Vonage’s fast facts Starting price: $19.99 per user per month. Key features: Unlimited calling and texting. Free number porting. Virtual receptionist. Intuitive admin portal. Communication APIs. Image: Vonage Vonage is an average business phone system if you just need something that supports basic calling and texting capabilities from your smartphone. If you’re looking for more functionality, it’s missing advanced features and team collaboration tools, despite having a higher price tag than many of its competitors. However, Vonage’s support for communication APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to embed custom calling capabilities into apps and websites may be worth the lack of other features if that’s a priority for your business. 1 RingCentral Office Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Medium (250-999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees) Medium, Enterprise, Large Features Hosted PBX, Managed PBX, Remote User Ability, and more Vonage’s pricing Vonage has three standard business phone system plans: Mobile: $19.99 per user per month for a few users who just need basic calling and texting capabilities. Premium: $29.99 per user per month for small teams that want internal messaging, video conferencing, and desk phones. Advanced: 39.99 per user per month for on-demand call recording, voicemail transcription, and call groups for teams. Vonage offers three plans to fit your business’s needs. Image: Vonage If you handle high call volumes, Vonage offers two contact center plans. Pricing isn’t available for either, but there are a ton of add-ons available, so you’re able to mix and match features to build the right plan for your business. There’s also a unique conversational commerce package that starts at $1,000 per month for up to 10 agents, with the option to add additional agents at $35 per month each. You’ll also have to pay a $5,000 set-up fee, making it a significant up-front investment. Pricing for communication APIs is based on usage: Domestic calls start at $0.0127 per minute. SMS messages start at $0.0062 per message. Video meetings start at $0.004 per minute. In-app messaging starts at $0.0007 per minute. You can also use number insights, dispatch, custom event, reporting, social media messaging, and verification APIs. Vonage’s key features Vonage’s standard phone system features include unlimited domestic calling, unlimited texting, free number porting, and a virtual receptionist (which is essentially an auto attendant). But its standout offering is its useful communications APIs. Unlimited calling and texting Every Vonage plan comes with unlimited domestic calling and texting. If you want a more cost-effective alternative to traditional carrier plans with usage-based billing, this is a great value. If you are a business with basic phone system needs, and you are thinking about switching from a landline to VoIP, Vonage should be on your shortlist. You can make and receive calls or send texts from your existing devices without having to purchase any additional hardware. Just download the Vonage app, and you can seamlessly transition between your personal and business lines. Schedule a conversation with Vonage to discuss the company’s business phone features in depth. Image: Vonage Free number porting If you’re interested in switching to a VoIP provider or you want to change business phone systems, Vonage makes this process easy. They’ll port your number to Vonage for free so you can maintain continuity with your customers without having to worry about number forwarding or missing calls. Local and toll-free number porting can take up to 21 business days to fully process, so it’s a good idea to keep your current subscription active until the number has officially been moved to Vonage. Virtual receptionist With Vonage’s virtual receptionist, all incoming calls get answered by the virtual auto attendant instead of a live agent. From there, callers are greeted by an automated recording or presented with a list of menu options — they make a selection and their call is routed smoothly to someone who can help. You can also set up your virtual receptionist to play different greetings based on the time, day of the week, and holiday hours. SEE: Learn how call routing impacts customers’ perception of your brand.  This is a standard feature available on all Vonage business phone plans. It’s not a full-blown Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system by any means, but the virtual assistant can handle typical business needs for a single location. From there, callers are presented with a list of menu options from which they’re able to select their reason for calling. This allows them to be quickly routed to someone who can help. You can also set up your virtual receptionist to play different greetings based on the time, day of the week, holiday hours, and more. This is a standard feature available on all Vonage business phone plans. Reduce agent workloads with Vonage’s virtual receptionist. Image: Vonage Intuitive admin portal Vonage’s user-friendly admin portal makes it easy to quickly manage and see what’s happening organization-wide with your phone system. You can monitor the system status, track team trends, add new phone extensions, and manage your numbers. It’s a clean interface that helps managers and system admins quickly complete tasks without having to spend hours scrolling and clicking around. The admin portal also gives you access to the audit log, where you can track changes and restore things to the original settings if necessary. This feature is only available to users with designated admin access. All regular Vonage users on your team can manage their own extension settings from their user portal, but not other system settings. Role-based access is one of many VoIP security best practices and this system makes it easy to adhere to it. Keep things simple and manage your entire phone system on one portal with Vonage. Image: Vonage Communication APIs Vonage offers voice, video, SMS, social media messaging, in-app messaging, dispatch, verification, number insight, custom events, and reporting APIs you can use to create truly custom environments for collaboration and customer interactions, such as: Sending real-time updates via SMS. Adding two-factor authentication (2FA). Providing video support. Detecting

By Christopher Cole ( November 18, 2024, 7:38 PM EST) — Brendan Carr’s selection as the next Federal Communications Commission chair prompted a wave of plaudits from industry and some dismay from liberal groups, but one thing stands out among experts: He will push to counter what he sees as out-of-control conduct by tech platforms…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

An effective cross-channel marketing hub (CCMH) can position marketing as an indispensable component of an organization’s customer-obsessed growth engine. Think of your CCMH as much more than a campaign management platform. Instead, leverage it for next-gen customer engagement based on compelling, contextually relevant experiences. Forrester defines a CCMH as: Enterprise marketing technology that supports customer data management, analytics, segmentation, and workflow tools for designing, executing, and measuring marketing engagement across digital and offline channels. A successful CCMH implementation supports holistic customer engagement while helping customer-obsessed marketers deliver sustainable long-term business impact. CCMH capabilities go beyond outbound email campaigns and messages that drive acquisition and conversion strategies. They also support inbound personalization for web, e-commerce, and mobile app engagement. And some CCMH solutions connect to human-assisted channels for more personalized sales, service, and operations. Announcing The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs, Q4 2024 To help you traverse the CCMH market, The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs, Q4 2024 is now live. It identifies 14 of the most significant CCMH vendors — Adobe, Bloomreach, Braze, CleverTap, HCLSoftware, Insider, Iterable, MoEngage, Netcore Cloud, Optimove, Salesforce, SAP, SAS, and Zeta Global — and scores them across 28 criteria. You can use this report to identify the CCMH capabilities that matter most when it comes to elevating your approach to personalized customer experiences. The CCMH market is constantly evolving, with vendors that vary in size, vertical expertise, and geographic focus. Enterprise marketing suites vendors continue to dominate the space, but smaller vendors are investing heavily in AI-based innovation and offer agile alternatives for digital-first environments. Buyers must carefully consider not only CCMH capabilities, but how their chosen solution will integrate with other martech ecosystem investments. For a deeper dive into our evaluation, please register and join our Forrester CCMH webinar on December 11. Our webinar will also feature insights from CCMH customer references for vendors participating in the study. If you want a broader view of the CCMH space, The Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs Landscape, Q2 2024 features 36 vendors. It covers four core CCMH use cases: customer data and profile management, segmentation and audience building, customer understanding (analytics and insights), and cross-channel marketing (outbound campaigns). It also identifies six extended CCMH use cases: consent, privacy, and preference management; creative collaboration and project management; individualized personalization and recommendations; contextual marketing (triggered or responsive); moments-based marketing (predictive or real time); and marketing measurement and optimization. And as always, feel free to schedule an inquiry if you’d like to talk in depth about our research findings or the various vendors in the CCMH space. source

The interwoven relationship between the cloud and artificial intelligence continues to grow complex as demand for these resources increases. AI can be put to work to increase efficiency to run the cloud while the cloud can be the platform where AI is developed and does its heavy lifting. It is no secret that many organizations want to leverage AI, sometimes in ways that might not be clear yet. That chase to put AI to work, in the wake of the cloud transformation age, could lead to unexpected developments for both spheres of technology. Will the pace of AI’s rise change the nature of the cloud? What types of cloud systems and resources stand to benefit from, or need to adapt to, AI? In this episode, Sundaram Lakshmanan (left in video), CTO with Lookout, and Amrit Jassal (top right), co-founder and CTO of Egnyte, share their insights on how this space has shaped in the AI era and the potential road ahead. Listen to the full podcast here. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More AI agents are the talk of the enterprise right now. But, business leaders want to hear about tangible results and relevant use cases — as opposed to futuristic, not-quite-there-yet scenarios — and demand tools that are easy to deploy and use and, further, that support their preferred model(s).  Microsoft claims to have all these concerns covered with new no-code and low-code capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Today at Microsoft Ignite, the tech giant announced that users can now build their own custom autonomous agents or deploy out-of-the-box, purpose-built agents. And, they can do this via a bring-your-own setup that provides them access to the 1,800-plus models in the Azure AI catalog. (See our separate story today about how Microsoft has quietly assembled the largest AI agent ecosystem — and no one else is close). “Companies have done a lot of AI exploration and really want to be able to measure and understand how agents can help them be more efficient, improve performance and decrease cost and risk,” Lili Cheng, corporate VP of the Microsoft AI and research division, told VentureBeat. “They’re really leaning into scaling out their copilots.” Supporting bring-your-own-knowledge, bring-your-own-model According to IDC, in the next 24 months, more and more companies will build custom, tailored AI tools. Indeed, vendors — from tech giants such Salesforce and Snowflake to smaller players like CrewAI and Sema4.ai — are increasingly pushing platforms to market that promise to revolutionize enterprise operations.  Microsoft introduced Copilot in February 2023, and has now infused it with a suite of new capabilities to support agentic AI. Autonomous capabilities now in public preview allow users to build agents that act on their behalf without additional prompting. This means agents can work and act in the background without human oversight.  Users can use templates for common scenarios (such as sales order and deal accelerator agents) in Copilot Studio. Or, more advanced developers can take advantage of a new Agent SDK (now available in preview) to build full-stack, multichannel agents that integrate with various Microsoft services and can be deployed across Microsoft, third-party and web channels.  New integrations with Azure AI Foundry will support bring-your-own-knowledge (custom search indices can be added as a knowledge source) (now in preview) and bring-your-own- model (now in private preview). This will allow users to pull from the 1,800-some-odd models (and counting) in Azure’s catalog.  This element is critical, as users are demanding the ability to securely use proprietary data and combine and test different models without getting locked in to one or the other. “People want a variety of models, they want to be able to fine-tune models,” said Cheng.  Ready-made agents for HR, translation, project management But not all tasks require a custom solution; already-built models can be useful across enterprises. Microsoft is releasing several ready-made agents in Copilot that can handle simple, repetitive tasks or more complex multi-step processes. These include:  Agents in SharePoint, which allows users to create their own tailored agents that they can give names and personalize. Users can ask questions and receive real-time answers and share agents across emails, meetings and chats. Microsoft emphasizes that agents follow existing SharePoint user permissions and sensitivity labels to help ensure that sensitive information isn’t overshared. Employee self-service agent, which answers common workplace policy-related questions and takes action on HR and IT-related tasks. For instance, employees can retrieve benefits and payroll information, request a new device or start a leave of absence form.  Facilitator agent, which takes real-time notes in Teams and chats and provides a summary of important information as the conversation is unfolding.  Interpreter agent, which provides real-time translation in Teams meetings in up to nine languages. Participants can also have Interpreter simulate their voice. Project Manager agent, which automates processes in Planner, handling projects from creation to execution. The agent can automatically create new plans from scratch or use templates; it then assigns tasks, tracks progress, sends notifications and provides status reports.  Further, a new Azure AI Foundry SDK offers a simplified coding experience and toolchain for developers to customize, test, deploy and manage agents. Users can choose from 25 pre-built templates, integrate Azure AI into their apps and access common tools including GitHub or Copilot Studio.  Cheng pointed to the importance of low-code and no-code tools, as enterprises want to accommodate teams with a range of skills. “Most companies don’t have big AI teams or even development teams,” she said. “They want more people to be able to author their copilots.” The goal is to greatly simplify the agent-building process so that enterprises “build something once and use it wherever their customers are,” she said. Tooling should be simple and easy to use so that app creators don’t even know if things are getting ever more complicated on the back end. Cheng posited: “Something might be more difficult, but you don’t know it’s more difficult, you just want to get your job done.” McKinsey, Thomson Reuters use cases Initial use cases have revolved around support, such as managing IT help desks, as well as HR scenarios including onboarding, said Cheng.  McKinsey & Company, for its part, is working with Microsoft on an agent that will speed up client onboarding. A pilot showed that lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work by 30%. The agent can identify expert capabilities and staffing teams and serves as a platform for colleagues to ask questions and request follow-ups.  Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters built an agent to help make the legal due diligence process — which requires significant expertise and specialized content — more efficient. The platform combines knowledge, skills and advanced reasoning from the firm’s gen AI tool CoCounsel to help lawyers close deals more quickly and efficiently. Early tests indicate that several tasks in these workflows could be cut by at least 50%.  “We really see people combining more traditional copilots — where you have AI augmenting people skills

AI is a leading theme among cloud vendors globally, and European vendors are following suit. In a cloudy Paris on November 7, the cloud vendor Scaleway hosted its third ai-PULSE event, with about 1,000 attendees and 40 press delegates and analysts. The guest lineup was remarkable, from CEOs of global companies such as Michael Dell (founder of Dell Technologies) to government representatives such as Clara Chappaz (the French secretary of state for artificial intelligence and digital technologies) and founders of startups like Charles Kantor (CEO and cofounder of AI startup H Company). The event revolved around cloud and AI and, specifically, sustainability in AI and cloud deployments and digital and cloud sovereignty. AI Takes Center Stage At A Cloud Provider’s Event Fundamentally a cloud provider, Scaleway is massively focusing on AI. The vendor has significantly boosted its AI computing power by making over 5,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs available to its clients. This is to support the On Demand GPU Cluster service, allowing customers to reserve computing clusters of varying sizes for flexible durations. Additionally, Scaleway has partnered with stealth startup H Company to provide a large training cluster of NVIDIA H100 GPUs. This pivot to AI is driving discussion in related areas such as AI and cloud sustainability, as well as digital and cloud sovereignty. Cloud And AI Sustainability Due to increasing numbers of GPUs available in data centers belonging to cloud providers and their associated power consumption, cloud and AI vendors have begun to consider environmental sustainability as a pivotal issue both in cloud and AI deployments. If the adoption of AI continues at scale, there will be no power plant that will be able to sustain AI workloads’ energy needs. In fact, over time, the increase in AI utilization will more than offset the gains in power consumption efficiency that are being made for every new GPU model released. Cloud decision-makers should keep an eye on these trends: Colocation of data centers and power plants. Given the increasing power consumption of data centers, it could be necessary to build power plants to meet cloud vendors’ demand exclusively. This will be a viable solution to avoid overprovisioning of (diesel-powered) backup generators to grant continuity in case of power grid overload or failure. This will also require colocation of power plants and data centers to minimize energy dispersion. Increase of nuclear power usage. Cloud vendors are realizing that they need nuclear energy to meet their power demand. While solar and wind power aligns better with the cloud vendors’ sustainability goals, nuclear is going to be the main energy source in countries, such as France, where this kind of source is available. GPU mutualization. Solicited by my question on GPUs’ utilization and efficiency, Scaleway’s CEO Damien Lucas illustrated an interesting concept: GPU mutualization. With GPU mutualization, cloud vendors are becoming GPU brokers, providing them on demand to end-user organizations and enabling 100% utilization of the processing units in their data centers, with related power efficiency gains. Improvement of efficiency of cloud infrastructures, AI, and generative AI workloads. A single request to an AI chatbot consumes 2.9 watt hours. This is 10 times more power consumption than a regular Google search query. This has an obvious impact in terms of power consumption and related emissions from AI workloads hosted in public cloud environments. According to Renee James, founder of Ampere Computing, when interviewed for one of the keynotes, AI has to be affordable and environmentally efficient. Given the current increasing power consumption trend, it must become more efficient rather than more affordable to be sustainable from a cloud vendor’s emissions perspective. Digital And Cloud Sovereignty Digital and cloud sovereignty of course play a major role in France, where the SecNumCloud regulation was developed. This topic has consequences on AI as well as in terms of data residency and workloads’ location. Presenters and keynote speakers made a few interesting points: Bring AI to the data, not data to AI, for inference. One sovereignty-related issue with AI is that some organizations bring data to where the AI engine is running. Moving forward, AI will be more and more at the edge, be it on mobile phones, laptops, or any other edge device. For example, a lot of inference can be done on more efficient CPUs with special-purpose transistors. This will make it possible to keep the data used for inference local, overcoming some of the sovereignty-related concerns. Select data for model training. Organizations do not — and should not — need to feed models with all the available data. Selecting the data to provide for model training in the cloud is one way to stay in control and avoid leveraging data in the public cloud when it need not leave the premises. Foster a startup culture in Europe. Europe is not short of ideas and capital for startups in the cloud and AI space, but some startups do leave the continent seeking higher funding, less regulation, and better ecosystems in places such as the Silicon Valley. If Europe wants to play a leading role in the cloud and AI space, regulators and operators need to contribute to a better culture that will keep talent and top ideas in Europe. This will help tackle sovereignty constraints as more technology options are going to be available locally. European organizations should be aware that they can leverage AI opportunities within the continent’s boundaries to abide by digital sovereignty requirements as well as shrink the number of cloud vendors making CO2 emissions that they have to keep under control. Set up an inquiry or guidance session with me to learn more. source

By Christopher Cole ( November 17, 2024, 10:21 PM EST) — President-elect Donald Trump has picked Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the agency’s next chair, selecting a former general counsel of the agency and frequent critic of the current administration to lead the telecom regulator…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

A queue callback offers callers the option to request a return call from an agent instead of waiting on hold. This saves customers time and helps you make your call center operations smoother and more efficient. I love it when companies offer this option. I think most people would rather get back to their life and receive a call later. Queue callbacks go by a ton of different names: automated callbacks, virtual holds, callback queues and other terms. It’s all the same thing. You will usually see it listed as a call center IVR feature, though some vendors offer it as part of standard business phone services. If customers are waiting on hold for more than 5 minutes, I recommend using queue callbacks. It’s not difficult to set up, and there are really only a small number of situations where it doesn’t make sense to use. 1 RingCentral Office Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Medium (250-999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees) Medium, Enterprise, Large Features Hosted PBX, Managed PBX, Remote User Ability, and more The beauty of the callback Queue callbacks are one of the most efficient ways to reduce call queue times. So it’s a clear win on the operations side. Plus, they make customers feel like VIPs because the customers themselves get to request a return call. That might be over-egging it a little, but queue callbacks certainly provide a better experience for callers. Who wants to listen to hold music and pre-recorded messages? No one. Enhancing a caller’s experience is really important. Everyone is chasing that goal using complex strategies and expensive tools. Queue callbacks offer an easy way to win over customers and improve call center metrics at the same time. Why customers love queue callbacks It gives them part of their day back. They feel like they have more control over their call. They don’t have to listen to the hold music or a repetitive message. It shows them that you respect their time. It shows you are willing to actively pursue them. Why call centers love queue callbacks It sets up a more efficient workflow for your agents. Agents handle fewer callers that have been waiting on hold. It improves call queue metrics immediately. It increases customer satisfaction scores. Ideal uses for queue callbacks If you can’t tell already, I think that automated callbacks should be part of every call queue management strategy. These systems are a godsend in high-demand situations, and offer a way to improve service delivery without hiring more employees. SEE: Learn call queue management tips for making it through peak call volumes.  Here’s where queue callbacks can have the most impact: Peak times Queue callbacks can be great if your call center analytics reveal there are hours when customers are most likely to call. The same is true if you want to make sure that the crazy times between Black Friday and New Year’s are completely covered. They might not solve understaffing issues, but queue callback is a thousand times better than hiring new staff that will need to be onboarded and trained to solve temporary issues. Multilingual support Callback options can be configured to automatically connect customers to agents who speak their preferred language. This should be fairly easy to set up with skills-based call routing. Again, this is another way to more efficiently use the talents of the agents you have, rather than having to go out and hire more people. It may not work in every situation, but queue callbacks will help you maximize the time of your agents with specialized skills. Unexpected surges Maybe there’s a promotion going on, one of your products has been shipped out with defects, or perhaps it’s just a busy Tuesday. You can’t hire people to sit around and hang out just in case an unexpected surge occurs, nor can you make your customers wait for extended periods of time. What you can do is automatically turn callbacks on during unexpected surges. It will give your callers their time back while allowing your agents to regroup and organize themselves over time. Technical support If your Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or agents identify that a customer wants to talk about an issue that may require a long time to solve, you can have them request a callback for very specific use cases and technical support. SEE: Discover why employees and callers alike appreciate IVR.  This also helps reduce call transfers trying to get the customer to the right technical agent who can help them. With queue callback, you can make sure a technical specialist who knows the customer’s issue is the one on the line calling them. Tips for using queue callbacks Some best practices to keep in mind include: Offer an estimated wait time. Offer an estimated callback time. Allow the customers to choose between a callback or staying on hold. Train agents to be ready to handle callbacks right where the IVR left off. These are all small and important details to get right as you configure IVR call flows. Most of it can be automated so you are not manually updating wait times. That would be terrible. Having your call center integrated with your CRM software will go a long way toward prepping agents to jump back on the call. They’ll be able to see the customer details, purchase history, and potentially a lot more. Another thing to consider is using an outbound dialer to manage queue callbacks. Three scenarios where queue callbacks don’t work Routine inquiries When customers call with basic questions such as how much they have to pay on a bill or how they can get a refund for a product they returned, queue callbacks are just going to feel more frustrating than helpful for the customer. Plus, it’s a waste of time and resources in most cases. For routine inquiries, you can use an IVR menu system, a chatbot, email support, or other

By Jonathan Capriel ( November 15, 2024, 9:23 PM EST) — A Michigan federal judge won’t weigh in on a spat between an attorney and his former cannabis business partner brother, who is accused of shorting him $18 million as part of a buyout agreement, saying the dispute should stay in state court…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

As an idea, the digital product passport (DPP) sounds pretty good. Imagine being able to simply scan a QR code on a product to discover all sorts of useful things about it: A bar of chocolate’s passport could, theoretically, tell you where the cocoa beans were grown and whether the farm complied with Europe’s upcoming Deforestation Regulation; where and when the bar was made; in which countries it’s allowed to be sold; when it should be eaten; and the ways it contributes to the eater’s daily targets for sugar, fat, calories, and more. An electric vehicle’s battery passport could tell you where the battery’s components were originally mined; what proportion of the lead, cobalt, lithium, and other elements was sourced from recycling (good) instead of mining (less good); and an indication of battery health, which might inform resale value. An industrial robot’s passport could tell you where it was manufactured and link to product documentation, certified shipping and import paperwork, a full service history, and lists of the part numbers replaced during routine maintenance. A DPP Is Associated With European Legislation But Is Internationally Relevant The European Commission is enthusiastic about DPPs, and most discussion of these passports now tends to be in the context of new European rules like the Batteries Regulation and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). These will require what the CIRPASS and CIRPASS-2 projects called “a massive issuing of DPPs” beginning in 2027, and both are discussed in a recent Forrester report, Embrace The Circular Economy To Make Manufacturing More Sustainable. Others, both inside and outside the European Union’s borders, also talk about “digital product passports,” “product passports,” or “battery passports.” They may — or may not — mean something that would technically meet the requirements of European regulators. Frankly it can be difficult to tell, and not just because the European Commission has punted almost all of the implementation detail to “applicable delegated acts” that haven’t been written yet. Article 9 of ESPR, for example, states that: The information requirements shall provide that products can only be placed on the market or put into service if a digital product passport is available in accordance with the applicable delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4 and with Articles 10 and 11. The data in the digital product passport shall be accurate, complete and up to date.” In other words, the Regulation requires companies to comply but doesn’t tell them how. So What Is A DPP, Anyway? While ESPR and the Batteries Regulation don’t manage to clearly describe what a DPP is, another Commission web page offers a reasonable summary: “The DPP is designed to close the gap between consumer demands for transparency and the current lack of reliable product data. The DPP will include essential details such as a unique product identifier, compliance documentation, and information on substances of concern. It will also provide user manuals, safety instructions, and guidance on product disposal. By offering a detailed digital record of a product’s lifecycle, the DPP will enhance supply chain management, ensure regulatory compliance, and help companies identify and mitigate risks related to authenticity and environmental impact.” The Batteries Regulation describes the high-level design aspirations for a DPP (usually called a “battery passport” in this context) without providing the sort of actionable detail needed to construct a functioning system of passports: “To ensure that the battery passport is flexible, dynamic and market-driven and evolves in line with business models, markets and innovation, it should be based on a decentralised data system, set up and maintained by economic operators. To ensure the effective roll-out of the battery passport, the technical design, data requirements and operation of the battery passport should adhere to a set of essential technical requirements. Such requirements should be developed hand-in-hand with those for digital product passports required by other Union law concerning eco-design for sustainable products. Technical specifications, for which the Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility principles for the eDelivery Network should be considered, should be established to ensure the effective implementation of those essential requirements, either in the form of harmonised standards for which the references are published in the Official Journal of the European Union or, as a fall-back option, in the form of common specifications adopted by the Commission. The technical design should ensure that the battery passport carries data in a secure way which respects privacy rules.” Give that to your favourite enterprise architect, ask them to build something robust, interoperable, or useful with it, and watch them start to cry. Article 77 and Annex XIII of the Regulation provide a little more, including a (long) list of the classes of information that should be accessible by the public (carbon footprint data, etc.), by “persons with a legitimate interest” (parts numbers, disassembly instructions, etc.), and by “notified bodies, market surveillance authorities, and the Commission” (regulated test results, etc.). But there’s still a massive gulf between legislative aspiration and implementable code. Demonstrators Put Theory Into Practice The Battery Pass consortium has developed good content guidance and technical guidance. Together, these capture consortium members’ view on turning the Battery Regulation’s aspiration into something implementable. To prove their point, the Battery Pass consortium also offers a demonstrator which aggregates battery data from various stakeholders to show what a human-readable representation of a Battery Passport might look like. Siemens offers a similar interpretation. Battery Pass consortium member Circulor worked with Volvo to deliver the “world’s first EV battery passport” for Volvo’s EX90 cars earlier this year. The Global Battery Alliance also offers demonstrators, but with a more global flavour. All of these, and DPP demonstrators like those from CIRPASS-2, help to show what’s possible and highlight the areas where standardization work is still needed. Standards Bodies Push The Market Closer To Interoperable DPPs The ICT Standardisation Observatory and Support Facility in Europe (StandICT.eu) produced a report on ‘The Landscape of Digital Product Passport Standards’ back in 2023. It listed “186 international and European standards from recognised standardisation bodies… and a further 78