I spoke with Tsahi Levent-Levi, a WebRTC, CPaaS, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence Analyst based in Israel. He gave me his take on why Twilio is dominating the CPaaS market. He told me because they were one of the first in the CPaaS market, they pretty much have perfected the model.
“This, paired with the fact that they now have massive brand recognition and that they have not changed much, makes them a strong CPaaS contender”
For the past 20 years, Levent-Levi’s focused on communications software development as an engineer, manager, marketer, and CTO. Today, he told me that he: “Assists enterprises in simplifying communication technologies.” Levent-Levi said he does so by “Creating effective solutions” through two of his ventures, BlogGeek.me, and as Co-founder/CEO of testRTC, a company that focuses on testing and monitoring WebRTC applications.
Twilio Stayed Focused on the Developer Experience
If you go back ten years, there were two major players in the then-budding CPaaS space, according to Levent-Levi. Tropo and Twilio. While Tropo got acquired by Cisco, the company changed its focus and decided to shy away from enhancing the developer experience.
Twilio on the other hand, stayed steadfast on improving the developer experience and ended up where it is today. “When Tropo shifted its focus from developers to carriers, it got acquired by Cisco. It also got them to shut down, while Twilio continued its path to where it stands today,” he added.
It is Twilio’s focus in four principal areas, according to Levent-Levi, you can attribute to its success in the CPaaS arena. Contact centers, two-factor authentication, bots/automation, and omnichannel, he told me during our interview.
Twilio, the Competition and the Competetive Advantage
Levent-Levi also said, companies that use Twilio, shift their core focus from telecoms to something else, and that can be user experience. Levent-Levi argued, just because a company uses Twilio does not ensure they will automatically have a “better user experience.” It does, however, enable developers to spend time on enhancing CX using Twilio APIs.
So, does Twilio have any real competition? Levent-Levi says no, and told me, they likely do not look at others as real competition either, just the mega brands with big spending power.
“Twilio does not consider those who see themselves as competition to be actual competition. I do believe companies like Microsoft and Amazon worry Twilio more than the rest of the CPaaS market, though”
He added, if Amazon goes out and buys a Twilio competitor, this could make Twilio worry a lot more than they have in the past. Another reason for Twilio’s domination in the CPaaS space, at least according to Levent-Levi, none of its competitors have the engineering power of Twilio, nor can they churn out the number of features Twilio can. This gives them a headstart and lets Twilio get there faster than the competition.
For now, Twilio will likely continue its domination in the CPaaS space well into the future but the threat of another tech giant entering the CPaaS market probably somewhat worries the folks at Twilio.
