Raúl Castañón is a senior research analyst in the 451 Research technology research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence. He contributes to both the Customer Experience & Commerce and Workforce Productivity & Collaboration channels, focusing on business communications and collaboration and the digitization of the employee and customer experiences. Raúl’s areas of concentration include communications platform as a service, contact center as a service, unified communications, collaboration and enterprise messaging, conversational AI, speech technologies, chatbots and intelligent assistants. Raúl arrived at S&P Global Market Intelligence through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research. Prior to 451 Research, he was a product manager at EMOSpeech, a startup focused on speech emotion recognition technology. At Comverse Network Systems, he gained significant experience in product marketing working with tier 1 mobile operators to define strategy, pricing and business models for voice and data products. Raúl is widely quoted in the top-tier press, including publications such as Business Insider, CIO, Computerworld, Fortune, The Information and Wired. Raúl holds a holds a bachelor’s degree from ITESO University in Guadalajara, México; a certificate in telecommunications from ITESM Mexico City; and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
While activity slowed after 2021, customer experience remains an active sector for M&A, with 350 deals over the past five years, according to 451 Research's M&A Knowledgebase. In this report, we examine how the emergence of generative AI as the next phase for CX could accelerate consolidation in this space next year.
Businesses are poised to navigate a shifting landscape transformed by generative AI, unified commerce and agentic AI. These technologies promise to reshape customer engagement and operational efficiency, demanding strategic agility and robust data strategies. Organizations that effectively integrate these advancements will be well-positioned to deliver personalized, seamless experiences, maintaining a competitive edge in an increasingly complex digital ecosystem.
Integrating the target's near-real-time conversation insights should support Calabrio's efforts to enhance its AI offerings as well as maintain its position as a leading player in the customer experience space, which is being increasingly disrupted by the emergence of generative AI.
The company recently hosted an analyst and industry event its D-15 innovation center in Silicon Valley. In addition to providing an update on Ericsson's network API strategy, the event highlighted the relevance that a partner ecosystem has in supporting network operators' successful deployment of network APIs.
Most network operators responding to our 2024 global telco survey have incorporated open APIs to their network infrastructure road maps. While rollout dates and priorities vary by region, there is a consensus that anti-fraud APIs are a top priority across all regions.
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