[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 →