Why, after a noisy year, the bigger picture finally comes into focus

Writing predictions for the year ahead is always a slightly risky exercise. It’s easy to sound confident in January — and much easier for everyone else to point out, twelve months later, where you were right and where you completely missed the mark.

Still, I find the exercise useful. Not as a crystal ball, but as a way to slow down, step back, and make sense of what’s actually happening beneath the noise.

The holiday break is often the only moment in the year when there’s enough distance to think properly. After a busy year full of events, announcements, launches, panels, and strong opinions — about AI, Network APIs, CPaaS, and everything in between — it felt good to take a deep breath, spend time with family, and let some of that noise fade.

That distance matters.

When you step back, patterns start to emerge. Conversations that felt disconnected suddenly line up. Ideas you’ve been circling around for years begin to make sense together. Looking ahead to 2026, that’s very much how it feels to me: things are starting to fall into place.

At The Next Cloud, we’ve always been focused on shaping what comes next in communications. Not by chasing every trend, but by connecting dots across technology, business models, and real-world use cases. With that lens, I see five shifts that will define the next phase of CPaaS and cloud communications. They also happen to be the five areas I’m most interested in, optimistic about, and actively working on.

1. Intelligent Engagement Becomes the Primary Lens

The cloud communications conversation continues to move away from channels, features, and standalone platforms toward Intelligent Engagement.

This means starting with outcomes rather than infrastructure. Businesses don’t wake up wanting UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, WhatsApp, voice, RCS or Network APIs. They want better customer experience, higher conversion, lower churn, more efficient operations, compliance, and engagement that actually makes sense to their customers.

This is also where converged communications finally becomes real. Instead of separate stacks for contact centres, enterprise communications, messaging, and engagement, these capabilities increasingly blend into a single orchestration layer. Communications, data, AI, and networks come together around workflows and business outcomes — not product categories.

This shift was already very visible at CASA25. Whether it was Vonage, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Radisys, XConnect or others on stage, the message was consistent: customers don’t buy channels or APIs. They buy solutions that improve how they sell, serve, and operate.

In 2026, Intelligent Engagement becomes the umbrella under which convergence actually delivers value.

2. AI Becomes Native, Not an Add-On

AI finally grows up.

In 2026, AI stops being something that’s “added” to cloud communications and becomes the operating logic behind it. Not just generating responses or summaries, but orchestrating engagement end to end.

Routing decisions, prioritisation, escalation, compliance checks, summarisation, learning loops — all increasingly handled by AI-first systems rather than static rules and workflows. Engagement becomes adaptive instead of scripted.

This is where the difference between AI-washing and serious AI becomes obvious. Enterprises don’t need more demos. They need AI that is reliable, explainable, controllable, and affordable at scale.

This is also why edge and enterprise-grade AI matter so much. A growing category of silicon, infrastructure, and platform players is focused on enabling organisations — including telcos — to run AI stacks closer to the data, at lower cost, with greater control and predictability. AI is no longer something you simply “call in the cloud” by default; it becomes something you architect as part of your core system.

In 2026, cloud communications platforms that treat AI as a bolt-on feature will increasingly struggle. Those that treat it as foundational infrastructure will pull ahead.

3. From Transactions to Conversations — and Builders Take Center Stage

Customers don’t think in messages, minutes, or interactions. They think in conversations. In resolution. In outcomes.

WhatsApp has already made this shift obvious. According to the State of CPaaS 2025, WhatsApp continues to grow rapidly as the primary interface between businesses and customers across many regions. RCS is likely to follow a similar path as native messaging becomes richer and more conversational.

Once conversations become the unit of value, transactional models start to fall apart. Pay-per-message and pay-per-API-call pricing may work for notifications. They don’t work for long-running, asynchronous, AI-assisted conversations.

This is where companies like SaySimple stand out. A small Dutch team, deeply focused on customer interviews and real service workflows, building on top of CPaaS rather than trying to replace it. They didn’t start with technology abstractions. They started with the reality of SME customer service teams trying to get their jobs done.

An important side effect of this shift is that attention moves toward the companies actually building these engagement solutions — not just those delivering underlying infrastructure. The real innovation happens one layer up, where CPaaS, AI, and data are translated into usable, scalable products for specific customer problems.

This is also why initiatives like CPaaSAA and strategic collaborations around sandboxing and funding matter: helping builders move from promising ideas to real, scalable businesses. In 2026, the spotlight continues to move from infrastructure to execution.

4. Sovereignty and Trust Become Core Design Requirements

Sovereignty is no longer a side conversation. It’s becoming a core design requirement.

Data residency, identity, trust, compliance, and control increasingly shape buying decisions, especially in Europe and other regulated markets. This shift is not driven by regulation alone — it’s driven by enterprise reality.

This is where telcos re-enter the picture in a meaningful way. Not as generic platform providers, but as trusted foundations for identity, reach, compliance, and local control.

This trend also ties directly into AI. As AI systems become more autonomous and more embedded in decision-making, trust becomes infrastructure. Where models run, who controls them, and how data is handled suddenly matter a lot.

In 2026, cloud communications platforms that don’t take sovereignty seriously will hit real limits — not because they are forced to, but because customers expect it.

5. Smart Networks Become About New Business, Not Infrastructure

The conversation around networks — and Network APIs — finally matures.

For years, there has been confusion about where the value really sits. When McKinsey talked about a potential $100–300 billion opportunity around open networks, they were never referring to API call revenue. They were referring to new business enabled through programmable, intelligent networks.

That distinction got lost. Many looked at API pricing and concluded there was no money there. If the goal is selling APIs, that conclusion makes sense — and misses the point entirely.

It’s also worth being explicit here. Network APIs — like CPaaS before them — were never meant to be “just APIs”. From the start, the real challenge has been everything around them: orchestration, security, identity, compliance, commercial models, developer and partner experience, and the ability to turn raw capability into something enterprises can actually use. APIs matter, but on their own they don’t create value.

My hope for 2026 is that we can finally stop talking about Network APIs as products in their own right, and start treating them as what they are: building blocks that quietly disappear into the background once new services, new business models, and real outcomes take center stage.

Another critical part of making this work is aggregation. Very few enterprises — or developers — want to deal with dozens of networks, versions, commercial models, and operational quirks directly. This is where a new class of players becomes essential: network API aggregators that abstract complexity, provide consistency, and make network capabilities actually usable.

Companies like Shush and Shabodi, as well as initiatives like Aduna Global, play a crucial role here. Not by “owning” the network, but by normalising access, aligning commercial models, and connecting network capabilities to real enterprise and application demand. Without this layer, Network APIs risk remaining fragmented and theoretical. With it, they can become part of real products, services, and business models.

This is also where ecosystem initiatives like CPaaSAA play an important role. Rather than focusing on APIs themselves, the emphasis is on use cases, builders, and practical education: helping teams understand what network capabilities can actually enable, how they fit into real solutions, and where sustainable business models sit.

By bringing together telcos, CPaaS players, aggregators, platforms, and builders, the goal is not to explain technology, but to accelerate learning — shortening the distance between possibility and execution. In 2026, that kind of collective focus on use cases and builder education will be essential if Network APIs are to move from promise to practice.

In 2026, the focus shifts from exposure to application. From “what APIs do we have?” to “what can smart, open networks actually enable when combined with AI, data, and real enterprise demand?”

We’re already seeing early signs of this shift. Initiatives like BT’s Global Fabric point toward a future where networks are designed to be AI-ready by default: programmable, policy-driven, globally consistent, and able to support latency-sensitive, data-intensive workloads close to where intelligence actually runs. Not as an API catalogue, but as an execution layer for modern digital and AI-driven services.

The real winners won’t be those who expose networks, but those who help builders turn network capabilities into products, services, and businesses customers are actually willing to pay for.

Closing Reflection

What excites me about these five shifts is that they’re not abstract trends. They’re already visible — unevenly, imperfectly, but unmistakably.

They also map very directly to what we focus on at The Next Cloud: Intelligent Engagement, Enterprise AI, conversational business models, sovereignty and trust, converged communications, and turning smart networks into real business.

2026 won’t be about launching more things.

It will be about making the right things work — at scale, in the real world.

Let’s see how this reads in a year’s time — and in the meantime, let’s get cracking!