The rise of cloud communications is one of the significant trends in business operations today – overlooking the most recent Generative AI bandwagon because it’s still so new and unproven in terms of viability, security and ROI. UCaaS, on the other hand, is a proven alternative to traditional alternatives and has become powerful suites of tools for companies to streamline communications, enable effective collaboration, and drive operational efficiencies.
Businesses worldwide are adopting UCaaS platforms to leverage services such as voice and video calling, conferencing, messaging, and other collaboration tools, driven by advancements in cloud infrastructure and ubiquitous connectivity?.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a natural catalyst, as remote work became a necessity – and now, a permanent part of business culture. UCaaS (and CCaaS) solutions gave businesses the technology to support work-from-anywhere strategies. The truth is, the ability to work effectively from anywhere was always part of the UCaaS strategy, the pandemic simply made it a reality for most businesses. As organizations worldwide shifted to remote work, the demand for online communications and collaboration platforms grew.
CPaaS platforms and the integration of programmable capabilities into unified collaboration tools have also been a factor, along with advances in AI and machine learning, 5G access, and a focus on security. Collectively, they have all allowed service providers to cater to customized demands across various industries, providing effective communication and collaboration tools based on subscription models?.
According to Grand View Research, the UCaaS market, which was at $47.6 billion in 2021, will grow at a CAGR of 20.6% to eclipse $137 billion by 2030. Other research firms have projected similar growth trajectories.
So, in this era of digitalization and unified communications, it’s not surprising to see carriers and cloud solution providers collaborate to leverage their individual strengths to capitalize on the demand for cloud-based communications solutions.
Take Brightspeed and Alianza (News - Alert), which announced a joint endeavor to deliver a suite of next-generation voice and unified communications services. The partnership brings modern voice and UC services to residential and small business customers across Brightspeed's fiber network, specifically targeting locations where fiber and other advanced technologies have not been historically deployed.
Brightspeed is the nation's fifth-largest ILEC and sees this as an opportunity to deliver next-gen communications capabilities to its customers. Alianza’s cloud-native platform serves as a pivotal element of this transformation effort, expanding its own footprint and helping Brightspeed connect more than 3 million homes and businesses with cloud communications solutions.??
Alianza enables Brightspeed to offer a variety of communication services, not only augmenting Brightspeed's existing service portfolio, but delivering a portfolio of communications capabilities that are necessary for businesses to thrive.
“Brightspeed’s focus on building a modern, agile, next-generation broadband company with continued innovation and a commitment to delivering top-notch customer experiences is a perfect match with our company culture and history,” said Brian Beutler (News - Alert), founder and CEO of Alianza. “We are working together to connect people in new and innovative ways and help Brightspeed execute on bridging the digital divide in their communities.”
With Aliazna’s platform, Brighspeed wins a number of benefits, which extend to their collective customer base:
- Speed to market – Alianza's scalable, flexible cloud-native platform enables Brightspeed to quickly bring the most in-demand communications services to market, and easily keep up with market changes and service innovations over time.
- Simplified operations through API-driven automation – The ability to integrate its business and operations support (BSS/OSS) systems to Alianza's API-first cloud platform automates the end user buy-flow, account provisioning, billing, and end-to-end workflows.
- Enhanced customer experience – By eliminating the need to manage traditional voice equipment, feature server upgrades, and other legacy voice network complexities, Alianza's solution frees up Brightspeed's operations teams to focus on providing an exceptional end user experience.
- Carrier-grade reliability and security – Constant security benchmarking and automated failover to geo-redundant, always-on data centers, delivers a dependable service.
- Compelling business case – Alianza's commercial model enables Brightspeed to eliminate capital requirements for voice networking and assures the lowest total operating cost as the customer base scales.
It’s hard to describe cloud as the future of communications, given the number of businesses already embracing UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, but the truth is, there are many more that have yet to make the move, but must do so in order to compete effectively. The capabilities delivered by UCaaS platforms not only help drive operational efficiency and improve customer experiences, but also create better employee experiences, which has become a key post-pandemic factor.
This partnership underscores the transformative value of cloud, in general, and UCaaS specifically, in bringing businesses in previously underserved areas into the modern generation, creating the bridge they need to compete and scale in today’s environment.
Edited by
Erik Linask
