Cloud Connections 2025 Podcast with David Duffett

“It’s not just a potato—it’s a globally distributed core of telephony goodness,” says David Duffett, Simwood. As the Cloud Connections 2025 event wrapped up in sunny St. Petersburg, Technology Reseller News publisher Doug Green sat down with David Duffett, corporate ambassador for Simwood, in a conversation that was equal parts innovation and, yes, potato.

Simwood’s unique term “the potato,” coined by CEO Simon Woodhead, refers to the homogenous, globally distributed core of Simwood’s network. “It looks a bit like a potato,” said Duffett, “but it’s packed with telephony goodness—at the edge, everywhere.”

At the Cloud Communications Alliance’s inaugural Solution Showcase, Duffett demonstrated Conversational AI powered by Simwood, launching a live voice assistant named Karina on stage. Within minutes, the team built an intelligent assistant that fielded live calls, answered questions about CCA membership, and even joked about starting a Joe Marion fan club. “She asked if we wanted badges,” Duffett laughed.

Simwood’s AI implementation stands out for its ease of deployment and carrier-agnostic integration. Through Bring Your Own Carrier, even customers on other platforms can transit through Simwood’s network to access conversational AI.

But the real future, Duffett revealed, lies in Contextual AI—where AI assistants can seamlessly pass contextual information from one touchpoint to another. “We’re eliminating the need for callers to repeat themselves,” he said. “Your credit card info doesn’t need to be entered twice.”

Simwood continues to support both enterprise customers and channel partners, including MSPs and hosted PBX providers, offering everything from AI tools to Teams integration—all through the potato.

Learn more at:

www.simwood.com

blog.simwood.com