What is CPaaS? Communication Platform as a Service

Heading 2 Example
Heading 2 Example
Post 0
Share 0

What is CPaaS?

CPaaS is a cloud-based service specifically designed to enable communication facilities between software systems, mobile apps, and any application tech stack that operates over the Internet.

CPaaS Meaning

The term CPaaS is often confused with PaaS. The CPaaS full form translates to Communication Platform as a Service, which is a specialized form of PaaS, acting as a communication platform.  Therefore, the CPaaS meaning can be interpreted as a specialized platform as a service, designed to offer cloud communication features. CPaaS is powered by an underlying cloud communication infrastructure that takes care of API backends, media and message forwarding for peer to peer, unicast or multicast forms of communication over the Internet.

CPaaS platforms host the cloud backend and offer communication APIs to support text messages, phone calls, and video conferencing services between two or more applications. Additionally, these platforms also offer various frontend integration options, such as SDKs, and UI components to embed these services within existing applications.

CPaaS is also leveraged as a cloud communications platform to deploy more advanced services such as virtual phone numbers, chatbots, video and conferencing, message broadcasting, and custom applications.

When is CPaaS Leveraged?

A few business scenarios when CPaaS is required:

  1. 1
    When providing customer support via in-app chat messaging or voice calls to expedite issue/complaint resolution.
  2. 2
    When facilitating marketing campaigns through bulk messaging or interactive two way messaging.
  3. 3
    When conducting secure business communication with branch offices or partners via virtual phone numbers.
  4. 4
    When initiating secure communication across different communication channels via authentication and authorization procedures, such as multi-factor authentication.

Terms Related to CPaaS

CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service)

CCaaS is a specialized platform version of CPaaS that is tailored to manage customer contact center operations.

UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service)

A UCaaS platform offers a unified and single interface for a variety of communication services, such as video conferencing, emails, business messaging, screen sharing, file transfer, and storage. UCaaS and CPaaS may share the same backend architecture but differ in their frontend integration capabilities.

Why is CPaaS Needed?

CPaaS extends the concept of traditional internet telephony based on VoIP phones and terminals to an embeddable communication software component. It also elevates the user experience of a UCaaS system, wherein users do not have to use different software or hardware devices/terminals for communication and collaboration purposes.

Without CPaaS

  • Companies must invest in building and deploying their own cloud communication infrastructure to enable messaging, voice, and video-based communication.
  • Service providers depend on separate apps for customer interaction, apart from regular applications for managing service workflows.
  • Software vendors have to rely on tedious or manual integrations and hacks to enable communications features for their web /mobile apps.

With CPaaS

  • Companies get a ready-to-deploy cloud communication infrastructure to run their messaging, phone, and business collaboration systems.
  • Service providers get a single window to serve customers and communicate with them in real-time without switching applications.
  • Software vendors have the ability to embed communications features anywhere within their web / mobile apps.

Who is Benefited from CPaaS?

Developers and software architects are the primary targets for CPaaS. Therefore it has benefits for all the roles within the technical leadership of a company that is engaged in software development.

For CTO and C-level

The CTO organization and top management can combine cost savings with the flexibility to enforce specific SLAs related to scale, reliability, and quality of service expectations from the chosen CPaaS provider, avoid CAPEX, and achieve TTM as per their terms.

For Engineering Leadership

Engineering leadership can plan faster release cycles to integrate communications features without the burden of maintaining and upgrading an in-house cloud communication infrastructure.

For Product Management

Product managers have the flexibility to seamlessly inject preferred channels for communication across all phases of the user journey, thereby improving customer engagement.

For Software Development Teams

Software developers can embed communication capabilities within their web / mobile apps without relying on third-party apps and systems.

Which Features Are Part Of CPaaS?

CPaaS encapsulates a wide range of features to augment the communications capabilities of a software application.

Broadly, these features can be categorized under three service tiers:

  1. 1
    Foundational service that offers the foundational cloud communication APIs to let developers embed real-time communication features such as voice, video, and messaging (SMS/WhatsApp/RCS/Chat) capabilities within their application's source code.
  2. 2
    Application services offer higher-level APIs on top of the foundational services to address specific application needs, such as personalized communications, marketing, and business collaboration.
  3. 3
    CPaaS-based solutions offer full-fledged UCaaS or SaaS enterprise applications for addressing specific industry use cases like real estate, healthcare, and gaming.

Where is CPaaS Applicable?

CPaaS finds applications across many industries and is primarily designed as a communications stack for every business application used within organizational functions.

From an industry standpoint, CPaaS has been adopted by a range of industries:

  • Banking and Insurance: Delivering omnichannel communication touch points for better customer experience to address and resolve issues.
  • Supply Chain and Logistics: Provide real-time notifications between various parties involved in the supply chain to coordinate the on-ground logistics operations.
  • Healthcare: Equipping patients and caregivers with timely intervention to address medical emergencies and access to doctor consultation via voice chat or video meeting.
  • Retail: Enhancing customer service via personalized promotional offers decimated through various messaging services like WhatsApp and SMS messaging.

From an organizational function point of view, CPaaS finds applications within:

  • Internal Technology Stack: Providing building blocks for communication and messaging capabilities within the internal communication stack, such as the marketing technology (Martech) stack, along with seamless integration with existing team collaboration applications.
  • Customer Relation Management: Supporting advanced capabilities for engaging with customers through contextual communication for quick response to inquiries and faster resolution of complaints.
  • Sales Enablement: Integrating with sales software to support seamless interactions with prospects and better coordination in internal communication to nurture the leads.
  • Rich Communication Service: Adopting innovative and customizable communication strategies across partner and customer interaction channels for better synergies and operational efficiencies.

How is CPaaS Used?

Due to the connected nature of modern software applications and the need to foster increased collaborations, CPaaS solutions are found in almost all B2B and B2C applications.

Based on the general pattern of communication, here are the top-level CPaaS use cases:

  1. 1
    Peer-to-Peer Communication: Peer-to-peer communication leverages the foundational CPaaS services to facilitate embedded communication tools like voice, video calling, and instant messaging within apps.
  2. 2
    Multi-party Communication: Multi-party communication is mainly used in various business collaboration tools to support coordination across multiple stakeholders. These use cases leverage the foundational and application CPaaS services to integrate communication functionalities within business applications. Examples include video and audio conference calling and team messaging.
  3. 3
    Broadcast Notifications: Broadcast notifications leverage various notification and messaging mediums like SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, and email to deliver one-time notifications to a target set of users. This is the most widely used use case, especially for sending personalized communications to users through marketing campaigns.
  4. 4
    Add-on Communication Services: These use cases include features built on top of the foundational service, such as AI-powered virtual assistants, interactive voice response, document sharing, and similar capabilities that add value to peer-to-peer or multi-party communication sessions.
  5. 5
    Specific Notifications: These use cases include notifications for particular scenarios, such as sending an OTP as part of two-factor authentication.
  6. 6
    Communication Routing: Communication routing involves routing inbound or outbound calls based on specific applications. Prominent examples include CCaaS solutions for managing contact center operations and SIP trunking for managing business communication via cloud-based PBX solutions.

CPaaS Platform Deployment Models

  1. 1
    As a service: The model leverages the application programming interface approach to deliver various communication features across multiple channels via a managed CPaaS backend.
  2. 2
    Self hosted (White labeled): This model requires a company to have their own infrastructure for hosting the CPaaS backend components and interface with the public telephone and mobile networks.
  3. 3
    Network as a Platform: This model leverages a telco network's cloud based platform and offers CPaaS solutions on top of the traditional services.

Featured CPaaS Use Cases

>