The CPaaS market

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For market conditions and evolution, CPaaS stands for communication platform as a service, it's what Pareteum does.

Summary of a report from IDC:

This IDC Market Analysis Perspective presents the worldwide voice and text messaging communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) market. This market is forecast to grow from $2 billion in 2017 to $10.9 billion in 2022. The voice and text messaging CPaaS market has rapidly evolved into a mainstream segment with many companies entering the segment and adding APIs to their portfolio to leverage the tremendous interest and demand for APIs. IDC is predicting that CPaaS will continue to grow at strong CAGR of 39.2% from 2017 to 2022.

The CPaaS market has moved beyond the hype cycle and has become established a tangible force in the communications industry. The 2016–2017 IPOs and mergers involving Twilio, Nexmo, and Bandwidth provided tremendous momentum as well as new pressures on the industry. Over the next few years, the developer ranks will continue to swell, use cases will proliferate, and a new wave of enterprise beyond cloud-native companies will join the ranks of the initiated. The demand is driven by enterprise digital transformation requirements. Enterprises are engaging customers via mobile applications, providing customer support and commerce on the web, migrating internal applications, and enhancing notification applications with APIs.

The next stage of CPaaS, which can be labeled CPaaS 3.0, is already taking shape. The leaders of the core CPaaS segment such as Twilio and Nexmo have already moved beyond the basic API — functions to encompass integrated platforms that offer a suite of services that will further deconstruct the toolset. This will bring APIs to a new layer of knowledge workers beyond developers and into the C-suite and into new segments such as contact center and IoT.

Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Real-Time Communications (CPaaS), 2018

With thanks to WallstPirate!

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And a useful intro into CPaaS:

CPaaS stands for Communications Platform as a Service. A CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that enables developers to add real-time communications features to their own applications without needing to build backend infrastructure and interfaces. Traditionally, real-time communications (RTC) have taken place in applications built specifically for these functions. For example, you might use your native mobile phone app to dial your bank, but have you ever wondered why you can't video chat a representative right in your banking app? These dedicated RTC applications - the traditional phone, Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp, etc. - have been the paradigm for a long time because it's costly to build and operate a communications stack, from the real-time network infrastructure to the interfaces to common programming languages.

A CPaaS offers a complete development framework for building real-time communications features without having to build your own. This typically includes software tools, standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs), sample code, and pre-built applications. CPaaS providers also provide support and product documentation to help developers throughout the development process. Some companies also offer software development kits (SDKs) and libraries for building applications on different desktop and mobile platforms.

What is CPaaS? Communications Platform as a Service Explained

[admin]

Another intro, from Vonage:

Communications platform-as-a-service solutions (CPaaS) has essentially liberated the traditional meaning of telecommunications and extended it to developers across the globe, allowing them to incorporate powerful and easily accessible capabilities into millions of applications. As the CPaaS market evolves, the benefits of CPaaS increase, giving customers increased flexibility and options.

Just as unified communications-as-a-service experienced a surge in the marketplace, the same pattern is emerging in the CPaaS market. As [/url]The VoIP Report notes, analysts expect the market to reap $8.1 billion in 2019. Predictions also indicate that market share will pick up fairly quickly in the coming years, specifically in the enterprise market. This is just the right time to lean in, learn, and deploy the option as part of their user-experience and technology portfolio.

The questions for business leaders, then, are what this means and what organizations should do to keep their competitive edge in the swiftly changing world of business communications. 

The CPaaS Market: Communications, Context, Client-Friendly Deployment, and User Protections
At the heart of the excitement that's driving the CPaaS market is the underlying creative and competitive force that application programming interfaces (APIs) represent. As approaches and innovations around the API continue to evolve, the promise of increasingly sophisticated voice, rich media, and messaging APIs grows.

We already live in an API economy where CIOs must look beyond APIs as technology and instead build their company's business models, digital strategies and ecosystems on them.

At its core, CPaaS is about reaching the end user via apps and through desktop and mobile web experiences. That's a broad statement, but it's accurate: The addressable market for CPaaS is anyone who has broadband and an app that uses broadband. The examples below illustrate the ways in which enterprises are already building deep and dynamic connectivity:

• Dynamic communications: CPaaS enables virtually seamless and option-rich communications. A user might start an in-office text message conversation with a client that then moves to the car as he or she departs for the next meeting across town. The very same conversation can switch from the text-based format to a call, and then pick up again as a video interface when both parties are in places where they'd like to add a face-to-face element to the conversation. And all this happens with a swipe or tap. A core value of the [url=https://www.vonage.com/business/advantage/innovation/]CPaaS experience is that it never requires either of the users to switch applications.
  

• Context-forward interactions: Personalized experiences are table stakes in the business communications marketplace. That doesn't make them any less valuable, it just means that providing them is now the backdrop for the user experience. Any customer interaction is now expected to be rich with moments that reflect the wants and needs of the individual. CPaaS leans into this expectation, empowering the enterprise to see ticket histories, cart contents, visit logs, and more. The added dynamic capabilities — media flexibility, location agnostic and seamless transfers of the conversation between formats - these features elevate CPaaS to a personalized ecosystem that delivers far beyond the table-stake expectations with which business now works.
  

• Simplified deployment: Communications technology projects can rise and fall along the path to implementation. Simplicity and speed make for successful deployments. As such, CPaaS puts all the solutions it delivers into play without the client having to build each component. The cloud-based environment provides both an IT-light ecosystem and vendor support after enterprise leadership throws the switch. When a solution includes a software development kit of its own, the CPaaS system also allows the organization to build, expand, and flex along with its evolving business needs. Each of these factors allows an enterprise to make the case for CPaaS with confidence that the transition phase will inspire confidence in turn.
  
• User protection is at the heart of CPaaS: Another factor that has sparked the surge in popularity and adoption within the CPaaS market is the technology's focus on authentication and identity protection. CPaaS users are assured of virtual phone numbers that drive identity-safe connections via virtual switchboards — no names, no data. This alias feature applies to messaging as well. In today's world of security-minded services, the CPaaS experience fits squarely within the expansive realm of options and flexibility that enterprises demand.
  

As Paolo Malinverno, research vice president at Gartner, noted in a blog post, "We already live in an API economy where CIOs must look beyond APIs as technology and instead build their company's business models, digital strategies and ecosystems on them." As enterprises turn to CPaaS solutions, chief information officers can be sure they're leveraging just the models, strategies, and ecosystems that Malinverno described.

[admin]

Enterprise CPaaS spend set to quadruple to $6.7bn by 2022, estimates Juniper Research

February 20, 2018 05:00 ET | Source: CLX Communications AB (publ)


Forecast part of new Juniper and CLX Communications white paper - mapping the enterprise opportunity for CPaaS

20th February 2018, London and Stockholm: CLX Communications AB (publ) - (XSTO: CLX) has today launched a new white paper in partnership with Juniper Research that forecasts that enterprise spend on Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is set to quadruple by 2022 to $6.7bn.

According to Juniper, the value of the CPaaS market grew by 50% to more than $1.6 billion in 2017. While early CPaaS adopters have primarily been agile, disruptive, digital-first players, this is beginning to change. More established businesses are now beginning to recognize the vital role that differentiation and personalization will play in attracting and retaining consumers, with customer engagement seen as a key future battleground.

CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to quickly and easily integrate communications capabilities like voice, video, and messaging into their own applications, without needing to build backend infrastructure and interfaces. This enables them to add new capabilities such as chatbots, service agents and contact centers into their customer-facing applications with minimal effort.

The white paper, entitled 'Communications Platforms - Transforming Enterprises into Digital Innovators', provides an overview of the CPaaS market and its growth potential. In addition, the paper plots the journey from SaaS to PaaS and evidencing the effectiveness of CPaaS through various use cases. 

Robert Gerstmann, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at CLX, commented, 'We live in a hyper-connected world where we routinely engage with our friends and family using a range of voice, video and messaging technologies. Therefore, as consumers we expect to be able to engage with our chosen brands and businesses whenever, and however we like.
 
'CPaaS enables enterprises to rapidly innovate to meet consumer demand - making it easy to integrate a range of communications functions within their existing customer-facing apps and online systems.

'As our white paper with Juniper illustrates - it's no longer just the native tech businesses that are innovating through CPaaS, many established multinationals are now waking-up to the importance of omnichannel communication for attracting and engaging the customer of tomorrow.'

Dr Windsor Holden, Head of Forecasting & Consultancy, Juniper Research, added: 'The rapid pace of technological change can be a problem for the most agile of enterprises. New technologies and devices in turn spawn new patterns of demand, meaning that keeping pace, let alone future-proofing, can be a challenge.

'CPaaS offers a highly flexible solution which allows greater scalability, while reducing time-to implementation. Therefore, enterprises using CPaaS can continually evolve their customer engagement channels in line with consumer demand. This is why enterprise spend on CPaaS is set to surge in the next four years.'

Download the 'Communications Platforms - Transforming Enterprises into Digital Innovators' white paper from the CLX Communications website today.

[admin]

Top 7 CPaaS Trends to Lookout for in 2019

1. Cequens
   
2. StoryHub
   
3.  Insight
   
4. Top 7 CPaaS Trends to Lookout for in 2019
   

By Cequens Editorial Team
December 10, 2018
Insight CPaaS MEA Communication Platform

Communications-Platform-as a-Service (CPaaS) market is currently experiencing a period of exponential growth. According to IDC, enterprise spend on CPaaS is forecasted to grow from $2 billion in 2017 to $10.9 billion by 2022. Early adopters of CPaaS were typically digitally transformed enterprises that were highly agile and disruptive. However, this is starting to change as more established businesses across the globe have realized the value of embedding communication technology into digital business processes (and applications) to maintain business relevance.

For example, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council are rapidly adopting digital transformation. With a median average age of 27 (in the region), you can expect a highly flexible and integrated approach to technology across industries. In this scenario, CPaaS is a crucial driver because it enables operational efficiency, creates new opportunities to generate revenue, and improves customer engagement through differentiation and personalization.
So what else can we expect to see in the new year? Let’s take a look.

1. Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR)
Both AR and VR technologies have evolved considerably over the last few years. Today, there’s an opportunity for CPaaS vendors to leverage this technology to enhance communication experiences. The market is slowly evolving from video conferencing to video interaction, and this has created an opportunity to use AR and VR in embedded video solutions (to deliver highly immersive experiences). According to research, the global AR and VR market is expected to reach $94.4 billion by 2023. Exponential demand for these technologies will be primarily driven by retail and e-commerce sectors.
However, we can also expect to see AR and VR making an impact in the following industries:

• Customer Service
  
• Education
  
• Finance
  
• Telehealth
  

As cloud-based platforms allow both developers and citizen developers to integrate custom communications into both mobile and web-based applications, there’s a potential to drive new innovative customer experiences and business outcomes.

2. Application Programming Interface (API) Enablement in the Telecoms Ecosystem Breeds Agility
The CPaaS approach is cloud-based with APIs, so businesses don’t need to invest in costly propitiatory hardware that lacks adaptability and scalability. With the help of APIs, companies can configure and embed their own real-time communication and collaboration solutions without building any backend infrastructure. The voice and text messaging market within this niche is already mainstream, and many companies are adding APIs to their portfolio to take advantage of present interest and demand. In the digital age, it’s essential to leverage APIs to build an engagement ecosystem around a product or service. When the enterprise network is open and extensible, businesses are free to innovate and gain a competitive advantage.

3. CPaaS Goes Serverless
All the leading cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform offer serverless services. In the new year, we will also start seeing the prevalence of serverless architecture in CPaaS vendor infrastructure. Serverless environments will become a force to be reckoned with because it enables developers to build and deploy product-grade applications that help scale businesses seamlessly. This can be achieved without any operational burden as the cloud provider will be charged with maintaining the enterprise communication infrastructure.

4. Visual / Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
CPaaS vendors will make it much easier for citizen coders to build in-house applications to enhance business processes leveraging IDEs. These solutions could take the form of communication and collaboration tools that are designed for specific tasks or projects. In the MEA region, enterprises share the universal problem of attracting and retaining top tech talent. This makes it difficult to scale and diversify product portfolios to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving market. As a result, technologies such as the DIY drag and drop model now prevalent in the CPaaS industry help fill the talent gap to make companies more agile and highly adaptable. When there isn’t a need to write countless lines of code, just about anyone from HR to marketing can quickly design and deploy these applications to enhance efficiency and boost productivity.

5. Omnichannel Communication
The global A2P messaging market is forecasted to grow over the next three years. Across the MEA region, growth will be primarily driven by rising support for smartphone connections, increasing population, the use of SMS for authentication, marketing, and customer relationship management
At the same time, chat applications like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are also on the rise in enterprise communications. In fact, in some emerging markets, WhatsApp has grown into the go-to marketing tool. While SMS will continue to play an important role in business communications, it’ll be necessary for enterprises to also pay attention to other communication channels, especially social communication channels. An omnichannel model to CPaaS will demand seamless integration of applications like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp for customer interactions. This approach will also provide an opportunity for businesses to communicate with customers through their preferred communication channel.

6. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
The fourth industrial revolution will be data-driven, and this includes all the data generated by internal and external communications. Today, with the power of AI and ML, companies are well-placed to analyze and visualize the data and leverage business intelligence in real-time. A lot of CPaaS technologies already come with data and analytics capabilities. So it can be used to optimize operations, performance, and end-user experiences.

7. Chatbots
Chatbots are already projected to make a massive impact on customer service experiences. These days, we talk to machines as much as individuals working in a call center (thousands of miles away). Going forward, chatbots will become the norm as part of cloud-based communication platform vendors’ omnichannel offering. However, we still have some distance to cover as we need better conversational interfaces and smarter bots to meet the demands of various enterprise channels. CPaaS is evolving rapidly and growing exponentially across industries. As businesses and government agencies move their communication infrastructure on to the cloud, they will be well-placed to seamless reap the benefits of AI, AR, VR, ML, and big data and analytics. When companies don’t embrace cloud-based communications platforms, they risk being left behind. In the digital age, enterprises need to engage their customers according to their individual preferences, and CPaaS is the ideal platform to accommodate such an omnichannel approach.

[admin]

Yes, IoT is going to boost the number of connections by an order of magnitude, if not two..