Enterprises are focused on enhancing operational efficiency and customer engagement digitally. Software engineering leaders should include CPaaS in their software development strategies to embed SMS, A2P, voice and video, along with emerging rich conversational CPaaS and omnichannel, into applications.

Key Findings:

• Communications platform as a service (CPaaS) business adoption remains robust as software engineering leaders seek to deepen digital engagement with customers and stakeholders as part of digital development strategies on varying use cases.
• Enterprises are starting to evaluate more-complex use cases (beyond SMS) requiring rich communications channels and orchestration incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), conversational APIs and simple user interfaces to scale customer engagement. Vendors are advancing communications capabilities in these areas to address horizontal and vertical needs, such as campaign management or telemedicine.
• Most large organizations have IT staff members with software engineering skills to leverage CPaaS tools, but there are trends toward IT democratization of roles in business units and small and midsize businesses (SMBs) where coding capabilities may be lighter.
• Mega cloud vendors like Salesforce are expanding their cloud offerings using CPaaS. Hyperscalers like Alibaba, Amazon and Microsoft are becoming increasingly active in CPaaS.