CPaaS or Communication Platform as a Service, is something that's grown incredibly popular in recent years, driven by the demand for a more customised communications stack. With the CPaaS model, companies can use cloud-based solutions to add real-time communication features like SMS and voice to their existing applications, without having to build additional backend infrastructure.
CPaaS providers can use the latest in cloud technology to provide companies of any shape or size with the services they need to delight their customers and users. Telestax is just one of the companies responsible for leading this communication revolution. Telestax builds and delivers the ecosystem that companies need to embrace the next generation comms environment.
I caught up with Telestax to talk more about CPaaS and the changing nature of the business/consumer discussion.
Tell Us about Yourself and the Company
I had the fantastic opportunity to sit down and speak with Ivelin Ivanov, the co-founder and CEO of Telestax. He told me that he's been in the communications environment for a couple of decades now and met his other 2 co-founders within the middleware market, where they build products together over a period of around 15 years.
"We have a long history in the market, and we launched Telestax in 2011 with the aim to explore the innovation that's been happening with applications and infrastructure in communication. These days, it seems like as much as everyone has multiple modes of communication available to them, like smartphones, for instance, developers simply couldn't access real-time communication as part of their toolset."
Ivelin told me that Telestax wanted to help the people who enjoyed "breaking into the code of things" to discover new opportunities. Telestax realised that there was no simple way for mainstream developers to pull communication code into their apps, and since then they've been working on ways to raise awareness. "A lot of vendors have already started to make CPaaS available today thanks to our technology."
Are SMS and Voice the Basis of CPaaS?
While there's obviously a lot that can be accomplished with CPaaS, for many companies, the major focus appears to be on SMS and voice; I asked Ivelin whether he thought those technologies formed the foundation of CPaaS.
"I think the bigger picture is omnichannel, and there's the rise of WebRTC too. However, by far the most practical use cases are based on voice and SMS."
Ivanov went onto explain how multiple verticals are beginning to explore the CPaaS revolution. For instance, he told me that many airlines are now trying to stay ahead of problems for their customers, which means notifying people by SMS when a flight is delayed, or a gate is changed. To some extent, much of the focus of CPaaS is on improving customer and user experience (UX).
"The next wave of this functionality is giving customers a means to respond and escalate an issue with an agent that has context into the conversation."
Is It Easy to Get Involved with CPaaS?
As exciting as CPaaS appears to be on the surface, it's worth noting that any technology is only truly useful if it's accessible. There are plenty of design tools out there for people who want to start exploring CPaaS for themselves, but companies that don't have developers on board may need to look to software companies for support.
"We're beginning to see a lot of software companies supporting smaller companies. These businesses can simply roll CPaaS capabilities out as part of the updates they deliver to the businesses they serve."
