EXCLUSIVE: CloudWave rebrands to NeonNow as it deepens its focus on AI
Founder and CEO Mike Powrie discusses the name change and his plans for the Aussie channel.
AI-based customer experience platform CloudWave has rebranded to NeonNow as the company begins deepening its roots in the AI space.
Speaking exclusively to CRN Australia, Mike Powrie, CEO and founder at NeonNow explained the new name and redesigned website leaves “no room for doubt” where the organisation is going.
“All of our products and services have been brought along with [AI]. We're looking at tokenising commercials,” he said.
“We'll maintain all of the consumption based metrics, that's key.”
Another goal Powrie has with the rebrand is to bring more partners into the company’s ecosystem.
He explained they have structured the program to give partners education, commercials, and leverage in the AWS marketplace. NeonNow is a Twilio and an AWS partner.
“The Nirvana is, and it's happening with some partners, they can do everything themselves,” Powrie said.
“They go and win the deal, they make the margin, they spin it all up, and then they provide the support and services. It all backs off to us.”
The company currently has five partners in Australia, 10 in the US, and Powrie hopes to have 10 in Australia by the year’s end.
“We take it very seriously, it's not just about signing someone's up,” he said.
“[We are] teaching the guys how to fish. It depends what level, if they've got skills already in Amazon Connect, they'll just fly without us.
“They can build everything and then add our NeonNow overlay with a few clicks from marketplace; they will not even need us.”
However, if a partner is from Cisco or a similar technology background, Powrie added there will be a “bit more demonstration”.
New change
The Australian-based vendor operated under CloudWave for 13 years, but Powrie thought it was time for a change.
“The word cloud was pretty cool back then,” he stated.
Powrie noted that this new name also reflects a lot more around NeonNow’s AI engagement platform.
“[This is] where all of our R&D is going into building out the three core products underneath that, which is the CX contact centre, Amazon Connect,” he said.
“Then you've got the outreach, Twilio based campaign messaging, AI-driven inbound outbound messaging services.”
The company already has four offices across the US, New Zealand, India and the UK which were all under the name NeonNow, so this rebranding is also a cohesive marketing effort.
“It just makes sense to bring all the folks together,” Powrie noted.
New Agentic AI products
The rebrand is also a chance for NeonNow to showcase its agentic technology arm, which Powrie dubbed as “our secret sauce”.
“It's our two years of blood, sweat and tears and battle scars. Finding best LLMs in industry, universal CRM adapters to pick up any data, and also the ability to low latency all the security guardrails that must go along with it,” he said.
“But the ability to start to blend, where it makes sense, an AI assistant.”
Powrie explained the new tool allows for customers to deploy AI agents across voice and messaging.
“It's the same philosophy around low cost of entry, super simple to operate, administer, manage, with all of the safety and strong security practice that AWS has renowned for, the resilience and then the global reach as well,” he explained.
“[It’s] 170 odd countries now we can deliver to across voice messaging, contact centre, journeys, and that's all some against some of our secret sauce, but the availability zones of AWS and then the in-country Interconnect from Twilio allow us to do that.”
For the future, Powrie is eyeing off further expansion in America.
"Sky's the limit. [There are] lots of other countries that we could provide the services to and just looking at various avenues to get there quickest and fastest,” he said.
The company rebranded on March 31.