Frost Radar™: Communications Platform as a Service, 2024

Frost Radar™: Communications Platform as a Service, 2024

A Benchmarking System to Spark Companies to Action Innovation that Fuels New Deal Flow and Growth Pipelines

Frost & Sullivan defines communications platforms as a service (CPaaS) as any cloud-based platform that enables developers to programmatically embed voice, video, chat, and messaging services in their business or consumer applications and workflows. In nearly all cases, the embedded communications and collaboration services leveraged through a CPaaS are a feature of the larger application and rarely its primary focus. For example, consumer-focused ride-sharing applications require a means for the driver and passenger to connect via SMS or a voice call. Organizations can leverage CPaaS to deliver their application’s communications features, which frees the developers to focus on mission-critical aspects.

CPaaS solutions represent a significant departure from how businesses of all sizes customarily purchase and deploy communications. The solutions’ value proposition lies in providing a powerful toolset to make business communications applications richer and more tightly integrated into business workflows. CPaaS provides additional capabilities to complement a business’s existing communications infrastructure.

Similar to other cloud-based services, most CPaaS solutions offer businesses a compelling operating expense (OpEx) alternative to costly capital expenditure (CapEx) for the deployment of appropriate communications and network infrastructure needed to securely support application programming interface (API)-driven voice, video, and messaging services. Importantly, cloud-based CPaaS offerings are priced at published per-API call or per-minute rates, enabling businesses to pay for the exact amount of services they consume. This is a particularly attractive value proposition for organizations with varying levels of demand or seasonal spikes in business activity.

Programmable communications solutions, particularly CPaaS, have seen steady growth driven by increasing awareness among enterprise decision-makers and the market’s ability to serve the needs of both traditional and enterprise developers. The programmable communications market received a jumpstart in 2020 as requirements to support brand-new use cases, such as contact tracing and curbside pickup, pushed companies of all sizes to rethink business processes and customer engagement.

The key value proposition of CPaaS—providing a powerful toolset to make business communications applications richer and more tightly integrated within business workflows—is perfectly aligned with the ongoing digital transformation efforts that nearly every organization is undertaking.

The companies chosen for this Frost Radar cover the full spectrum of CPaaS providers and enablers, including pure-play providers, as well as those that offer service provider-enabling solutions and hybrid CPaaS solutions integrated with on-premises resources.

Frost & Sullivan analyzes numerous companies in an industry. Those selected for further analysis based on their leadership or other distinctions are benchmarked across 10 Growth and Innovation criteria to generate their position on the Frost Radar. The publication presents competitive profiles of each company on the Frost Radar, considering their strengths and the opportunities that best fit those strengths.