On Thursday, April 12th, we were delighted to welcome attendees from all over the world to Dublin for our annual Customer Forum. Operators traveled from Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Britain and the US to spend a day together, share thoughts on the future of mobile messaging and to learn how Openmind can support them in their messaging strategies.
The theme of this years’ conference was The Impact of Digital Transformation on Telecoms Operators. Digital Transformation is an umbrella term for a host of technical, process and business model changes that are sweeping the industry. Change brings opportunities as well as disruption. The presentations at the conference were geared to showing how Openmind provides products and services that allow operators to deal with all the disruptions created by Digital Transformation, while at the same time exploiting the opportunities it is generating. Use cases for mobile messaging as an Application-to-Person (or perhaps we should be calling it Enterprise-to-Consumer ) channel are growing at rapid rate. With new products and services from Openmind, Operators can now take their high-value messaging services direct to large Enterprise and Governmental customers. SMS as a Person-to-Person messaging channel may be less popular than before, but the market for other forms of mobile messaging as an Enterprise-to-Consumer channel is an exciting growth area for operators.
We were also proud to have special guests from the GSMA and Google presenting at the conference. The GSMA provided an update to the User Group on the accelerated global adoption of RCS, primarily driven now by the need for a richer A2P experience. Finally, Google explained the opportunity that exists for Operators in providing mobile numbers that can be used by international businesses as messaging and voice contact points.
The conference wasn’t all work however – at the conclusion of the formal agenda the User Group moved to a new location, the famous Guinness Brewery in Dublin for food and refreshments. After a guided tour explaining how the beer is made, our guests had an opportunity to sample one of Ireland’s favourite products and to socialize together and make new friends.
In 2019 we will have a special event to mark the 10th running of our User Group. The User Group plays a key role for Openmind in ensuring we understand the concerns of our customers and providing an opportunity for our visitors to share experiences and make important business contacts. Planning has already started for the 2019 event, and we look forward to welcoming all of our customers and friends to join us again for what is always an informative and enjoyable occasion!
