BluIP Positions AI-First Overlay and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Communications Platform for Industry-Specific Needs
In an analyst conversation, Steven Norris, VP of Business Development at BluIP, outlined the company’s evolution from a telecom carrier into an AI-first and agent-to-agent (A2A) communications provider. Today, BluIP positions itself as a vendor with a vertical focus, integrating cloud PBX, contact center, and system-aware AI automation, with strong traction in hospitality, healthcare, government, and distributed enterprises.
Hospitality remains BluIP’s strongest vertical, with over 750 hotel resorts (from 300 room hotels to 3,700 room casino resorts). The company has now also expanded into healthcare (with clients such as Cedars-Sinai), into state government (including the State of Arkansas), and into distributed retail and food service chains (such as PF Chang’s). AI use cases vary by sector: in hospitality, applications range from pre-book to post-stay guest engagement, while in healthcare the focus is on patient engagement.
Overlaying BluIP’s cloud solution stack (cloud PBX, contact center, and telecom) is its AIVA Connect Platform. The platform is comprised of an AI virtual assistant (hence the acronym, AIVA), its Connect Studio (low-code/no code integrations and workflow automation design environment), and its Connect Console (the interface for agents and operators). AIVA Connect is designed to be omnichannel (voice, SMS, chat, social), A2A, and system-aware; the solution uses caller data (phone number and SMS, for example) with real-time application integrations to deliver more personalized and contextual automation.
The AIVA Connect Studio is what enables BluIP partners and end business users to customize workflows and integrate with in-house systems. With more than 2,600 prebuilt integrations and hundreds of propriety hospitality/healthcare integrations, enterprises can also create, customize, implement, and monitor agentic AI workflow automations directly to their core business processes. For example, a hotel can greet a guest by name, confirm a booking, and suggest an upgrade; a healthcare provider can securely confirm appointments; and a retailer can streamline call routing across locations.
Image: Workflow building in AIVA Connect Console. Source: Thomas Randall, screen shot
The recent release of AIVA 3.0 introduced agentic AI capabilities, allowing organizations to build omnichannel virtual agents that go beyond answering questions to perform actions such as booking reservations, escalating urgent issues, or processing payments. AIVA Connect’s multi-LLM architecture provides flexibility to select different AI and speech technologies and A2A capabilities, so clients can avoid being locked into a single LLM provider. AIVA 3.0 is in Beta, with a GA date of November 1st, 2025.
Image: Agentic AI workflow building in AIVA 3.0 Studio that would “call” AIVA Connect Integration Studio system integration. Source: Steven Norris, VP of Business Development at BluIP.
Security and compliance remain central to BluIP’s design philosophy. The platform supports SOC 2, PCI, and HIPAA standards, with safeguards to ensure sensitive data is not exposed to LLMs. Built-in monitoring and testing further strengthen governance, giving CIOs visibility and control over AI-enabled customer interactions.
BluIP delivers solutions both directly and through partners, including integration with NiCE’s and Cisco’s contact center offerings. BluIP’s roadmap emphasizes making all integrations “agentic AI ready,” enabling AI agents to act across enterprise systems via a unified bus, A2A protocol, or MCP wrapper. Around 30% of BluIP’s workforce is dedicated to software development, and the company maintains visibility at industry events as part of its AI-first strategy.
Our Take
BluIP’s repositioning from telecom carrier to AI-first orchestration provider reflects the significant shifts taking place across the communications industry. The market is moving beyond connectivity and into automation that is context-aware, compliant, and embedded within business workflows. BluIP’s strength lies in its vertical orientation and integration depth. Specifically, AIVA Connect is a digital agent framework that draws on enterprise applications and caller data to handle transactions such as booking confirmations, escalations, and payments. This model is particularly well aligned with the needs of hospitality, healthcare, and government organizations, where customer engagement is both operationally intensive and subject to compliance requirements.
The business case for BluIP is reinforced by its breadth of prebuilt integrations and its low-code/no-code studio. By embedding AI into existing business applications, BluIP lowers the disruption of adoption. CIOs often face resistance to large-scale platform migrations; BluIP’s approach positions automation as additive rather than replacement-based, which can accelerate time-to-value. BluIP’s ability to reduce onboarding times from days to minutes provides evidence of operational maturity that goes beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations.
BluIP is best considered by prospective customers at specific organizational inflection points. End of incumbent contracts, vendor end-of-life announcements, or forced migrations are natural opportunities to reevaluate the communications stack. Enterprises undertaking digital transformation projects focused on customer journey redesign, patient engagement, or distributed service expansion will find BluIP’s orchestration layer particularly relevant, as it can unify fragmented systems into an AI-enabled experience without wholesale re-architecture. Compliance pressures can also shift the business case: If regulatory obligations expose weaknesses in an incumbent’s governance, BluIP’s risk-first design philosophy could justify consideration.
At the same time, BluIP operates in a competitive market. Larger UCaaS and CCaaS providers are rapidly embedding agentic AI into their platforms, backed by global reach, deeper ecosystems, and larger R&D budgets. BluIP’s focus on multi-LLM flexibility and vertical templates differentiates it in the near term, but CIOs must assess whether its innovation trajectory can be sustained against better-capitalized rivals. CIOs pursuing a platform standardization strategy that consolidates around Microsoft Teams, Cisco, Genesys, or Zoom may prefer to extend AI from those strategic partners. Moreover, if the incumbent already offers a credible AI roadmap and is delivering measurable outcomes, the incremental benefit of BluIP may not justify the cost and disruption of migration. Yet, given there will be no one AI solution that enterprises use, BluIP could be the right fit for a particular AI domain as A2A is more broadly implemented.
BluIP represents a specialist, vertically attuned alternative in the communications market. It offers the most value to enterprises that need contextual, compliance-ready automation tightly integrated with industry applications and that face decision points where adopting a new orchestration layer is feasible. For CIOs whose priorities are rapid ROI in high-touch workflows and flexibility in AI vendor choice, BluIP deserves a place on the shortlist. For organizations that are committed to ecosystem consolidation, in need of global scale, or already seeing strong AI traction with incumbents, BluIP will be a less compelling option.