Ericsson’s $6.2BN acquisition of Vonage was a long time in the making.
First announced in November 2021, Ericsson finally got the deal over the line in July last year.
Since, the networking giant has done little to talk up the acquisition.
Yet, its team has worked diligently in the background, and now the results are starting to show.
These center on Vonage’s CPaaS offering, which supports its CCaaS and UCaaS solutions.
Perhaps this is little surprise, as the CPaaS market is gathering significant momentum, valued at $7.13BN in 2020 and set to reach a value of $25.99BN by 2025 – according to Juniper Research.
Nevertheless, it has become crowded. Cisco, Twilio, and Avaya are already prominent players. Throw in AWS and Microsoft as relatively new entrants, and the space is thriving.
According to 2022 Omdia research, Vonage is currently a market leader. Yet, how does Ericsson plan to keep it there with this raft of new rivals and grasp the treasures of a growing market?
The answer: leveraging its wireless operator relationships that will allow Vonage to differentiate its tools through mobility.
Mobility as a Differentiator
Operator relationships are crucial to the performance of communications via over-the-top (OTT) smartphone applications – which leverage CPaaS to enable this communication.
Unfortunately, OTT apps often lack reliability. UCaaS applications are an excellent example of this – with employees sometimes struggling to communicate using their data while on the move.
Microsoft recently teamed up with Verizon to launch a Teams Mobile integration to overcome this issue. Elsewhere, Cisco partnered with AT&T to power a similar WebEx Go service.
These deals hinge on coordinating network contracts and dual-sims. Yet, Vonage seems to have a different proposition: managing the entire network experience to enhance the performance of OTT communications applications.
However, such an approach may improve communications beyond UCaaS. Users may send messages and make phone calls without leaving a customer app, giving the business more control over the conversation while enabling greater mobility.