The future of messaging apps

Messaging apps currently allow users to text message, voice call, video call and send images, videos and audio. However, these apps are evolving and becoming platforms that offer many more services such as ecommerce, fintech applications and connection to IoT devices. The emerging use of messaging apps for delivering enterprise services has created an increased requirement for strong data security, while introducing multi-stakeholder use-cases that can only be resolved by achieving interoperability between different messaging apps.

If we take the example of global organisations, regional offices in different countries are likely to use different brands of messaging app. Interoperability between these brands would allow the organisation’s internal communication to be simplified. More importantly, organisations would be able to communicate more efficiently with their business ecosystem of clients, suppliers, advisors and other parties.

Recent changes in regulation mean that security requirements must be addressed alongside messaging app interoperability. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means an organisation’s data security perimeter has expanded to cover wherever data may be processed. Data processing, in many cases, happens both inside and outside of an organisation due to remote workforces, outsourcing of services, or simply as a result of day-to-day business communication with external parties. The adoption of a universal interoperability standard (that mandates an approach to security solving the requirements of the GDPR) would substantially simplify data protection beyond the security perimeter of an organisation.