The CaaS Market Heats Up

Communications-as-a-service (CaaS) shares many attributes with other as-a-service offerings in its pricing model and delivers voice, conferencing, contact center, IVR, and unified communications services from services providers' or vendors' networks. CaaS vendors offer full management of the communications system or application, which typically resides on a shared secure platform. Customers typically pay per user, per month, or per transaction for full life-cycle support. Providers offer sophisticated applications in the cloud, allowing companies to deploy advanced unified communications services quickly and affordably across a distributed environment. However, this market is still in its early stages, and most providers have not rolled out a full portfolio of CaaS solutions. Nonetheless, we recommend that infrastructure and operations executives consider CaaS's role in their infrastructure plans. In fact, Forrester's 2010 networks and telecommunications survey indicates high interest by enterprise communication decision-makers in adopting CaaS services in the future. Early CaaS adoption encourages more comprehensive offerings from current providers and results in a broader range of services.