The 2025 TMC Labs INTERNET TELEPHONY Innovation Award lineup showcases how far communications, IT, and security platforms have come in just a few short years. Every winner tackles a different piece of the productivity-versus-complexity puzzle, yet each uses software-defined intelligence – and, increasingly, embedded AI – to deliver cleaner visibility, faster decisions, and tighter protection across sprawling networks.
Starting at the service-management layer, AireSpring’s AIreCONTROL gives distributed enterprises a single cloud console that blends ITSM, network monitoring, inventory, and automated carrier escalation. By correlating live metrics with power-grid and weather feeds, it really lets operations teams predict trouble instead of merely reacting to it. That same “see more, do more” imperative drives AVOXI Cloud Service, which turns what was once a tangle of carrier portals and SIP trunks into one API-driven platform for global voice, number management, and no-code call routing—complete with fraud monitoring and SSO hooks for security and compliance.
Hybrid work continues to push audio-video expectations higher, and AVer’s VB370A addresses the challenge with a dual-lens, AI-framed bar that delivers wide-room context and 18× zoom detail in the same device, while fourteen beam-forming mics keep every voice crisp. At the opposite end of the latency spectrum, Lantronix’s SmartLV brings Qualcomm (News - Alert) edge AI and 5G-ready connectivity to low-voltage substations, letting utilities steer distributed energy resources in milliseconds and turning passive grid assets into autonomous, cyber-secure nodes.
As critical data and machine identities multiply, this year’s class also leans hard into advanced protection. Entro Security inventories more than 1,200 secret types across code, chat, and runtime logs, then applies behavioral analytics to spot abuse before it explodes into a breach – an early answer to the wave of AI-generated non-human identities now surfacing in modern pipelines. Forcepoint’s DSPM, powered by its AI Mesh architecture, complements that view by classifying sensitive information anywhere it lives, prioritizing risk, and feeding precise data identity into DLP and detection stacks without the GPU overhead common to other AI tools. Compliance pressures remain just as acute on the voice side: Sansay’s STIR/SHAKEN Express rolls certificate management, call signing, and traceback analytics into a drop-in cloud service, giving CLECs and CPaaS providers a fast track to robocall-mitigation mandates with room to add E911, least-cost routing, and other SBC functions later.
Taken together, this year’s winners illustrate a common theme: intelligence belongs everywhere – at the network core, at the edge, in the conference room, and even inside the credentials that power automation. Whether your priority is maximizing uptime, authenticating calls, safeguarding data, or orchestrating clean energy, the 2025 class proves that thoughtfully applied AI and cloud-native design can streamline operations without sacrificing control. We congratulate each recipient for pushing the industry toward a future where complexity is tamed, risks are contained, and innovation remains squarely in the service of better business outcomes.
The need for centralized management of complex system continues to grow as margins are compressed and companies look to leading-edge tech to help increase productivity and resiliency. Enter AireSpring’s AIreCONTROL, which brings together IT service management, network monitoring, inventory, and automated incident response inside a single, cloud-based interface. From one dashboard, multi-location enterprises and MSPs can review circuit IDs, contract terms, IP addresses, device status, and real-time performance data across dozens – or hundreds – of sites. The platform opens and escalates tickets directly with more than 200 global carriers and issues proactive alerts, giving operations teams the information (and the head-start) they need to address issues before they grow.??
Where it fits
AIreCONTROL targets organizations that oversee large, distributed networks, like retail chains, global manufacturers, healthcare groups, utilities, municipalities, and the VARs or MSPs that support them. Because it is delivered as a browser-based, AI-powered SaaS offering, there is no on-premises hardware to deploy. AireSpring’s NOCs supply 24 × 7 monitoring and support.??
Notable capabilities
- 360-degree inventory & monitoring – Combines circuit, device, security, and application data in one view; integrates with existing toolsets to reduce swivel-chair management.
- AIOps context – Correlates network metrics with external power-grid and weather feeds so teams can anticipate and prepare for environmental risks.??
- Automated carrier escalation – Opens, tracks, and escalates trouble tickets across more than 200 providers without manual intervention.
- Service-centric workflow – Links directly to AireSpring’s AIrePOD model, giving customers a dedicated Tier 3 engineering team from initial design through day-to-day operations.
- Recent additions – Expanded third-party device monitoring (SNMP/ping), deeper analytics, and broader use of AIreMONITOR for customer-provided equipment.??
Why we selected AIreCONTROL for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
AIreCONTROL stands out by fusing classic ITSM functions with live carrier engagement and contextual AIOps data – particularly its use of power-grid and weather feeds to predict service impact. This breadth allows IT teams to act on a fuller operational picture without layering yet another siloed tool into the mix. The platform’s open, vendor-agnostic design, combined with AireSpring’s embedded engineering support, offers enterprises a practical route to consolidate monitoring, accelerate resolution, and contain costs as their networks grow more complex.
Whether all companies will ever be back in the office five days a week or not is debatable, but one thing is for sure: Many large organizations and many SMBs want workers back in the office at least part of the week. What this means is that they will still need to maximize their collaborative productivity, even if groups are located away from one another. In such an environment, you need the best tools available to support and drive effective communications. AVer’s new VB370A packs an 18× PTZ camera and a 120-degree fixed lens into one compact bar, letting mid-to-large rooms shift instantly from expansive group views to razor-sharp speaker close-ups. Smart Composition and Auto Framing use on-board AI to size each shot automatically, while intelligent voice tracking keeps the lens locked on the active speaker for a more natural hybrid meeting flow.
What it delivers
- Dual-lens flexibility – PTZ zoom for detail, wide-angle for context; no need to choose one or the other.
- AI-driven automation – Real-time framing and voice tracking minimize manual camera control.
- Enterprise-grade audio – Fourteen beam-forming mics pick up voices out to 10 m, while noise-blocking, audio-fencing, and echo-cancellation keep distractions out of the call.
- Built-in Android OS (Zoom Rooms ready) – Eliminates the external PC, speeds installation, and supports dual-screen content sharing.
- Plug-and-play scalability – Expansion accessories let IT teams tailor deployments from huddle spaces up to boardrooms without re-architecting the stack.
How it stacks up
Compared with single-lens bars such as Logitech Rally Bar or Poly Studio X70, the VB370A’s dual-lens design gives enterprises simultaneous wide coverage and 18× zoom in one device. Against more complex room-system alternatives, its embedded OS removes extra hardware, licensing, and cabling – cutting both deployment time and ongoing IT overhead.
Why we chose the VB370A for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
The VB370A stands out for merging two cameras, AI framing, advanced beam-forming audio, and native Zoom Rooms support into a single, truly plug-and-play bar. This design lets IT teams equip larger collaboration spaces with the kind of dynamic, speaker-focused video and room-filling audio previously reserved for multi-component systems, while delivering the cost control and ease of management enterprises now demand.
Communications, by its very nature, is real-time and mission-critical and, in many organizations, keeping it that way has become a struggle, as the number of managed carriers has grown and keeping on top of each has become virtually impossible without an automated solution to handle management, issues and challenges. AVOXI Cloud Service unifies global voice connectivity, number management, call-routing logic and enterprise-grade security behind a single web console and API layer. The platform lets multinational organizations layer carrier-grade voice into their existing tech stacks through more than 40 out-of-the-box integrations, including new SIP peering with Zoom, alongside established hooks for Genesys, NICE, Microsoft Teams and Twilio.
Key capabilities
- Application integrations – Direct SIP and REST connections to 40+ CCaaS, UCaaS and CRM systems speed provisioning and eliminate middleware.
- Number management & analytics – Real-time inventory, quality dashboards, geographic usage reports and proactive capacity alarms provide the visibility global sites need to keep calls clear and compliant.
- Flow Builder intelligent routing – A drag-and-drop GUI plus rule-based APIs route voice traffic by caller, location, time-of-day or intent, enabling self-service IVRs and contextual transfers without code.
- Security & compliance – Encrypted SIP, fraud monitoring, and SSO via Azure AD, Google, Okta or AWS IAM combine with AVOXI’s regulatory team to protect conversations and simplify audits.
- Expert support – Standard and Premium models are augmented by telemetry from the platform itself, letting AVOXI engineers predict capacity needs and resolve anomalies before they hit customers.
Why we selected AVOXI Cloud Service for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
AVOXI stands out for turning what is often a patchwork of carrier portals, SBC configs and regional providers into a single software layer that enterprises can drop into whichever CCaaS or UCaaS environments they already use. The blend of live quality analytics, self-service number control, no-code routing and baked-in security means IT teams spend less time wrangling circuits and more time refining customer experience. Add rapid SIP activation for Zoom and other major platforms, and AVOXI Cloud Service offers both the breadth and the operational polish that modern, multi-location businesses need to keep voice simple, visible and secure.
Entro Security positions its SaaS platform as a control plane for the “non-human identities” that move data between code, CI/CD pipelines, chat systems, vaults, cloud services and on-premises assets. By scanning both repositories and runtime logs, Entro builds an inventory of more than 1,200 secret and credential types, then enriches each one with owner, service context, permissions and risk score. Security teams gain an always-current map of keys, tokens and service accounts, plus alerting and automated remediation when usage veers from normal patterns.
NHIs may seem under-the-radar and inconsequential, but recent advances in AI, specifically AI agents and model context protocol (MCP), changes everything, as agents can now easily communicate with one another. As Adam Cheriki, Co-founder & CTO, Entro said in this post, “The rise of MCP is accelerating the creation of AI-driven NHIs at a scale we haven’t fully reckoned with.”
What the platform covers
- Discovery & inventory – Proprietary high-entropy algorithms surface every secret across code, docs, vaults and infrastructure; results collated in a single dashboard.
- Context & health – For each secret, Entro shows owner, last-used, privilege level and exposure surface, giving teams the data to prioritize clean-up.
- NHIDR (Non-Human Identity Detection & Response) – Behavior analytics on logs flag anomalies, such as sudden geo shifts or permission creep, then trigger playbooks or SOAR actions.
- Broad integrations – Connectors for CI/CD, vaults, CNAPP, SIEM/SOAR (Splunk (News - Alert), Sentinel, QRadar), AWS & Azure marketplaces, and on-premises via a lightweight connector.
- Continuous delivery – New code drops every two weeks keep pace with dev tooling changes and emerging secret formats.
Differentiation
Unlike tools that focus narrowly on source-code leaks or vault hygiene, Entro correlates secrets everywhere they live or run – including wikis, chat channels and third-party SaaS logs – then watches how they behave in production. It remains the only platform advertising full NHIDR capabilities and the first to inventory every major secret class across cloud and hybrid estates.
Why we chose the Entro Platform for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
Secrets sprawl is now a top breach vector, yet most solutions tackle only a slice of the problem. Entro’s end-to-end view – discovery, enrichment, anomaly detection and automated mitigation – gives security leads a single source of truth for machine identities without forcing a rip-and-replace of existing vaults or pipelines. The platform’s rapid release cadence, wide integration menu and SaaS delivery model make it both practical to adopt and quick to show value, qualities that set it apart in a fast-growing but fragmented market.
Managing the safety, security and integrity of organizational data has become more challenging as data creation seems to grow exponentially. The need to enforce precise policies across the cloud, web and endpoints has never been greater. The requirement to secure access at scale has also never been more crucial. To that end, Forcepoint’s DSPM platform shifts data protection focus from devices and locations to the data itself. Running across cloud and on-premises environments, the SaaS service discovers where sensitive information lives, gauges its risk, and applies controls to stop leakage or misuse – all without heavy tuning or specialized hardware.
What’s different
- AI Mesh data classification – A networked small-language-model architecture analyzes content and context with fewer than 100 signals, hitting high accuracy on standard CPUs, with no costly GPUs needed. Administrators can tweak the mesh directly, keeping models explainable and audit-friendly.
- 360° visibility – Maps sensitive material across multi-cloud stores and on-premises file shares, flags dark or redundant data, and highlights weak permissions or unusual access paths.
- Risk-prioritized workflows – Scores each finding, so teams fix the most critical exposures first; integrates with Forcepoint DLP and new Data Detection & Response to automate containment.
- Compliance-ready – Sector-tuned policy packs let enterprises address GDPR, PCI (News - Alert)-DSS, HIPAA and regional privacy rules without starting from scratch.
- Light operational footprint – Runs as a service; AI Mesh executes on commodity servers, cutting infrastructure cost and energy draw.
Position in the market
Traditional discovery tools rely on pattern matching and manual model training, while newer AI offerings often demand GPU farms or black-box models that auditors can’t examine. Forcepoint’s AI Mesh strikes a balance: rapid, CPU-based inference plus transparent logic that security and compliance teams can review.
Why we chose Forcepoint DSPM for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
Forcepoint elevates DSPM from checkbox scanning to an adaptive, end-to-end control plane. Its AI Mesh technology delivers measurable gains, including sharper classification, lower compute cost, and easily explainable outputs, thus solving two perennial headaches: false positives and audit friction. By feeding that clean data identity into Forcepoint’s DLP and DDR stack, the company gives enterprises a credible “data security everywhere” strategy, rather than another silo. Those advances, coupled with direct model customization and no-GPU deployment, set Forcepoint DSPM apart in an increasingly crowded field and earned it this year’s award.
Bonus: We expect the solution to get even better over time, considering the company just acquired Getvisibility, a pioneer in AI-powered Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and Data Detection and Response (DDR).
Lantronix’s (News - Alert) SmartLV is the first cellular gateway built expressly for low-voltage substations and distribution automation sites that must make millisecond decisions at the edge of the smart grid. Powered by Qualcomm’s IQ-615 processor, the DIN-rail unit merges 5G-ready connectivity, industrial protocol conversion and on-device AI into a rugged, InfiniShield-secured chassis only 150 × 85 × 30 mm in size.
What the gateway delivers
- AI at the edge – The integrated AI engine analyzes sensor and power-quality data locally, letting Distribution System Operators (DSOs) steer energy and balance phase load before congestion spreads.
- Multi-protocol flexibility – Dual Gig-E LAN, WAN SFP, RS-232/485, isolated I/O and a field-bus conversion suite connect legacy relays, DER inverters and new IoT sensors without extra converters.
- High-speed, future-proof comms – LTE Cat 4 today, software-upgradable to 5G sub-6 GHz; dual SIMs and Wi-Fi/BT provide path diversity for critical telemetry.
- Percepxion management out of the box – The gateway ships pre-enrolled in Lantronix’s cloud for fleet lifecycle updates, SIM/VPN control and analytics through a single pane.
- InfiniShield security – Secure element, signed boot, encrypted firmware and IPsec/OpenVPN options defend substations against escalating OT cyber-risk.
Position in the market
Traditional RTUs and PLCs offer serial I/O but little compute, while generic cellular routers lack deterministic industrial protocols. SmartLV collapses both roles – and an edge AI server – into one device, giving DSOs real-time visibility and closed-loop automation without truck-rolls or data-center latency.
Recently added highlights
- Field-bus library now includes IEC 104 slave and Modbus master.
- Energy-steering algorithms that issue set-points to connected DERs based on live voltage readings.
Why we chose SmartLV for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
SmartLV stands out as the first gateway to pair Qualcomm AI silicon with 5G and hardened industrial I/O specifically for the last mile of the power grid. By enabling split-second, policy-based control of transformers, EV chargers and rooftop solar – directly at the pole or cabinet – it turns what was once passive infrastructure into an intelligent, cyber-secure edge. That convergence of compute, connectivity and turnkey cloud management tackles a pressing utility challenge and earns Lantronix this year’s award.
Sansay has had a solid reputation in the market for a quarter century or so for building rock-solid telecom products powering millions of calls around the world. Sansay’s STIR/SHAKEN Express gives small and mid-sized voice providers an “easy button” for call authentication. Delivered as a hosted service from Sansay’s SBC cloud, the platform lets carriers sign every outbound call, verify inbound calls, and generate the required SHAKEN PASSporTs without rewriting softswitch logic or investing in new STIR/SHAKEN-capable equipment.
What STIR/SHAKEN Express brings
- Turnkey signing gateway – Registers the provider’s SPC token, inserts A, B or C attestation, and hands the signed SIP INVITE to any downstream carrier.
- Single-pane management – One web interface shows certificate status, real-time call signing stats and traceback history; APIs feed the same data to OSS/BSS tools.
- Inbound verification & analytics – STIR/SHAKEN headers on incoming traffic are checked, scored and exported, helping stop spoofed calls before they hit customers.
- Network add-ons on demand – Because the service sits on Sansay’s multi-function SBC stack, customers can bolt on E911 routing, robocall mitigation, least-cost routing or toll-free 8YY tools when ready, with no new contracts or hardware.
- Rapid compliance – Typical on-boarding completes in a few days, allowing FCC (News - Alert)-covered carriers and non-U.S. operators peering into the United States to meet attestation mandates quickly.
Where it fits
STIR/SHAKEN Express targets competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), wholesale VoIP hubs, international carriers peering into U.S. networks, and enterprise CPaaS providers that must sign traffic but lack the staff or budget to run a full STIR/SHAKEN infrastructure.
Why we chose STIR/SHAKEN Express for the 2025 INTERNET TELEPHONY TMC Labs Innovation Award
While many vendors offer STIR/SHAKEN toolkits, Sansay collapses certificate management, signing, verification and analytics into a service that rides on the same SBC cloud thousands of calls already traverse every second. That “drop-in” model removes the integration burden from lean carrier engineering teams and speeds them to compliance. This is an acute market need as regulators tighten traceback rules. The ability to layer additional Sansay voice applications on the same footprint extends the value proposition well beyond attestation, earning STIR/SHAKEN Express this year’s award.
Edited by
Erik Linask
