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Nic Laschinger

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Nic Laschinger

Chief Technology Officer & Director, Euphoria Telecom

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Technical product architect leading Euphoria's development team — building telephony that's simple to use, serious under the hood, and ready for whatever's next.

When I'm not at work

Beyond the desk

Cycling Guitar Gaming

In my own words

What I think about the platform & the future

What's your job, in one sentence?

Build a telephony platform South African businesses can rely on without thinking about it — and keep it ahead of where the market is heading. Strategy, architecture, performance, security, and a roadmap that earns its keep.

Where do you actually use AI in the product?

Where it makes a real difference for customers — analytics, anomaly detection, voice fraud protection, and tooling that takes load off contact centre teams. AI should serve the customer and the operator, not show off. If it doesn't make the human side of work better, it doesn't ship.

What's the biggest misconception about cloud telephony?

That it's commoditised. The category looks the same on the outside, but the platforms underneath are wildly different — uptime, integrations, voice quality, fraud protection, the way features actually compose. That's where the real differentiation lives.

What are you most excited about right now?

The bit of the roadmap that ties AI, smarter analytics and deeper integrations together — so the product gets quietly more useful every quarter without becoming harder to use. Easy on the surface, serious underneath.

Behind the role

Architect of the platform

I'm CTO and a director at Euphoria Telecom — a technical product architect by trade, an entrepreneur by habit, and the person responsible for the platform thousands of South African businesses run their phones on every day.

Building telephony platforms since 2005.

I've been in tech entrepreneurship since 2005 — founding The Next Big Thing, SagacIT and VoIP Telephony along the way, and serving as CTO and co-founder at Fat Budgie before going on to lead technology at Fleek, a cloud-telephony business for small and medium enterprises.

It's a path that taught me one thing above all: great telephony products aren't won at the marketing layer or the pricing layer. They're won at the engineering layer — in the parts customers never see.

In the office at Euphoria Telecom.
In the office at Euphoria Telecom.

Heading up Euphoria's development team.

At Euphoria my job is to set the technology strategy and direction — and to make sure the platform stays ahead of where the market is going. That means better availability of information, more efficient ICT infrastructure, sharper performance, and a roadmap that genuinely makes our customers' lives easier rather than just adding features for the sake of it.

It also means using technology to mitigate risk for the business and the businesses we serve. The product we ship has to be reliable, secure and easy to live with. Anything else is a liability dressed up as a feature.

On AI, remote work and what's next.

I've been writing and speaking about AI in telephony for a while now — what's overhyped, what's genuinely useful, and what businesses should be paying attention to. My view is that AI earns its place when it makes the human side of work better, not when it tries to replace it.

Same goes for remote and distributed work. Making a business remote-capable technically isn't the same as making it remote-ready. The human aspect is the part most companies under-estimate — and the part the right technology has to support, not undermine.

Featured work

Nic in the press & on the blog

Press features and blog pieces where I weigh in on AI, cloud telephony, remote work and what's actually changing in business communications.

Press ITWeb

Lockdown diary: Nic Laschinger, Euphoria Telecom

On remote-capable vs. remote-ready businesses — and why technology only solves half the problem.

Read the article
Press MyOffice News

Non-geographic number porting is here

What non-geographic number porting means for South African businesses, and why it matters now.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

When hearing is no longer believing: The threat of AI voice fraud

Why AI voice fraud is the threat South African businesses should be paying attention to — and how to protect against it.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

Truth about AI threat to call centres

Cutting through the hype: where AI genuinely changes the contact centre, and where it doesn't.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

Should you ditch your business phone for Zoom or Teams?

Why a real business phone system still beats a meeting tool when it comes to running a business.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

How to take your deskphone with you, everywhere you go

Cloud telephony, mobile extensions and what real phone-system mobility actually looks like.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

2023 Tech Trends: Experience Focus

The tech trends most likely to shape SA business communications — with experience taking the lead.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

Euphoria Telecom's legacy of innovation continues under new management

On the leadership transition at Euphoria — and the technical roadmap behind the next chapter.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

Euphoria On Air: eTV's The Morning Show

On the eTV Morning Show couch talking cloud telephony, AI and the future of work.

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Blog Euphoria Blog

A decade of savings for SMEs

Ten years of delivering meaningful telephony savings to South African small and medium businesses.

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Watch

Nic in the news

Did you know?

Euphoria Telecom has been in operation since 2010 and our very first customer – Altech Isis – is still with us 16 years later on a month-to-month contract.

Established 2010 Developed in South Africa

Refer Euphoria Telecom and get a R1000 voucher from Takealot

Refer Euphoria Telecom and get a R1000 Takealot voucher

Refer a business to Euphoria Telecom and get a R1,000 Takealot voucher if they sign up. This offer is available to customers and non-customers alike.

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