The Evolution of Business Messaging: An Interview With HORISEN

February 2026

Telecoms & Connectivity

Molly Gatford

Senior Research Analyst

Following HORISEN’s recognition as the Gold Winner of Best Business Messaging Solution at the Future Digital Awards for Telco Innovation 2026, we sat down with Fabrizio Salanitri, Founder and CEO of HORISEN, to explore the future of business messaging and how the company is innovating to stay at the forefront of the industry.

Fabrizio is the founder and CEO of HORISEN, with over 25 years of experience in telecommunications, specializing in messaging technology. Combining Italian charisma with Swiss precision and a degree in Electronic Engineering, he founded HORISEN with a pioneering vision to enable SMS delivery through a browser-based application - long before cloud and CPaaS became industry standards. Driven by a passion for software engineering and a strong sense for emerging market needs, the company began developing SMS trading platforms alongside advanced messaging and marketing technology solutions. Under Fabrizio’s leadership, HORISEN evolved into a vendor-neutral messaging ecosystem, supporting hundreds of mobile operators and messaging providers worldwide.

All those years brought a lot of adventures, marvelous growth and many changes, but above all, numerous messaging businesses powered up with HORISEN messaging technology today.

How is the rise of rich, conversational messaging transforming enterprise communication strategies today, and which use cases are proving most impactful for customer engagement?

For years now, rich and conversational messaging has been redefining enterprise communication at a structural level. We have moved beyond simple message delivery into an era of continuous digital dialogue, where every interaction can become part of a broader, orchestrated customer journey.

Importantly, this transformation is not a replacement of traditional messaging - it is its natural evolution. SMS remains the most universal and resilient communication channel in the world. It reaches virtually every mobile subscriber, across every handset, regardless of data connectivity. For critical use cases, such as one-time passwords, fraud alerts, service notifications, and transactional updates, SMS continues to be the backbone of enterprise communication. That reliability is made possible by the global telecom infrastructure – Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), Signal Transfer Point (STP), Mobile Number Portability (MNP), carrier-grade routing - which remains fundamental to how the ecosystem functions.

What has changed is the strategic mindset of enterprises. Communication is no longer seen as a one-way notification mechanism; it is increasingly viewed as a conversational touchpoint. Rich messaging channels, such as Rich Communication Services (RCS) and over-the-top (OTT) platforms, are enabling verified identities, branded interfaces, interactive elements, and real-time engagement within the native messaging experience. As Juniper Research has highlighted, rich business messaging is entering a phase of sustained global growth, with RCS in particular opening up significant new possibilities for enterprise engagement and monetisation.

The most impactful use cases are those that build upon transactional reliability and elevate it into interaction. A simple authentication message becomes the beginning of a guided onboarding journey. A delivery notification evolves into an interactive rescheduling experience. A payment reminder turns into a secure in-message transaction. Customer care shifts from voice-heavy contact centres toward intelligent conversational automation.

The real transformation lies in orchestration - selecting the right channel, in the right context, at the right moment - while ensuring the foundational reliability of SMS remains intact.

What are the main obstacles enterprises encounter when adopting rich messaging channels, and how is HORISEN uniquely positioned to help enterprises overcome these complexities?

The greatest obstacle is fragmentation. Rich messaging offers enormous potential, but the ecosystem is technically and operationally complex. Enterprises must navigate differing channel standards, carrier requirements, regulatory frameworks across markets, sender verification processes, and fraud mitigation mechanisms, as well as integration challenges with existing enterprise systems. Without a coherent strategy, organisations often find themselves managing disconnected tools and vendors, which creates operational silos and limits scalability.

At HORISEN, we approach this differently. Our philosophy is centred around what we define as a Messaging Operating System. It spans the entire messaging value chain: from carrier-grade SMS routing, Application-to-Person (A2P), Person-to-Application (P2A), machine-to-machine (M2M) monetisation, number intelligence, MNP, and signalling infrastructure to omnichannel business messaging and conversational engagement. Each component is designed to function autonomously, yet all share a unified architectural logic that enables seamless interoperability, orchestration, and scalability across the ecosystem.

Because our origins are deeply rooted in telecom infrastructure, we understand that innovation must rest on stability. Scalability, compliance, fraud prevention, and monetisation cannot, however, be secondary considerations. They are structural pillars. Our modularity allows operators and enterprises to deploy only the components they require, without sacrificing interoperability. Fragmentation in messaging must be eliminated. Complexity may be inevitable, but it can - and should - be simplified for customers. That distinction is critical.

With AI reshaping the messaging ecosystem, how does HORISEN Business Messenger enable brands to harness AI-driven automation, personalisation, and optimisation at scale?

AI is becoming embedded in every layer of digital communication, but in messaging it must be implemented with discipline. We see AI operating across three interconnected dimensions: operational intelligence, conversational automation, and performance optimisation. It is not only about building smarter chatbots; it is also about how AI can enhance routing decisions, support anomaly detection, contribute to mitigating artificial traffic inflation, and continuously improve engagement performance through data-driven insights.

HORISEN Business Messenger is built to harness AI where it genuinely adds value for customers. Rather than layering intelligence superficially, our platform integrates AI-driven support directly into user workflows - for example, helping marketers craft stronger, channel-optimised messages, and enabling intelligent chatbot experiences through large language model (LLM) integration. Because AI functions inside the broader Messaging Operating System, brands can design automated conversational journeys while preserving guaranteed reach with channel fallback logic - such as an RCS interaction smoothly reverting to SMS when necessary. AI-driven insights can also help optimise content, timing, and channel selection based on real engagement signals; improving relevance and performance without placing an additional operational burden on teams. 

Importantly, AI is not a detached overlay; it operates within an infrastructure-grade environment aligned with verified identities, secure routing, compliance, and monetisation strategies. At scale, these capabilities require more than machine learning - they require trusted foundations and coherent system design.

How does HORISEN empower enterprises to deliver more personalised, context-aware customer experience across channels, and what capabilities make this possible?

True personalisation is not simply about customising content. It is about contextual orchestration. Delivering meaningful engagement requires awareness of channel availability, network intelligence, device compatibility, regulatory requirements, routing optimisation, and behavioural data - all working together in real time.

Because HORISEN connects omnichannel engagement with underlying telecom intelligence - from SMS and RCS orchestration to routing, portability, and signalling insight - we enable enterprises to make informed decisions at every interaction point. Messaging journeys can adapt dynamically based on number portability data, optimal routing paths, device capabilities, and verified sender status. Campaigns can remain synchronised across SMS, RCS, and other channels without losing operational control.

This unified architecture is central to our philosophy. By maintaining independent yet interoperable modules under one roof, we allow enterprises and operators to innovate without rebuilding their foundation each time the market evolves. Context-awareness becomes possible not through isolated tools, but through structural integration.

What major shifts do you expect to see across the business messaging landscape in 2026, and how is HORISEN innovating to lead the market into this next phase?

By 2026, we expect the business messaging landscape to move decisively toward convergence. The historical separation between telecom infrastructure and digital engagement platforms will continue to narrow. Operators and enterprises will demand environments that combine monetisation, compliance, AI, verification, and omnichannel orchestration within unified systems.

Trust will also become a defining factor. As messaging volumes increase and fraud techniques grow more sophisticated, verified and authenticated communication will be essential. Secure signalling, identity validation, and traffic transparency will differentiate serious industry players from opportunistic ones.
At the same time, AI-driven optimisation will become embedded by default. It will not be positioned as an innovation layer, but as a built-in capability of messaging infrastructure.

HORISEN is innovating along precisely these dimensions. We continue to strengthen our telecom foundations - SMS, routing intelligence, firewall protection, signalling, number intelligence - while advancing rich business messaging capabilities and AI integration within a modular framework. Our architecture ensures that innovation enhances stability rather than disrupting it.

Receiving the Gold Award for Best Business Messaging Solution is significant because it validates this architectural approach. It is also especially meaningful for us because it comes at the beginning of a milestone year, as HORISEN marks 25 years of building carrier-grade messaging technology as a pure product house. We believe the future of messaging is not about choosing between SMS and rich channels, nor between infrastructure and engagement. It is about orchestrating them coherently within a single, modular operating system.

That is the direction the market is moving - and it is the direction we have been building toward from the beginning.

With 25 years of experience, HORISEN is a pure product software house and the Home of Messaging Technology, building the complete ecosystem that messaging businesses can rely on from A to Z.

HORISEN offers modular, independent, and vendor-neutral platforms that integrate seamlessly into any system environment, enabling both wholesale and retail use cases across the entire messaging value chain. Our portfolio includes SMS Platform, Business Messenger, SS7 Platform and STP Platform, MNP Platform and MNP Lookup Service, Inventory Platform as well as SCCP Signalling and SMS Long Number Service. Trusted by leading telecom operators, MNOs, MVNOs, and messaging providers worldwide, we enable customers to start, operate, and scale successful messaging operations while we take care of the technology foundation, allowing them to focus on growth, innovation, and long-term success.

For more information on HORISEN Business Messenger, please visit the website. You can also connect with Fabrizio on LinkedIn.