns CEO of JSG, back with another episode of Channel Smart. In fact, it's...
season five for us here. And today we're going to talk about AI in the fast lane and really specifically about precision and speed for cloud channels. And so there is no one better than today's guest to talk to us about that. We are super honored to have Clark Peterson, who's chairman of the Cloud Communications Alliance which by the way is the best collective of the most forward looking companies in cloud voice, UCAS, CCAS and adjacent technologies. So Clark, would you like to introduce
introduce yourself a little more to the audience today.
Clark Peterson (00:48.142)
Thanks, Janet. It's great to be here. And I'll say Janet's obviously at all our CCA events, probably our most popular speaker. So if you go to a CCA event, you have to go into Janet's topics or seminars or round tables, whatever she may be doing earlier, you won't get in. So it's a great.
Janet Schijns (01:07.436)
Well, love that. you have the best event. tell you this every time, best event in the space. tell partners, suppliers, providers, ISPs, MSPs, ISVs, should be a member of the Cloud Communications Alliance and attend the events. they are the best, for me, the best events of the year, the most intelligent discussions I have or had there.
Um, so today, as I mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit with Clark about how AI is being integrated by CCA member companies, not just in their tech stack, because we hear a lot about that and we do want to hear about some of them. But we also want to think about how they go to market, how they serve customers, how they compete and spoiler alert. I'm also going to give you a little sneak peek into what we're doing at cloud connections, 2025, where I'll be keynoting on how to dominate the market through high speed growth levers. That's being held.
Clark Peterson (01:28.238)
Thanks.
Janet Schijns (01:57.066)
in St. Petersburg and it starts on April 14th. So if you haven't signed up yet, feel free to do so as you're listening. We'll forgive you for minimizing the screen and signing up right now. So, okay, let's get into it. I want to talk for a minute about AI's role in the cloud communication ecosystem. So Clark, from your conversations across the CCA membership, and I know you have some great ones, how would you describe the real state of AI adoption
among the Cloud Palm vendors today.
Clark Peterson (02:30.21)
Yeah, that was a great question. And it's top of mind for anyone who's in the communication space. think you mentioned Cloud Connections 25 coming up in April there. One of the things we'll do at Cloud Connections is myself and Matt Town with Cavell will release the 2025 survey of all the service providers worldwide. And it gives you insight, right? I looked at it, I know the stats, we haven't released it yet, but I'll just tell you 65%.
of the CCA members are saying that they currently have AI integrated into their products. The big question, and I think where it varies a lot is what's that integration mean, right? I mean, how much is integrated? What products, features do you have? And I think you'll see when you look at those that participate in the CCA members, it goes all the way from, you know, Microsoft to invest $10 billion in chat GPT OpenAI, right? And have AI agents and some very sophisticated.
AI tools, have Zoom, who's member of the CCA with their AI companion, and AI agent that's very sophisticated. And then I think it goes down to, it goes down the stack where you then have it being used for contact center, you know, chat bots, you have it being used for their marketing, you have it being used, you know, just for basic summaries when someone calls into customer care and they hear
you know, here's a summary of all the things that they talked about before when they call into customer care. So it's gonna, you're gonna see it vary quite a bit, even though all might say they have integration with AI, what that means is completely different for between the different.
Janet Schijns (04:09.642)
I love that. And you know, we're seeing it.
across the stack, like you said, whether it's marketing and it's doing content development or whether you're talking to even some of the smaller VoIP providers are now offering AI chat and AI bots and AI call center answering. So on the weekends, for example, they can route calls and figure out who, they actually need to call attack. So it's pretty exciting. I think based on that, I think we're both seeing it more in product development, but I think too, I'm starting
see it in customer experience because of all those chat bots. Do you agree?
Clark Peterson (04:48.43)
Yeah, mean, chat bots are getting extremely smart, right? I mean, I think they're going to evolve from something that was very annoying to get at first. Like, OK, I just want to talk to a live person. Why is this thing, you know, trying to play smart with me? And they were not very smart, right? And it was very obvious. So that's going to change a lot. Right. When you think about how an A.I. might might become kind of an avatar to be your customer care person, you think about
an agent, virtual agent that knows everything about everything you've ever called in for. You feed it all of the usage. Here's all of the things that this person has done to interact with the company from what it might be communications messaging, you know, outside of just calling the customer care, all your other usage and all your other data and your billing. mean, everything, all that put together and all being able to be analyzed and turned into something meaningful by an AI agent.
It's just not humanly possible for someone, a single real person to do that. It'll become very sophisticated. I think it'll get to the point, not right away, but it'll get to the point that you'll want to rather interact with an AI agent or a chat bot, so to speak, than a person. Just like when I make an airline reservation or I buy something on Amazon, I can do it at a stoplight on my app. I don't really want to call in to...
Janet Schijns (06:10.604)
Yeah.
Clark Peterson (06:15.586)
I don't call into Amazon to order something. I don't call into Southwest Airlines to make a reservation. It's so fast to do it virtually with through the app.
Janet Schijns (06:22.316)
I know, right? We've gotten spoiled and I think it's going to get even better. have to say, you know, having had some experiences with some of the products that are coming out, some of them are pretty amazing, right? Even if you look at some of the collaboration platforms when you're on a call, whether it's, know, Zoom or WebEx or Teams, and you have to step away, they now all have an AI transcription bot that can tell you what happened while you were gone, right? What are the key points while you were gone? And that's, you know, a game
changer, right, for those of us who do have to let the plumber in occasionally or do something else. So I think that really segues us well into the product innovation topic. But I did want to ask you one question before I kind of left my vendor reality check. Do you think there's anything different about how the telecom and comms vendors are approaching AI versus kind of the broader SaaS or application space?
Clark Peterson (07:19.15)
Yeah, it's a great question. really, I'll stick my neck out here to say really, I think the communication space will be one of, if not the most prolific user and developer of AI. Because you think about AI, the power of AI is the data that goes into the, call it the machine to manipulate that data. Communication providers have more data than almost anyone on their customers, right? When you think about
When you think as an example Microsoft's AI agent when you think about having the ability to say I want my agent to Monitor my SMS my messaging my voice calls my meetings that I have my collaboration meetings my video meetings I want them to look at my emails all of this communication I can tell my agent. I want you to take that
look at it, assimilate it, and then create something meaningful. So next time I talk to Janet Shines, I want to know what I should do. And I might say, well, you messaged with Janet, and she had this happen in her personal life that you should be aware of before you start your meeting. In the last meeting, here were the action items. all this communication now, being able to be analyzed and have a meaningful summary and guidance and direction of how I should communicate next.
No other industry is going to have that level of information on its customer to know every communication that's ever happened with them, and turn it into something really important.
Janet Schijns (08:43.768)
I agree.
Janet Schijns (08:49.088)
I agree, and I think you're gonna see Microsoft's agents.
coupled with the comms providers, because I think Microsoft Teams is kind of the de facto standard. I don't believe necessarily that people are gonna move away from their phone systems and use just Microsoft. I think folks that have contact centers, et cetera, that's not gonna happen. But the two working together is really the, to me, the interesting intersection. And I agree with you. I don't think you get a bigger productivity gain, particularly for humans and human jobs.
And then you get here because they have so much data on what's happening in the network, what's happening in the call, what's happening in just all the data that's transmitted. I think it's going to be meaningful. So let's talk a little bit more about that product level. So where do you think AI is showing up most effectively? Is it in predictive routing? Is it voice intelligence? I saw a really interesting fraud detection case the other day. What do you think about that?
Clark Peterson (09:52.054)
I think, well, as we've talked about all the great things that can happen with AI, I think as you think about what are the things that would hold it back and what are the things that are going to make it, you know, not just take over the world right away. A lot of it is the worry of security, right? I mean, do I really want to give all my information to some company and have them manipulate it and do something with it? what are the, are they secure? Can they be hacked?
Janet Schijns (10:17.048)
Great.
Clark Peterson (10:21.014)
So you have industries like the legal industry. I've talked to lot of lawyers who really in the healthcare, I think are the two big ones where they're like, we want to harness AI. want to use it. They want to say they're doing this or that with AI like everybody's doing in their marketing, right? But they they're very worried about how to do that in a secure way. So I think it will actually create a whole other new opportunity for communication companies to be consultants and to be
to help people from a professional services standpoint with the security piece of it.
Janet Schijns (10:57.302)
I love that. And you know, it's interesting because...
I was going to ask you about if vendors were building their own features or partnering, but having been at the CCA dinner and having talked in Vegas, having talked to a whole bunch of partners, I would say it's everything, right? Folks are building their own features. They're partnering for features. They're embedding third party tech. It's really amazing to see this community kind of come together on AI's potential. So I was just wondering though, are you seeing any standout use cases that might signal where your members or the industry
is headed.
Clark Peterson (11:32.332)
I think there'll be a kind of a short term versus long term. And I think right now, yeah, you're seeing them all, when they say 65 % of integrated, they're really talking about, have a summary of ability, right? We have, we're using AI to summarize all the, last customer care call-ins, right? We're using AI to make chat bots more intelligent when they do call in. I mean, it's kind of at that base level now we're using AI for our marketing so that
We're creating marketing blogs using AI. We're creating messaging using AI. That's kind of the lowest hanging fruit that I think you see everyone doing now. I think getting into, whoops.
Janet Schijns (12:07.33)
Yes.
Janet Schijns (12:12.958)
Everyone. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you're talking about that because I think that will go to market with AI. no, you're fine.
Clark Peterson (12:22.146)
Just so you, we can maybe edit this out, but I'm seeing delays and like buffering. Are you seeing me okay? Or is it, or is that, am I breaking up?
Clark Peterson (12:55.156)
Okay, yeah, it says 41 % uploading and some buffering going on there, but as long as that all works out.
Clark Peterson (13:06.016)
Okay, when you can edit, I talk over Janet at all, it's because she's frozen and I'm thinking she's done maybe.
Janet Schijns (13:15.091)
gotcha.
Janet Schijns (13:19.384)
All right, so then I'll start this topic then. So Clark, what a great point.
Clark Peterson (13:19.522)
Okay, great, thanks. Okay.
Janet Schijns (13:25.824)
What a great point because we have go to market. If I think about it with AI being kind of smarter, right? Not just louder. So it's not just about people using AI and doing more content, right? Just saturating things. That's where we were about two years ago, right? We were just, everybody was starting to use it and they were just, let's create more content. And it was garbage. The AI boss were not trained well yet. They hadn't become agents, you know, more human like now AI though, isn't just in the product. It's really.
coming in the pitch. Are you seeing vendors or how are you seeing vendors using that AI to refine how they're going to market or improving their sales motions? Is that coming up amongst the membership?
Clark Peterson (14:08.088)
There's a lot behind the scene happening on AI strategically, right? mean, so you like the big guys with Microsoft, Zoom, all those guys that have their own AI agents being built, but you have all these other providers. Think about the platforms that are out there. You think of Vonage where I was president of Vonage business, right? They have CPaaS platform. They have a C-Cast platform. They have a UCast platform. Think about the power when you start to integrate AI into all of those different platforms.
And now I have, as an example, I do a CPAS campaign, a messaging campaign out to a bunch of people through a messaging format, right? And I have intelligent messaging now with programmable voice abilities. I send these messages out in a campaign. I know who you are. I send you a message. You come back into my contact center.
I had intelligent headers coming back in telling me, this is from this campaign. Janet received it. She did this or that. That helps me know kind of what your, maybe your demeanor is as you come back in. I then merged with that all your AI information that I have from my Ccast platform of any interaction you've ever had before, right? I give you the ability to at any time reach out to a live person on the UCAS platform to an agent and be able to do it that way too. you have, you know,
Outward CPaaS, inward C-Cast, AI integrated through all of that with live UCast as an ability. So there's kind of really strategic use cases and products being built that these communication companies can integrate all that together.
Janet Schijns (15:44.32)
It's so cool. you know, we're seeing it.
with AI really helping to drive partner targeting. In the past, folks kind of used their gut about who was the best partner to go after or who was the best partner vertically, who they could go after. Now you've got these amazing AI driven platforms like Partner Optimizer that can actually scrub all the data and really come back with the partner that is actually both willing and able to sell support or service a specific product.
And so we're really seeing that now starting to drive really strong vertical go-to-market strategies, really strong partner targeting. We've come a long way from spreadsheets, right? And much of the AI in go-to-market is real now, right?
year one, which let's call that two years ago, it was really just rebranded marketing automation. It was just a little bit easier to find the data or a little bit easier to sort something. Now it's truly intelligent. And when I'm at Cloud Connections in a couple of weeks, I'm actually going to be talking about, as we've studied the market, what are the top AI go-to-market strategies and go-to-market tools that people are using? And we're seeing use cases where people are cutting their cost of go-to-market.
typically you never cut salespeople. That was kind of the gold standard, right? You never remove salespeople. Folks are halving, in half, their sales teams and doubling their sales with the use of some of these AI levers. So I think it's really, really incredible. So I want to change the lever again now, because we've talked about product, we've talked a little about go to market. I want to talk about where AI meets the customer.
Janet Schijns (17:31.188)
in service and support. Support's a huge cost center for most big companies. You talked about Southwest, Imagine what their contact centers must cost them for people to call in, for people to chat, for people to get help when their flight's delayed, et cetera. But they're also a loyalty driver, right? Done right. It's really truly a loyalty driver. I had a personal experience in Las Vegas where my flight, a JetBlue flight, was going to be canceled. They called me to tell
me as a frequent flyer and let me rebook ahead of it going out and that was all you could tell it had all been done right they had had algorithms and they were really looking using AI to enhance that customer service so how do you see your members using AI to enhance that customer service without completely kind of killing the human touch that drives that loyalty
Clark Peterson (18:25.454)
That's a great question and I think it will, that'll probably be where it evolves most quickly because I think it started on that low-hanging fruit of, you know, take the customer information. can control, if I'm a provider, right, I have all this information on you, Janet, that I can kind of decide how much I manipulate it, how much I use it. So.
that's going to get more and more sophisticated. And whether it just starts out like I think it is now is I'm a customer care agent and there's a screen pop that says all this information about you that's an AI summary. I think they're all probably there now that like to your example, I there's some things I know that will help me take care of you better. So then that evolves to the more sophisticated chat bot. That evolves to a more sophisticated outreach program, right?
That evolves to a more sophisticated digital marketplace to your point on distribution and cutting costs out of that. I mean, think about taking all that information and how targeted I'll be able to be to not only take care of you on the care side, but also to target you for upselling and make you aware of new features and services that you have. So it becomes, you know, really two sides going at the same time, this side of.
helping me reduce my cost by making me extremely smart from a customer care point of view, as well as then being able to monetize on the revenue side, how I go to market, how I market to you, how I target you, how I offer new products that I never offered before to you. And I think for the partners, there's a real opportunity there when I think about everybody wanting to harness AI, but everybody being nervous to harness AI.
The partners are in a great position really to, they have that relationship with the customer, right? And to be able to tell them, not only here's the products and services I recommend, but let me be your consultant. Let me offer some professional services to help guide you down this road so you don't compromise security and don't set yourself up for some big issues there by going into AI with a format and a platform and features that could be, put your own data at risk, right?
Janet Schijns (20:34.448)
I love that. you know, it's interesting when I look at what some of the carriers are doing for self-service or ticket triage or others, the security conversation, so glad you brought that up, is really coming to the forefront because, you know, as an example, and this was used by a partner, if a police station's network is out,
an AI can detect that. You want to be careful with who can get access to the information that the police department's network is down because a bad acting criminal can use that because they won't have the ability to get the help that they need or get the information that they need at the moment that the person perhaps is a criminal. You could, as a criminal, walk into that police station and because their system is down, they wouldn't be able to see that you were wanted. So there's a whole lot of nefarious acts
that folks are really digging in on with AI. And I think that's where we're going to see shifts in how folks are using AI. So I'm so glad you brought that up because I think that shift is being driven by security. So what I think I hear you saying is you think as a customer success tool, the vendors are really leaning in on AI, right?
Clark Peterson (21:46.766)
Yeah, it's a great tool and I think they'll use it to so many ways that you don't even realize now. mean, most people haven't heard of like a kind of a newer movement called Vcons, right? Virtual conversations, but Vcons are they're looking to create kind of a protocol or a standard to be able for the communication companies to be able to gather your personal data and then use it in a way that you feel comfortable from a security standpoint.
but I have a lot of data I can really use for you. almost becomes, VCon almost becomes like the source data for AI agents and other AI functionality. But VCon is just the way a communication company is able to use your data and how much of it they're able to use and the of the protocol that they use it in.
Janet Schijns (22:32.512)
I love that. See, they are thinking about it. And as a user of contact centers, occasionally I can say, I have noticed, you know, in the old days you used to call and they would ask you to input your account number. And then you would get on in the first question that agent would ask you is what your account number was, which was always super frustrating. You're like, wait, why'd you have me do that? And the truth was they had to do it to kill time, right? They had done their studies and people were not as annoyed if they waited less than a minute.
Clark Peterson (22:45.102)
Thank
Clark Peterson (22:56.395)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janet Schijns (23:02.446)
they had you and put a whole bunch of stuff that didn't count in your mind as part of your minute. But it was a bad customer experience. So I've noticed of late they could track and do a whole lot of good stuff. So I love that the whole Vcons perspective certainly getting better. All right. We're going to shift our focus now as we're starting to wrap up our time together and we're going to really look ahead at Cloud Connections 2025. Again, I've said it's my favorite event of the year, truly, because so many events have become
Clark Peterson (23:07.982)
Yeah.
Janet Schijns (23:32.298)
on pay to play where folks are going and you're just getting product pitch after product pitch after product pitch and they're not meaningful conversations and there's not an opportunity to break out and have round tables and all those flaws and the other events, cloud connections never has. They have significant round tables, significant breakouts, real gooey topics about what's going on and that's why people ask me why it's my favorite, that's why it's my favorite. And so towards that, you're creating some big conversations for this year.
event, what are you most excited for?
Clark Peterson (24:06.584)
Yeah, thanks, John. You're a great commercial for Cloud Communications Alliance and Cloud Connections. We'll just capture that and replay it on our own side, but thank you. But it is, know, the nice thing about the Cloud Communications Alliance is we're nonprofit that all remembers pay fees to be members of the Cloud Communications Alliance. And then our job is to take that money and spend it in a meaningful way for our members to really get great value. So we lose money on our shows. Every show we do...
costs us more to put on by a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars more than the members pay or any sponsors pay. So we don't do pay to play. We don't, you know, we plan to lose money when we go into these things. And then we look at it as just taking our members fees and giving them a value back that we hope is 2X what they put into it. Right. And so you'll see great speakers there. Right. We have Kevin Harrington, one of the original Shark Tank entrepreneurs there who really changed the distribution.
Model with all all he would did with directed consumer distribution. He'll be talking about that and kind of alternative Distribution which between you janet and kevin is really you have two of the best people we could ever find on the planet to be talking about distribution So if you want, know distribution strategic insight, you know, you're gonna see it i'll say cloud connections 2025 i'll say cc25 is kind what we say
to call it shortly. But it's also then you have the top experts like Mike Tesler who started Broadsoft, right? He'll be speaking on AI. You have the top experts, analysts in the space, know, with you have Elka Popova and Matt Townen and John Arnold, you know, all these and I'm missing one Robin, you know, who's awesome with MetraG, right? So you have all these top analysts.
who will also be speaking and I'm the moderator for that so I know my questions and I know two or three are really good ones on AI and where it's going and how you monetize it because I think that's the missing question now is like how do I save money or make money on this I know it's cool but specific use cases of how you make or save money with the AI so it's you know cloud connections between you, Kevin Harrington, Tesla, the analysts and I'm sure it'll be
Clark Peterson (26:29.442)
woven into a lot of this speakers. It's going to be a big part of our CC25 here in April.
Janet Schijns (26:35.16)
Cannot wait, I'll be in every session. I always learn so much and I always love seeing Tesla speak. And of course, I'm gonna be there as Clark just mentioned, sharing strategies on high-speed growth levers. I've really honed down through our research team at JSG, kind of the top five growth levers that we need for the next two-ish years. And I'm gonna really be talking about what they are and naming names and naming strategies. So not a...
Clark Peterson (26:37.73)
Yeah.
Janet Schijns (27:01.534)
so high level that you walk away going, was interesting, but I don't know what to do. But actually, hey, that was interesting. And I've got some ideas on what to do. Why do you think that topic around growth levers is resonating so much with the CCA membership? Now, I think more than ever.
Clark Peterson (27:05.75)
Yeah.
Clark Peterson (27:18.604)
Yeah, and it's going to get even more, right? I mean, as you see today, you know, happens to be when all the terror fears are kind of happening out there, right? And you have the stock market having the correction and you have a lot of people worried, especially outside of the USA, you know, as we were going to do a meeting with the Cloud Communications Alliance in June in Brussels.
And those guys want to hear about the geopolitical effects of what should we be thinking about how we interact with each other on a global basis and what's this tariff stuff mean. So finding those most efficient routes to market, finding out how you kind of strategically navigate and target kind of the path that you could monetize the best is going to be really, really critical because it's just you just can't do that shotgun approach anymore and say, well, let's do some.
pay-per-click and social media and let's do some SEO work and let's do some email marketing and see who comes in the door from it, right? I mean, that won't work anymore, right? And digital market, digital marketplaces are huge as you think about distribution. A lot of people are just focused on driving them now to their own digital marketplace and fulfilling them through their own self-provisioning portals. And so that's all changing and partners really need to understand.
Janet Schijns (28:19.852)
No, yeah, it won't.
Clark Peterson (28:37.262)
The providers, I think the providers have catered a lot to partners in the past saying, just sell my stuff, sell my stuff. But you really have to think strategically together now, because there's a lot going on on the service provider side. We know there's a lot going on the partner side. And I think the ones who combine and really think strategically, find a path together will be successful. But if you don't do that, you won't be successful. You'll be left behind.
Janet Schijns (29:02.68)
amazing. I think the attendees are just going to walk away with unbelievable content, unbelievable insights from all the participants. But is there one thing that you think that attendees walk away from CC25 with that they don't get anywhere else?
Clark Peterson (29:20.44)
For sure that, I mean, the interesting part about cloud communications lines, our meetings are for kind of management level folks, right? It's mostly C level people. So you don't have too many venues to meet other C level, you know, worldwide management level people and kind of talk shop, right? And so I think from a strategic standpoint, they network and they learn.
from each other. That's why we do all these round tables. You're not going to be talked to at CC25. Even the speakers are going to talk for like 30 minutes, and then we're have 15 minutes of Q &A. The round tables, you pick your specific topic. You're sitting around a round table with maybe just 15 people with those things diving deep on a particular topic. We have a throw mic we throw in the audience for when we do have keynotes, that even the keynotes are going to have throw mic questions from the audience.
extremely interactive from your peers that are all managing very big companies worldwide that you can kind of hear their answers, hear their questions, and a lot of best practice sharing that you won't find anywhere else.
Janet Schijns (30:30.68)
Yeah, I love the point about the level of the folks that are at the event. You really get to real conversations that are not isolated to just one area of the business because they tend to have a broader aperture. I've always enjoyed the round tables so much.
So as we wrap up, kind of final thoughts. So I want to get you to complete a sentence, one bold prediction. So by the end of 2025, AI will most dramatically transform what for cloud communication vendors.
Clark Peterson (31:03.288)
You know, I think it'll transform the interaction between customers and the providers and customers and their partners on the distribution side. That will be the first layer as far as just you will have a better experience as you communicate to your providers. They will more intimately know who you are, what you want, be able to kind of predict a lot of those needs before you even reach out. And I think that will be that first layer. I think though,
2026 is when you'll really see the power of AI. I think this year you will see what it can do from a customer interaction standpoint. 2026, you're going to see it on steroids.
Janet Schijns (31:43.02)
That's exciting stuff. So where can folks learn more about CCA and register for Cloud Connections 25?
Clark Peterson (31:51.596)
No, that's great. Yeah, if they just go to cloudcommunications.com, that's our domain, you'll see there everything about Cloud Communications Alliance, but you'll also see upcoming events on that homepage. And you'll be able to click on Cloud Connections 2025 and register, see all about, you know, all the speakers, the whole full agenda. Everything is there on cloudcommunications.com.
Janet Schijns (32:14.624)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much as always. We always have the best conversations. They have a hard time splitting us up when we're together. just probably the same way here. I just wanted to thank you. And I also want to thank CCA for continuing to be a catalyst in the cloud communication space. It is such a backbone in the industry. It truly, when you think about the cloud comm space, it is the lifeblood of most companies. It is how...
they are communicating with their customers in a digital age and to see the work that CCA does both on a regulatory level, on a policy level, but also on a go-to-market product level is just refreshing for all of us in the industry. So thank you for not only doing the podcast, but for being the person who's championing that cause out in the industry. It's well worth the effort. And as a member, we truly appreciate everything you're doing.
Clark Peterson (33:05.806)
Yeah. No, thanks, Janet. And thank you for all you do for the CCA. mean, your participation in the CCA is just unlike anything else. And when we think about just what happened at channel partners where all these partners are there and meeting their service providers, but we filled a huge room at Buddy V's just to hear Janet shine there and hear about kind of where things are going versus maybe out there with, you know, agents and service providers schmoozing each other. Instead, they chose, I think, wisely.
to kind of hear the strategic insight that you provided there at Channel Partners and you do it all of our CCA events. So thanks so much for all your contributions that make us better.
Janet Schijns (33:40.888)
was a great event. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It was a standout event. was a great conversation. So with that, I want to thank everybody for listening and staying tuned. Remember, you can go to cloudcommunications.com, learn more about the cloud communications group and all that Clark and Joe Marin and his team are doing to help in the industry. And half of the entire JSG team, thanks for joining us for another Channel of Smarts podcast. Have a great rest of your day.