Six 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?
WebRTC,the new in-browser framework for real-time video and audio communication, is getting a lot of attention lately. Some people feel it has the potential to cause major disruption throughout the telco world. They figure: If every web browser can be a soft-phone or VoIP client, that’s a game changer. Others see it as a neat technology that’s only an incremental improvement. They figure: Browsers can already do all of this with plug-ins, and while it’s better to be free of plug-ins, that’s a minor problem.
