Tag Archives: cpaas

Avaya Endgame?

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Avaya's Wild Ride through Bankruptcy

It’s been known for months that industry behemoth Avaya was interested in finding a buyer. Private equity suitors include Apollo, Pemira, and Searchlight (according to this Bloomberg report). There is also interest from Mitel, first reported in April and then reported again – more definitively – this week. (We wrote about an Avaya-Mitel tie-up here: Ghost of Nortel Returns Comes Home.)

During last week’s earnings call, CEO Jim Chirico said that there would be a decision about the company’s fate in 30 days. That’s the strongest indication yet that we’re truly in the “endgame” for Avaya. It’s fair to say the whole industry is on the edge of its seat right now.

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CPaaS Expands but Boundaries Getting Vague

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CPaaS Expands but Boundaries Getting VagueSix months ago I wrote that “CPaaS is a victim of its own success. The founding principle was to free communications from the grip of the carriers. But now many carriers have a CPaaS offering.”

Some folks responded that the point of CPaaS was not to demote the carriers, and that its success should be judged by the new products that it enables and not by whether it’s a net plus or minus for carriers. I admit it is easy to get wrapped up in, “inside baseball” type discussions. Maybe I spend too much time with analyst types.

So, what is the right way to judge success? What lasting impact do we expect CPaaS to leave?

 

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Big Vendor Announcements Focus on AI at Enterprise Connect

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Big Vendor Announcements at Enterprise ConnectThe Enterprise Connect conference is one of the largest events in communications technology. It’s often the venue for major announcements from the biggest vendors. It was here that Twilio announced Flex. It was here that Avaya announced Breeze, SnappIns, and Zang. It was here that Amazon launched Connect.

Big announcements this year include the launch of two new cloud contact centers called Edify and Thrio; a new contact center from Vonage called CX Cloud Express (based on their acquisition of NVM which we covered here); and the rebranding of Polycom/Plantronics as “Poly.”

But as for the big call center vendors, their announcements were less dramatic, and all revolved around AI.

 

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CPaaS Triumphs: Now What?

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CPaaS Triumphs - Now WhatSome quick history: 10 years ago, I attended a conference called Emerging Communications (eComm). It was an eccentric and inspiring collection of people focussed on the next chapter of voice and telecom technology. (It came on the heels of the “Voice 2.0” movement but with a broader vision.) The shared vision there was that a wave of innovation was coming because communication functionality would soon be as easy to access as web functionality (I’ll circle back to “the vision” at the end of this post).

eComm is now defunct but, if I recall correctly, one of the sponsors at their last show was a new start-up called Twilio. The term “CPaaS” arose a few years later, with Twilio leading the charge. The rest is history. But, in tech, nothing stays still.

What comes next?

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Mega News Week in CPaaS and Messaging: Twilio, SendGrid, SignalWire

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Big News in Messaging -Twilio SignalWire SendGridA year ago, the CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) space seemed settled into comfortable middle-age. Twilio had won the game in terms of “API for sending messages and making calls”. Nexmo had been acquired by Vonage. Tropo by Cisco. Zang by Avaya.

But, it turns out that this was just a pause before the next verse in this tune. Twilio launched an ambitious expansion “up the food chain” with a call center platform in March (which went live this week), invested heavily in IoT (Should that be part of CPaaS?) and continued last week via the massive acquisition of SendGrid, now moving into the email distribution space.

Meanwhile, Nexmo is newly relevant via Vonage’s acquisition of NewVoiceMedia. And we have a new entrant: SignalWire.

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Avaya Did Good with their Spotlight Moment This Week

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Avaya Did Good with their Spotlight Moment This WeekAvaya’s annual customer conference (“Avaya Engage”) just wrapped up and I believe they made good use of a unique moment in their history. Under normal circumstances, this type of conference is a high pressure situation. Avaya is in complete control of the content and production so if they can’t look perfect here, that’s bad news. If there are missteps or flubbed announcements, or if the crowd isn’t enthusiastic, analysts are quick to take note and turn that into a story.

That’s under ordinary circumstances; this no ordinary time for Avaya. Having declared bankruptcy just 3 weeks ago, the pressure was doubled. Luckily, they stepped up to the challenge.

 

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Twilio, Tropo, Nexmo, Plivo… ZANG! What Does it All Mean?

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Twilio, Tropo, Nexmo, Plivo… ZANG! What Does it All Mean?[UPDATED May 5, 2016: Vonage just bought Nexmo for $230m. With Twilio still on an IPO trajectory, that leaves the big question: Who will buy Plivo?]

A decade ago, working with telecom resources was a daunting task. If you wanted to build anything that used voice or text messages over the public phone system (the PSTN) you would have to hire specialized engineers and expect to spend months in development.

That all changed with the emergence of a category of companies that have come to be known as “Communications Platform as a Service” of CPaaS. The existence of these companies has radically changed the landscape of enterprise communication and customer service. They have become embedded in a surprising range of services (such as Uber).

Industry giant Avaya is the latest company to join the fray with the announcement, last month, of their new service “Zang”. Continue reading →