The hybridisation of communication solutions gives enterprises a range of options to streamline and strengthen communications experiences for customers and employees. But the blurring lines between one offering and the next also can make finding the right solution more challenging.
CPaaS (communications platform as a service) or UCaaS (unified communications as a service)? How might managed network services, such as a managed SD-WAN and/or a security solution, fit into the mix? And what about CCaaS (contact center as a service)? Navigating the alphabet soup of options to identify the appropriate combination of communications products, features, services and support can indeed be a frustrating undertaking. Today in particular, we come across more IT decision-makers struggling to choose between CPaaS and managed, cloud-based unified communications as a service, or UCaaS. They know their organisation needs to deliver a communications experience that is robust, secure, scalable, and seamless to users and, of course, cost-effective to operate. They have been told that both CPaaS and UCaaS can provide all that. So which option is best?
The answer: It depends — on your organisation’s strategic priorities, in-house capabilities, cost sensitivity, appetite for troubleshooting and other factors.
To help your organisation answer the “CPaaS or managed cloud UC?” question, let’s look at the types of businesses that tend to profile best for each.
Your organisation might be best suited for CPaaS… If it has a hands-on, do-it-yourself development mindset, legacy apps it wants to preserve and enhance going forward, and a preference for control and customisation; if that mindset is backed by a skilled, well-resourced in-house development team and leadership that is committed to continuing to resource that development team; and if that IT team has the capability and capacity to mobilise for network troubleshooting/emergency response.
There’s a good reason spending on CPaaS is projected to grow from $2 billion just a few years ago, in 2017, to $10.9 billion in 2022, according to IDC: It gives businesses a cloud-based framework to integrate various real-time communications capabilities, from voice and video to instant messaging and online chat, into existing applications, without having to build additional backend infrastructure, plus the flexibility to add other communications tools to enrich the employee and customer experience. CPaaS platforms typically come with open software development kits, standards-based APIs, sample code, pre-built applications and other tools for internal development teams to use to customise communications systems and the apps that run on them. CPaaS is also appealing because it can run on top of most existing communications systems and stacks.
The responsibility for configuring, coding, integrating, maintaining and troubleshooting all this, and for managing and meshing relationships with the multiple third-party vendors that may be involved, comes down to the enterprise itself and its IT teams. That’s just fine for some businesses because of the extra level of control they get in creating and overseeing their own customised communications systems.
However, not all businesses have the internal capabilities, appetite or wherewithal to assume all those responsibilities, and to execute them well, and may be better off with a managed solution.
