Raúl Castañón-Martínez is a senior research analyst at 451 Research from S&P Global Energy Horizons. He contributes to the Customer Experience & Commerce channel, focusing on business communications and the digitization of the customer experience. Raúl’s areas of concentration include CCaaS, CPaaS and network APIs, trusted communications, conversational AI, speech technologies, chatbots and intelligent assistants. Raúl arrived at S&P Global 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. He has contributed as a judge for the GSMA MWC GLOMO Awards for the past ten years. 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 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.
The vendor has launched Intelligent Communications Orchestration Network Cloud Service to consolidate voice and collaboration environments across disparate systems. For CIOs, the service delivers a single orchestration layer for dial plans, routing, security and analytics, simplifying global deployments and unlocking AI-enabled CX initiatives.
The provider is betting that enterprises will now buy AI based on verifiable safety, not just capability. Its new Continuous Red Teaming offers a self-hardening architecture that automatically finds and fixes weaknesses, providing the auditable security metrics that static approaches lack.
The company's Analyst Summit revealed that it is deliberately moving up the CPaaS value stack — from message delivery to agentic customer experience — while simultaneously protecting its infrastructure moat through direct telco connectivity and network API expansion.
Our 2026 Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Connected Customer, Disruptive Experiences survey assesses consumer sentiment toward emerging technology trends such as the deployment of agentic AI and its role in the broader customer experience, as well as consumer interactions with big tech (e.g., Meta, Google, Amazon), digital payments and financial technologies, and the intersection of online and brick-and-mortar shopping.
recently held its annual Engage customer conference — its first since its Thoma Bravo-backed combination with Calabrio — in Las Vegas, unveiling capabilities that accelerate its transformation from a workforce optimization vendor to a platform for orchestrating hybrid workforces.
451 Research's Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Connected Customer, Consumer Population Representative Survey conducts a population representative survey of US consumers about technology adoption, usage and buying intentions to understand how various tech trends are materializing in the mass market.
Our VoCUL product line combines two survey methodologies that together deliver a holistic view of the connected user. The combination of 451 Research's population representative surveys and early indicator surveys provides a comprehensive package of quantitative and qualitative analysis.
451 Research's quarterly US consumer population representative survey asks consumers about connectivity-related devices, services, digital media and applications, including current ownership and use, attitudes and purchase plans. All respondents are asked a set of questions on core demographics and device ownership. Each respondent is also randomly assigned to one of four sections that dives deeper into current ownership, usage trends and future buying plans for specific topic areas.
US consumers remain cautious on stablecoins, agentic AI (Spotlight)
Our 2026 Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Connected Customer, Disruptive Experiences survey assesses consumer sentiment toward emerging technology trends such as the deployment of agentic AI and its role in the broader customer experience, as well as consumer interactions with big tech (e.g., Meta, Google, Amazon), digital payments and financial technologies, and the intersection of online and brick-and-mortar shopping.
Our 2026 Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Connected Customer, Disruptive Experiences survey assesses consumer sentiment toward emerging technology trends such as the deployment of agentic AI and its role in the broader customer experience, as well as consumer interactions with big tech (e.g., Meta, Google, Amazon), digital payments and financial technologies, and the intersection of online and brick-and-mortar shopping.
Crosstabs (Excel tables | Download link in sidebar to the right) – Crosstabs of complete worldwide and regional survey results datasets, including key metrics and segmentation.
Charts and Figures (PowerPoint charts | Navigate charts in sidebar to the left | Download link in sidebar to the right) – PowerPoint slide deck of complete top-line survey results in charts and figures.
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