A new study from Juniper Research has found that the global value of communication platform as a service (CPaaS) market will exceed $10 billion for the first time next year; rising from $8.6 billion this year 2021.
This represents a 17% growth year-on-year.
Juniper is therefore urging CPaaS vendors to capitalize on this remarkable growth by seeking to further differentiate their services by integrating novel solutions directly into their service platforms.
A CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that enables app developers to add real-time communications features to their own applications without needing to build backend infrastructure and interfaces.
CPaaS platforms offer a centralized management service for outbound communications, including SMS, OTT business messaging, videos, rich communication service and voice services among others.
The new study, titled, CPaaS: Future Market Outlook & Emerging Opportunities 2021-2026, urges platform vendors to expand their range of value-added services to achieve this differentiation.
The research identified the development of CDPs (customer data platforms) as a key service that will increase the significance of a CPaaS platform by providing actionable insights into end user preferences, such as contact time, contact channel and upselling opportunities.
“In turn, brands and enterprises using CPaaS platforms will enhance the value of mobile communications by automatically contacting users over preferred channels at preferred times,” the report said.
Research author Sam Barker commented: “CDPs are an important step in creating differentiation in an increasingly saturated CPaaS market. As traffic over rich media channels increases, CDPs will enable brands and enterprises to tailor communications at a user level; creating a compelling and convenient experience for mobile subscribers.”
The report also predicted that the contribution of rich media messaging (RMM) formats will become increasingly significant in generating CPaaS vendor revenue.
“By 2026, over 20% of CPaaS revenue will be attributable to RCS/RMM and OTT business messaging channels; rising from less than 2% in 2021,” it said.
The reported noted that as SMS business messaging traffic growth slows, platforms are advised to onboard SMEs willing to explore rich media messaging, saying that CPaaS platforms must highlight the benefits that CDPs will bring to the rich media functionalities of OTT messaging channels to attract new customers.
For more insights, download our free whitepaper: How CPaaS will be Disrupted in 2022.
MTN Ambition 2025
Meanwhile, MTN Group is embarking on strategy dubbed Ambition 2025 across all its operation, where it working on becoming a platform player rather than a telecoms network.
The strategy would enable MTN to offer its network as a service (NaaS) so that various CPaaS vendors can sit on its platform and offer various digital services to customers across the continent and the world at large.
As part of that ambitious digital strategy, the MTN Group last year launched a new pan-African API marketplace called Chenosis that will enable developers and businesses to discover and subscribe to what will become the largest library of open APIs published on the continent.
According of the telecom giant, “Chenosis will enable developers to tap into a broad spectrum of API products and services from across the continent, ranging from telecommunications, e-health, e-government, IoT, fintech, e-commerce, identity and authentication, payments and collections, location and more, from a single marketplace.”
Chenosis is gone active in Ghana and several local app and digital service developers have started taking advantage of it.
