Smoothstone IP Communications, a company devoted to changing the VoIP service providers market, recently predicted that a perfect storm now brewing in the business communications industry soon will usher in a fundamental shift in how communications services are provided and used.

 

The company has made it its mission to fuel this storm by altering how enterprises everywhere in the U.S. obtain and then utilize communications services. Smoothstone calls the storm “converged communications as a service,” or CCaaS, a take-off on the recently coined term “software-as-a-service,” which refers to the delivery of software as an online, Web-based service rather than a desktop application.

 

Smoothstone thinks that a shift similar to that in the software industry is now taking shape for communications services. This change will profoundly alter how providers market their equipment and services, and how buyers procure and use those solutions. The result will be lower costs for the user, along with new capabilities and greatly simplified system management.

 

To capitalize on this growing change, Smoothstone is focusing on two trends in the enterprise-class communications market. The first trend is that all communications (voice, data, video, etc.) technologies are transitioning away from deployment on separate networks. In the future, the company predicts, all these services will be delivered using a single, IP-based network. Unified delivery platforms are therefore replacing traditional telcom equipment and the associated, separate silos of legacy networks.

 

This ties into the second trend, namely that software is moving from a packaged delivery model (e.g. apps installed locally on desktops) to a service delivery model (e.g. only apps like Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and NetSuite). The trend isn’t limited to traditional software, though; it also applies to software-based communications applications too.

 

Smoothstone dares to ask, what is communications could be delivered in the same way, utilizing the benefits of an externally hosted platform and the power of a unified delivery platform?

 

Why, if that happened, enterprises would be able to converge their separate data, voice, and video networks, in the process consolidating all the associated equipment suppliers, installation and maintenance vendors, and function/feature/application providers into a single provider. This provider would handle all the associated complexities, on its own network, and deliver only the benefits—not the management tasks—to the user.

 

This CCaaS business model is the one championed by Smoothstone. The company is confident that its approach will have a dramatic impact on business communication equipment and services suppliers, in addition to its own business customers.

 

“The coming triumph of CCaaS is inevitable,” predicted Paul Borgman, CEO at Smoothstone, in a statement. “It represents the ‘endgame’ of how all business communications will be delivered in the near future.”

 

Borgman added: “Current vendors in the business communications ecosystem will be forced to change the way they do business.”

 

CCaaS offers a number of important advantages for enterprises over established business models. Some of these are: 

Smoothstone said that it is the industry’s first CCaaS provider, but predicts that before long it will have competition as other companies realize that they need to change their business models.

 

To get a leg up, Smoothstone developed a proprietary IP communication services delivery platform that acts as a single source for all client needs. The platform delivers services, including VoIP, using a private, nationwide network that offers local dial tone in more than 6,200 calling areas.

 

Beyond mere time and cost benefits, the CCaaS model, Smoothstone predicts, will change the way companies do business, by providing the tools they need to improve collaboration and communication with customers, suppliers, and business partners.

 

The impact of CCaaS doesn’t stop with client enterprises, though. Smoothstone is better that as the approach takes off, business communication service providers and equipment manufacturers will be force to abandon the old, multi-vendor model. In its place, a new system will arise, dominated by three types of providers: IP network bandwidth providers, end user device manufacturers, and CCaaS providers.

 

“The current manufacturers of on premise PBX, gateway and other unnecessary communication infrastructure equipment and software will fight it all the way, but they will ultimately lose in the end,” Borgman said.

 

To learn more about CCaaS generally, and Smoothstone’s approach specifically, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channel, VoIP Service Providers.

 

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