How can MSPs best serve the New Borderless Enterprise?
After being thoroughly shaken by the pandemic, Cloud communications solutions, from Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and embedded Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), were pushed to their limits. This action caused them to bring out their best, which has become more relevant and highly valued.
As the pandemic struck, with all that came with it, Managed Service Providers immediately took the courageous step of attending to their customer's needs. Some of these customers had transformed how their teams worked from home in a brief period – sometimes over a week and even a weekend.
Other Managed Service Providers who were supporting huge, distributed enterprises scaled up to quicken the digitalisation of projects, in one case switching from a dated phone system connecting thousands of retail branches with a full-cloud solution integrated to going with their eCommerce platform, making it easier to adapt to online ordering, touchless delivery, and curbside pick-up.
The pandemic may have struck them hard, but these MSPs embraced innovation and grew their businesses despite COVID-19. Not only did they transform their customers, but they also transformed their operations.
New challenges confront enterprises today. One of which is the “Great Resignation,” which compels these enterprises to supply tools that give employees who Work from Home (WFH) an engaging and “human” online experience. This enables them to collaborate with their colleagues, serve their customers, and simultaneously reduce costs and contribute to CX innovation.
The global Cloud Communication Platform Market is predicted to grow from $4.6 billion in 2021 to $22.4 billion by 2028, representing an impressive CAGR of 25.3% between 2021 and 2028. This is according to Insight Partners.
There have been published analyses whose emphasis has been on how cloud communication platforms permit developers to take advantage of “telco APIs,” application program interfaces which give them the liberty to build dynamic communications solutions, including video, voice, SMS, and verification features.
Insight Partners introduced the report thus: “The rising trend of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) with the emphasis on offering flexible work options is favouring the cloud communication platform market growth. Rising BYOD policies at the workplace overburden the communication networks at workplaces, and the deployment of cloud communication platforms helps solve the network congestion issues.
Surge in demand for connected devices and the increase in the adoption of IoT and cloud-based services are major factors driving the market growth. Furthermore, the speed of internet connections is a key factor governing the cloud communication platform market growth.”
Notable Managed Service Providers have taken this as an opportunity to speed up digital transformation initiatives. This is also because more of their end customers have become comfortable with messaging, voice, video, and collaboration applications that are fully hosted and accessed via the cloud. The only requirement is a reliable, high-speed Internet connection or redundant connections for regulated industries that demand real-time communications environments (always on).
Amanda Lee, CVP of Global Communications at Pax8, a privately-held “unicorn” company valued at over $1 billion which earlier this year closed another $185 million in investment in a round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, says, “We continue to see substantial interest and growth in the cloud communications offerings on our marketplace."
This unicorn company, Pax8, operates a rapidly-growing independent cloud marketplace for IT professionals. It is one of the fast-growing where IT professionals can buy, sell, and manage best-in-class technology solutions.
Through its channel partners, Pax8 has cloud-enabled more than 250,000 enterprises. It processes one million monthly transactions, and its technology enables Managed Service Providers to speed up growth, increase efficiency, and reduce risk. For five years, it has ranked in the Inc. 5000.
“We witnessed a perfect storm for MSPs during the pandemic years, as their customers had no choice but to quickly set up infrastructure and services to keep communications flowing internally and externally,” Lee said. “With more powerful and affordable smartphones and the growth of 2G/3G/4G wireless networks, the quality of the experience and the impact on productivity and efficiency has led to more confidence in cloud communications and has ignited innovation and competition among UCaaS vendors like those on our marketplace.”
