Cisco purchased Tropo, a cloud API platform, in 2015. As a platform that enables customers and developers to embed real-time communications within their applications, this was Cisco's first venture into CPaaS. At the time, Tropo provided voice and SMS APIs as standard across both cloud phone systems and legacy on-premises setups. Since then, Cisco has been hot on the acquisition trail. Most recently, Cisco acquired security company, Duo, and more notably UC giant, BroadSoft. With a cloud API platform under their belt, as well as arguably the biggest name in cloud voice, I took a look at what Cisco was doing with Tropo to see if the Cisco/BroadSoft/Tropo powerhouse could be the next best thing (or better) to Twilio.
Cisco Focus
Hilton Romanski, then SVP and Chief Strategy Officer for Cisco, wrote in a blog:
"The need for next-generation communications and collaboration platforms with modern, easy-to-use APIs is more important than ever".
In the comments, I stumbled across a comment from former colleague Amit Khanna, Product Specialist at babblecloud. He asked:
"Look forward to seeing how this ties up with Spark & Jabber. Or does it cannibalise?"
This was back in 2015, of course, but was a great question. Cisco didn't reply and nearly 5 years on, the question hasn't aged well. Cisco Spark has become Cisco Webex Teams. Jabber only exists in an on-premises capacity - seemingly Tropo is of no use here. Everything that has happened since points towards collaboration in the form of UCaaS as the major focus for Cisco.
What happened to Cisco Tropo?
As I looked further into what had happened with Cisco Tropo, it soon became clear that I wasn't the only writer looking for details. One blog summarised "Another One Bites The Dust" as Cisco Tropo was closing the door to new customers. The blog goes on to suggest that Cisco had shifted their focus and investment solely to UCaaS - but would add their CPaaS offering as a layer on top of the UCaaS solution.
