The CF List: 2023's 20 Top CPaaS Providers You Should Know
CPaaS remains a large and lucrative market that will continue to grow through 2023.
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A year ago, Frost and Sullivan’s Michael Brandenburg said Avaya was doing well for a company that “everybody thought would just go away.” A lot has happened since then, with the company now potentially facing a second chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its unknown and uncertain future makes it a top provider to watch.
Brandenburg said Avaya’s CPaaS has been a “shining star” in its portfolio. It was the company’s path forward and still could be.
Brandenburg said RingCentral stands out among CPaaS providers because it’s offering an alternative to Vonage, Twilio and other more established providers in terms of pricing models and integrations.
“RingCentral was a dark horse,” he said. “They’re perpetually hungry, but they’ve been really considerate on how they get into the API space and how it fits with their customers. From my perspective, they’ve been rather stealthily gaining a developer community and really growing the CPaaS side of their business to complement the UCaaS and CCaaS platforms they have.”
S&P Global’s Raul Castanon said he’s keeping an eye on Gupshup. It’s a conversational messaging platform that helps businesses engage with customers across 30-plus messaging channels across commerce, marketing and support.
Omdia’s Roy Illsley said the best CPaaS solutions are the ones “you just click on the invite and it works.”
“The worst ones are if the original invite gets masked by your current default tool and you get multiple links,” he said. “Like a Webex invite sent to a Teams user, the Teams software inserts it into the calendar with a Teams link, but that will not work.”
Headquartered in Singapore and founded in 2017, vCloudx develops and manages EnableX, a CPaaS platform supporting a wide range of customers in Europe, Latin America, North America and Southeast Asia. Castanon said this is a younger provider he’s keeping an eye on.
“Everybody’s focused on getting better at what they’re good at,” Brandenburg said.
Alcatel Lucent Enterprise (ALE) has a long trajectory in networking, connectivity and enterprise communications, Castanon said. This allows it to provide a comprehensive CPaaS approach for the digitization of the enterprise.
In November, ALE launched Purple on Demand, a subscription-based commercial offer aimed at delivering secure business communications to end customers in a private environment.
Vonage has a long trajectory in CPaaS, Castanon said. Its acquisition by Ericsson has the potential to disrupt the market, given Ericsson’s work with communications service providers. Ericsson completed its $6.2 billion acquisition of Vonage last summer.
Ericsson’s strategy is to grow its mobile network business and expand into the enterprise market now that it has access to Vonage’s UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS offerings.
Plivo can be considered among the pioneers for CPaaS and continues to innovate, with novel approaches such as multicloud CPaaS, which can be instrumental for enterprises looking to address challenges related to resiliency, scalability, global coverage and regional regulation requirements, Castanon said.
Plivo is driving innovation in its solution to make CPaaS and programmable communications more accessible to business users, channel partners and non-developers, Brandenburg said.
Braidio initially emerged as a partner for Kandy and has expanded with additional partnerships, evolving to become a CPaaS enabler for communication service providers. Castanon said this is a younger provider he’s keeping an eye on.
“The modern technology stack builds and expands on transactional voice and messaging, with advanced capabilities such as conversational AI and the use of programmable voice in multiple languages and global availability,” he said. “Additionally, enabling safe and trusted customer interactions with the use of digital identity technology will become increasingly relevant and an important differentiation for CPaaS providers.”
Brandenburg said Twilio remains the most recognizable competitor in the space and stands out with its strength on both the growth and innovation indices on Frost & Sullivan’s CPaaS Radar.
“Twilio remains a benchmark for the industry as an industry pioneer and one of the largest global providers with a strong record in innovation,” Castanon said.
Kaleyra has steadily expanded its portfolio and market footprint through a series of strategic acquisitions over the past five years, and is making strides as a global provider of trusted communications, offering its customers a range of services to reach and engage their customers effectively, while maintaining safer data privacy practices and permission-based communication, Castanon said.
Another CPaaS pioneer, Infobip has evolved into one of the largest global providers, expanding its offering beyond application-to-person (A2P) messaging to develop a comprehensive, full-stack CPaaS comprising security, AI-enabled capabilities, payments and conversational commerce, Castanon said.
Brandenburg said 8×8 is a pioneer in VoIP. 8×8 ranks among the top North American hosted IP telephony and UCaaS providers in terms of installed users.
8×8 Connect Automation Builder is a no-code, multiple-channel communications management solution allowing a variety of user roles in organizations to build engaging customer experiences.
Microsoft is a relative newcomer in this category, Castanon said. However, given its trajectory and extensive market footprint in business communications and productivity, its CPaaS offering, Azure Communications Services, is positioned to become a major player and potentially, a disruptor in the space.
2600Hz has a comprehensive go-to-market (GTM) approach that includes enabling communication service providers to deliver API-based enterprise communications, Castanon said. Its cloud communications platform Kazoo modernizes how businesses provide communications services to their customers. Kazoo offers feature-rich UCaaS, CPaaS and CCaaS solutions.
Cisco Webex Connect is the company’s CPaaS platform, which evolved from its acquisition of IMImobile and now integrates with its customer experience offerings, Castanon said.
“In a way, Cisco was kind of a new launch in how it fits into its portfolio,” Brandenburg said. “They’re growing that segment of the business and tying that into their broader platform.”
Infinite Convergence launched a CPaaS offering based on its Netsfere secure communications platform, Castanon said. Though still a relative newcomer, the company has a long history as a provider of mobile messaging technology for enterprises and telcos.
Last October, Infinite Convergence launched SecureMeet, a virtual meeting experience. Through SecureMeet, users can safely host virtual meetings with both NetSfere users and external guests, allowing different organizations to communicate while maintaining the security and control NetSfere brings across its existing encrypted communication platform. This eliminates any worry of “Zoom bombing” and other phishing risks associated with virtual meetings.
Nylas is positioned as a CPaaS contender and differentiates based on its email and calendar integration capabilities, Castanon said. Nylas’ communications platform gives developers universal access to email, calendar and contact providers through a single integration.
Telesign sits at the intersection of digital identity and CPaaS, Castanon said. Its programmable voice and messaging communications API products coupled with its digital identity technology enable organizations and developers to build secure A2P, person-to-application (P2A), and person-to-person (P2P) communications into their web and mobile applications, allowing them to provide safe and trusted customer interactions.
“Telesign has the communications platform capabilities, but they’re really leading into digital identity and kind of pushing the envelope of two-factor authentication and biometrics, and preventing SIM swapping and things like that,” Brandenburg said. “They’re getting really good at that part of the market, and growing both the digital identity and adding their core CPaaS capabilities as part of it. And I think they’re making the bigger guys respond with broader identity solutions.”
Based in South Africa, SMSPortal initially emerged from a business focused on marketing events and has evolved to become the largest cloud communications specialist provider in Africa, Castanon said. It helps organizations enable digital marketing and customer engagement initiatives.
IntelePeer is driving innovation in its solution to make CPaaS and programmable communications more accessible to business users, channel partners and non-developers, Brandenburg said. Its platform is a workflow communications engine that provides management for voice automation, messaging, AI, analytics and the tools to help businesses tailor their customer engagement without requiring developer resources.
IntelePeer is driving innovation in its solution to make CPaaS and programmable communications more accessible to business users, channel partners and non-developers, Brandenburg said. Its platform is a workflow communications engine that provides management for voice automation, messaging, AI, analytics and the tools to help businesses tailor their customer engagement without requiring developer resources.
For communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) providers, the market remains strong and is growing despite ongoing economic uncertainty.
CPaaS platforms can include a number of services. Those include messaging technologies such as texting, rich communication services (RCS) and over-the-top (OTT) messaging applications.
Our latest CF List focuses on CPaaS providers. Analysts shared their views on what it takes to succeed with the technology. It includes an updated list and fresh views on changes in the CPaaS market.
CPaaS Providers Face Strong Market Through 2023
Raul Castanon is senior research analyst with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.
451 Research’s Raul Castanon
“Despite the near-to mid-term headwinds brought on by macroeconomic factors, CPaaS remains a large and lucrative market that will continue to grow through 2023, given the focus on the user experience that is driving adoption for embedded real-time communications for employee-and customer-interfacing interactions,” he said. “According to our 451 Research/S&P Global Market Intelligence CPaaS Market Monitor, this segment is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% through 2026.”
CPaaS has evolved beyond its early definition in terms of PSTN connectivity with advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled capabilities, IP-based services and the broad range of digital channels now available, Castanon said.
“With transactional voice and messaging use cases now table stakes for CPaaS vendors, cutting-edge CPaaS providers are looking to differentiate with support for more complex customer engagement use cases,” he said.
Changing CPaaS Use Cases
Michael Brandenburg is senior industry analyst of connected work at Frost & Sullivan. He said CPaaS use cases have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic has waned.
Frost and Sullivan’s Michael Brandenburg
“During the pandemic, there were a lot of health care use cases for not only video, but messaging, appointment notifications and vaccine reminders, things like that, while other markets like hospitality were down,” he said. “So you were getting a vaccine reminder rather than an airline confirmation or tap here to check in on your hotel. I think overall consumption is up, but it’s the use cases that are kind of shifting based on demand.”
The global CPaaS market is in a high-growth stage, with many of the contenders in the market reporting high annual double-digit growth rates, Brandenburg said. The companies represented on the latest Frost & Sullivan CPaaS Radar added about $7.6 billion of revenue into the CPaaS market in 2021.
Furthermore, he said M&A is quickly consolidating the CPaaS market, as competitors seek to gain regional presence, enrich their technology stacks or simply boost growth. He expects further consolidation in the foreseeable future.
Improving Interoperability
Roy Illsley is chief analyst of IT operations at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa).
Omdia’s Roy Illsley
“The working landscape is not the same globally, and while in the United Kingdom the trend is hybrid working, this is not universal,” he said. “With that said, the need for more communication services is seeing growth. I will expect to see this sector continue to grow and improve the cross-platform interoperability issues. The expectation of the service is it works. But we are increasingly frustrated by the different user interfaces (UIs) and the lack of consistency and interoperability. For example a Google Meet invite will assume a Gmail account, while a Teams invite assumes an Outlook account.”
We’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of 20 top CPaaS providers. It’s based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. The list is by no means complete. It includes a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known ones making strides in CPaaS. See our slideshow above.
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