Vconic Launches to Bring vCons Into the Mainstream — And to CASA25
A new chapter in communications technology has begun. Vconic, a spin-off from Strolid, has officially launched with one clear mission: to bring vCons — conversation containers — into the commercial world. At the helm is Thomas Howe, now CTO of Vconic, who has long been one of the driving forces behind The vCon Foundation.
Thomas isn’t going it alone. He’s joined by two legends in technology: the father of modern messaging and the co-founder of MapQuest. With this team, Vconic is positioning itself to turn vCons from an emerging standard into the backbone of how conversations are stored, shared, and analyzed.
What Exactly Is a vCon?
Think about how we treat images. You don’t wonder which app took the photo or which vendor stored it — you just save or share the JPEG file, because the format made images universal.
A vCon does the same thing for conversations. Instead of a picture, a vCon file contains the full context of an interaction:
- Media: the voice recording, text transcript, or video
- Metadata: participants, timestamps, channels
- Compliance details: disclosures, rules, regulatory tags
- Context: AI-derived insights like sentiment, intent, or outcomes
In short: a vCon is a conversation in a box — portable, self-contained, and ready to be stored, analyzed, or moved anywhere.
Papa in a Box
The origin of vCons — and one of its most compelling stories — comes from Strolid itself. The “Papa in a box” idea refers to Vin Micciche’s father, a veteran of the automotive sales world. Over decades, he built up deep expertise in how dealership conversations with customers worked: what questions mattered, how tone changed decisions, and which responses drove trust and sales.
When Vin thought about his father eventually retiring, he realized all of this tacit knowledge risked disappearing. Unless those conversations could be captured, stored, and analyzed, the insights inside them would be lost forever.
So the vision was born: put Papa’s conversations in a box. Capture every call with customers — the audio, the transcript, the context, the compliance — and package them in a standardized format. That way, Papa’s expertise doesn’t just vanish; it lives on, and can be used to train new employees, improve customer experiences, and even fuel AI systems.
That simple, personal idea became the foundation for vCons: making conversations durable, portable, and intelligent.
Why vCons Matter — And Why They Matter Now
Conversations have been digital for decades, but two forces are converging to make vCons urgent today:
- Compliance pressure is exploding. In finance, healthcare, telecom, and beyond, regulators demand proof of what was said, who said it, and whether rules were followed. Having conversations scattered across different platforms makes this nearly impossible. With vCons, every interaction can be packaged into a verifiable, portable record — a compliance file as easy to handle as a PDF.
- AI needs structured data. AI can’t thrive on messy, siloed transcripts. It needs clean, standardized, contextual data to process, analyze, and understand conversations at scale. vCons provide exactly that — the raw material for agent assist, intelligent automation, and next-gen customer experience.
Put together, compliance and AI create the burning need for vCons right now. Without them, enterprises face risk and missed opportunity. With them, they gain trust, insights, and competitive advantage.
And crucially, vCons are not just an idea — they are an IETF standard-track protocol, just like SIP, HTTP, and SMTP. That places them firmly in the lineage of the protocols that built the internet and global voice.
From Strolid to Vconic: The Next Step
The idea of vCons was incubated at Strolid, where the standard was developed and the vCon Foundation was created to steward it through the IETF.
With the launch of Vconic, the focus shifts from theory and standards to real-world adoption. This is the commercial engine that will help enterprises, telcos, and service providers embed vCons into products and workflows.
The involvement of heavyweight technology leaders underscores how critical this step is. It’s about moving vCons from concept to industry-wide practice.
vCons at CASA25
The launch of Vconic couldn’t be better timed. At CASA25 in Amsterdam (September 22–24), vCons will take center stage as one of the most anticipated themes of the program.
- The vCon Foundation is a Silver Sponsor of CASA25 — showing its commitment to driving this standard forward.
- Keynote: Thomas Howe will introduce vCons, the journey from Strolid to Vconic, and why this matters for compliance and AI in the future of communications.
- Dedicated track time: A good part of the first afternoon of CASA25 will be focused on vCons, with panels exploring real-world use cases, compliance needs, and business implications.
- Hands-on workshop: For those who want to dive deeper, a workshop will give participants the chance to explore the nuts and bolts of vCons in practice.
CASA25’s DNA is “less talk, more impact” — and vCons embody this, moving quickly from idea to adoption in real business contexts.
The Power of Ecosystems
No standard succeeds on technology alone — it takes an ecosystem. That’s what makes The vCon Foundation so powerful: it brings together developers, vendors, enterprises, and regulators to make vCons universal.
But ecosystems also need scale. That’s where the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance (CPaaSAA) comes in. As the umbrella that connects telcos, CPaaS providers, enterprises, analysts, and investors, CPaaSAA gives The vCon Foundation the platform it needs to reach bigger audiences, gain traction, and translate vision into industry-wide results.
At CASA25, that ecosystem is coming together. With The vCon Foundation as a sponsor, Vconic as a commercial driver, and CPaaSAA providing the connective tissue, we’re laying the groundwork for vCons to become the next SIP — the next trillion-dollar standard that redefines communications for the AI era.
Looking Ahead
Just as SIP unlocked global voice and fueled a trillion-dollar industry, vCons — as an IETF standards-track protocol — are positioned to underpin the next two decades of AI-driven communications.
The question isn’t if vCons will become universal, but how quickly. And the driving forces are clear:
- Compliance is non-negotiable.
- AI is inevitable.
- Ecosystems turn standards into industries.
At CASA25, we’ll begin answering the key questions:
- How fast can vCons be adopted?
- Which industries will lead the way?
- What new business models will emerge when conversations become truly portable and intelligent?
The answers start here — with Vconic, The vCon Foundation, and the CPaaSAA community.
👉 Read more in Thomas Howe’s guest blog.
👉 Join us in Amsterdam for CASA25, September 22–24 — where vCons and AI meet the real world.
