The communication environment has been in a state of transformation for a couple of years now – a trend that we’re bound to see continue in 2019. The arrival of a new year has led many communications leaders to examine the changing state of the marketplace from new perspectives as they strive to deliver competitive solutions for the months ahead.
Recently, we spoke to the CTO of leading communications company, Brightlink, Joe White. Joe shared his thoughts about the nature of the move to cloud, and the environment that modern companies may need to embrace to maintain an agile, competitive technology stack going forward.
From Cloud PBX to CPaaS
According to White, Brightlink sees Cloud PBX as a fantastic solution for many businesses. It can complete crucial tasks like provisioning phones, ordering new numbers, registering for emergency services and more, without the expense regarding time and resources. Not so long ago, it used to take days of waiting and multiple phone calls to enhance a communication system, and Cloud PBX eliminates this problem. However, just because the strategy is more straightforward, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the future of comms.
Joe told us that he believes that a solid CPaaS and cloud PBX collaboration is necessary to create a true single pane of glass experience for users. A CPaaS solution that can interact with the cloud PBX through APIs means that companies can manage all the tools they need, without having to switch between separate portals.
“Enterprises that can embrace CPaaS will transform their customer experience strategy with real-time provisioning and on-demand availability of resources and analytics.”
The Challenges of Managing CPBX without CPaaS
White believes that companies without a CPaaS strategy to support their cloud PBX will have numerous challenges to overcome. Buying, changing and deleting numbers becomes more time-consuming, as does updating CallerID details and improving emergency services. CPaaS allows teleworkers to automatically update their location, to ensure that emergency responders show up at the right place. Even porting numbers and message activation can take longer than necessary.
On the other hand, CPaaS and CPBX combinations allow for far more functionality. “CPaaS is delivering on the promise of making true machine-to-machine communications, reporting, and provisioning available for some of the biggest application platforms in the world.” Customers will be able to see what their bills look like in real-time, and track calling pattern trends that affect the business. It’s even possible to use DIDs for marketing campaigns while tracking the ROI on each medium. When it comes to provisioning new phones, devices can be pre-configured for easy set-up and drop-shipped from distributors to save on costs.
Is CPaaS Right for Everyone?
Though Joe believes that the combination of CPaaS and CPBX is crucial to the future of communications, he also recognises that there are some challenges to face. “CPaaS has begun to outpace the technology that needs it, whether it’s a PBX or a CRM application. The integration capabilities are currently not natively available in some technology. Even programs with CPaaS connectivity built into the software aren’t always platform agnostic. This means that customers are limited to a pre-determined set of CPaaS providers. It restricts the end user’s ability to innovate with new capabilities and platforms.”
According to White, it’s time for today’s CPaaS dependant software to begin including easily accessible JSON and REST interfaces, so that customers can see what’s truly possible. As the link between CPaaS and CPBX evolves;
“CPaaS platforms will allow enterprise customers and application developers to access a powerful, robust, and global toolbox that has never before been so easily available.”
