Andrew Collinson, Founder & MD of Connective Insight, explains why leveraging next-gen CPaaS to create intelligent engagement is critical to the telecom API market
In conversation with Mobile Europe’s Editor, Annie Turner, Andrew Collinson overturned much of what we thought we knew about the Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) market at our recent Telco to techco virtual event. He also explained the role of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance and why it is important to telecom APIs (not just network APIs) and the ecosystem it needs to thrive.
Collinson argues that APIs in parallel with the evolution of CPaaS – to mass market, two-way, individual communications at scale – will bring immense changes and benefits to operators, enterprises and end-users alike.
He started by stating, “There’s a bit missing between what the tech tech talk is saying, and what the business is on the other end – the enterprise market. What’s the world trying to do with all this stuff?…I think that’s I think that’s terribly important. That’s the last gap.”
Watch the video here now.
Businesses are looking to APIs, he says, because “they’re trying to engage with their customers, their partners, their people, the devices, the process. They’re trying to get all that information flowing. They’re trying to get that engagement going much more quickly so they can operate better…services. They can respond to…needs more quickly.”
Hence the point of APIs, all APIs, is to drive and enable “intelligent engagement”. He acknowledges that the initial ‘killer apps’ for telecom APIs are fraud prevention and ID verification, which are closely linked. Then, as an example of bringing intelligence to engagement, he highlights that the global digital advertising is something like a $600 billion market – and a third of it is fraudulent. In other words, APIs and CPaaS can address a $200 million problem, protecting people and improving confidence in the sector at the same time.
The all for one model
Perhaps the most talked about application is fighting fraud in the finance sector. There are billions of financial transactions every single day and finance houses try to verify each one, and want a verifcation method that can very quickly say, “Yes, that’s the right person,”or “No, it’s not”. The drawback here is that to be truly useful, all the mobile operators in a market have to be involved but, Collinson says, there are plenty of other applications where that does not have to be the case, such as for differentiated connectivity.
Differentiating connectivity
He says the sector around video is huge – the opportunity to provide guaranteed levels of bandwidth on demand, which could be achieved by slicing. Collinson says, “There are good business models for it”. He adds, “The last 10 years…hyperscalers have out-competed operators. They’ve out-invested. They’ve out-innovated. Part of the reason for that is that they have global scale and they focus on doing a small number of things really, really well.”
And while operators individually don’t have that global scale, the products they offer have both simplicity and global scale, “So it’s about replicating that success in this new area that’s going to make it successful and make it grow faster and scale.” And while the origins of CPaaS are in broadcast and one-way individual communication (like appointment reminders), Collinson argues the evolution of CPaaS to mass market, two-way, individual communications at scale will bring immense changes and benefits to operators, enterprises and end-users alike.
Watch the video here now to find out more.
