The “as a service” deployment strategy is growing increasingly popular throughout the communication and technology market today, as companies search for cost-effective and scalable approaches to business. One particularly compelling option is Communications Platforms as a Service (/unified-communications/cpaas), which allows organisations to build the services they need most on top of their existing communications infrastructure.
We had the fantastic opportunity to speak with Brightlink, a company founded in 2009, and built on the quest to create more innovative and intuitive communications solutions, about the rise of their industry-leading CPaaS platform and cloud-based services. Brightlink is currently responsible for powering more than 30 billion communication transactions worldwide, through voice, messaging and more.
Tell Us About Yourself and Brightlink
We were honoured to sit down and speak with Rob Chen, the new CEO of Brightlink. He told us that Brightlink is the only communications technology company that delivers value across the entire technology stack for customers, including applications, network services, and CPaaS. Brightlink supports customers of all sizes around the world, with exceptional levels of performance, scalability, and reliability.
“At the integration tier, we offer our powerful communication capabilities through our CPaaS platforms; then we have applications that we offer to SMBs and our industry-leading network services.”
Rob Chen joined Brightlink in May of this year, after years working for various brands within technology, from CRM to fin-tech, to hr tech. “I’ve looked at technology from a number of angles, across multiple segments, and I’m personally a big believer in the power that technology has to change the world.”
Where Did the Business Begin and What Does it Focus on Now?
Rob told me that Brightlink has evolved a lot over the years, and it’s his job to draw out the next wave of growth for the company, focusing on the new capabilities they believe they can bring to every layer. “We have our roots in the network services for voice, and messaging is something we’ve done for quite some time too. In the past year or so, we’ve really expanded our deliveries in the applications area too”.
Rob told me that Brightlink offers a good mixture of different things to their customers. They still provide fantastic network services at the infrastructure level to some huge companies, and they have a wide range of CPaaS and applications offering too. The plan for Brightlink is to continue growing as the only communication company that can offer exceptional support at every level of the comms technology stack.
“We’re really excited about the growth we’re seeing at every level.”
Why is CPaaS So Popular Today?
I asked Chen why he thinks that CPaaS is such a popular solution in the modern marketplace. He told me that in this “interconnected world” of countless people and devices working as one, communication is the only real mechanism for unlocking and delivering value. “CPaaS is a way for people to access the robust capabilities that they couldn’t tap into before. It’s all about allowing them to unlock value and discover how new communications solutions can change the way you do business.”
One of the trends that Rob has noticed in the Brightlink CPaaS space is the demand for more text-focused solutions. “Text is the default communication mechanism for many younger customers – particularly the millennial generation. There’s a lot of use cases for us where people want to be able to communicate through text, but they’re not sure whether text is enabled on a specific line. We offer a service where you can enable texting to any line. This means that customer communications and opportunities aren’t just getting lost in the ether.”
What are the Challenges You’ve Seen in the Industry?
When I asked Rob to tell me about the challenges that Brightlink is currently seeing in the industry, he told me that he thinks there are more opportunities than challenges. “There are more communication capabilities of every type in the marketplace today, and there’s more demand from people who want to explore the communication available to their business.”
Rob told me that one issue is that at the mainstream level, many companies still don’t know how to take advantage of the new communication opportunities available to them. “I don’t think the average SMB is aware of how to take advantage of these technologies. The challenge and opportunity for us is to raise both awareness and accessibility for these new functionalities.”
One of the ways that Brightlink makes new technology more accessible is to work with distribution partners that are already trusted by smaller businesses in the marketplace. “We have a lot of value-added resellers in different geographies that can distribute new systems to our customers.”
Do You Think CPaaS is for Large Enterprises or Can it Appeal to Smaller Businesses?
In Rob’s opinion, today’s companies are looking for solutions to their problems. “I think CPaaS is something that can scale from the largest companies to the smallest, but the way to do it is by finding meaningful solutions and addressing specific needs in the marketplace.”
Rob told me that he spent over a decade in Silicon Valley, and he learned that it’s important to look at things from an “out of the valley” perspective sometimes. “I think you need to take a broader view and examine things from the perspective of the everyday end user on main street. It’s about working backward from the problems that end-users are trying to solve, and there are a lot of great companies in Silicon Valley that do this very well, and not just focus on innovation for innovation’s sake.”
What’s Coming Up for Brightlink?
Rob told me that Brightlink is very excited to be announcing some new capabilities in their CPaaS solution. A fall release of new services will include various updates to the Brightlink platform, intended to boost customer experience (CX) from the infrastructure level with their messaging and voice services, all the way through to the CPaaS integration layer.
“The number one thing for me is looking into new avenues of growth, and I’m excited to see our business and capabilities growing through all three layers of the technology stack.”
Just some of the things that Brightlink will be exploring in the months ahead include:
- Increasing the capacity of their voice network by 50%
- Expanding their wireless direct inward dialing capabilities
- Enabling the activation of toll-free numbers
- Developing new content filtering capabilities to block out real-time Spam and SMS Spam
