At this year's Cloud Comms Summit USA 2019, I had the opportunity to speak with many leaders in the communication and collaboration space. I was also able to attend several discussions offering an insight into the trending technology of the UC space. One particularly interesting panel hosted by Fazil Balkaya, discussed the concept of driving enterprise consumption of APIs. Fazil is an Analyst & Consultant for Cavell Group.
Fazil brought together speakers from Voxbone, Ribbon Communications, Bandwidth, Vonage, and AT&T to discuss CPaaS, and API integration. Following the panel, I was keen to get Fazil's behind-the-scenes insights on the API environment, how new solutions like CPaaS are changing the way that enterprises access new technology and how providers today approaching delivery .
How is the API and CPaaS Market Growing?
In his panel, Fazil drew attention to the fact that the CPaaS market has been growing over 40% year-over-year and in Q2’19 only, CPaaS market has experienced a double digit QoQ growth, and CPaaS market is bound to exceed $2 Billion in 2019. However, the APIs that we know and use today are very different to anything that service providers have had access to before. Balkaya told me that APIs as we know them today are often described as "CPaaS", but different people identify CPaaS in different ways.
Some firms see CPaaS as telecommunications offerings that have been bundled into a consumable, cloud subscription-based model with APIs. "However, CPaaS doesn't have to be limited to telecommunications alone. It can also include other digital tools and applications too, like WhatsApp, e-mail and collaboration streams."
Crucially, the full range of representatives that Fazil brought with him into his panel showed that there are many different ways to deliver APIs and CPaaS in the current market. The fact that there's so much flexibility in this space makes it difficult to everyone to agree on how companies can go about driving adoption for this technology.
What Kind of Different Providers Do We Have Today?
Each company offering CPaaS and APIs in the communications space today seems to have its own unique approach on how to make the most of the technology. The approach of a business like Twilio is very different to the approach you get from a brand like RingCentral. For instance, RingCentral is using APIs to help customers access a range of tools like RingCentral Office. As Fazil told me:
"RingCentral isn't taking a consumption-based approach, and this might be a good thing for them. If they were trying to go consumption based, they would potentially end up cannabilising their existing business offerings. RingCentral would need to go to market with a SMS only or SIP Trunking oriented packages if they wanted to implement CPaaS, which they don't have yet. On the other hand, 8x8 and other brands are competing directly with Twilio and Vonage on a more consumption-based model."
Balkaya also noted that there are other models out there too, like the kind of CPaaS and API solutions brought to market by Bandwidth. "The typical go-to-market option for Bandwidth targets service providers, and the company is focusing on complementing the offerings of existing SPs with APIs. They're not necessarily a direct-enterprise play, although they are adding SMS and other tools to existing offerings. Now that Bandwidth are starting to explore the enterprise more, they will be competing more with Twilio and Nexmo, which highlights how competitive this space is."
Alternatively, there's also the Vonage API platform (formally Nexmo), which is deeply integrated with Vonage’s other products such as the UCaaS offerings where Vonage utilises CPaaS to enhance their offerings such as embedding TokBox video into UCaaS and penetrating countries who still have a tendency for Premise based PBXs, mainly in APAC. Vonage was among the first to realise the UCaaS & CPaaS opportunity... Voxbone is helping UCaaS providers with their global network and taking yet another go-to-market approach for APIs.
