UNDERSTANDING. Communications Platform Technologies

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1 UNDERSTANDING Communications Platform Technologies Cloud communications platform technologies allow you to extend, integrate and build customized solutions to address the specific needs of your business and differentiate it from the competition. This white paper will help you determine if a platform solution is right for your business. It outlines various cloud architectures, explains the spectrum of communications platform offerings available today, and offers insights to consider when determining what flavor of platform will best meet your needs.

2 Platform as a Service is becoming increasingly important because enterprises want and need more flexibility than ever before. Jim Lundy, Founder, CEO and lead analyst, Aragon Research WHY PLATFORM, WHY NOW? Today s businesses face a competitive environment that is more challenging than ever before. Managing profitable growth amidst rising customer expectations, ongoing compliance concerns, mounting security threats and rapidly changing technologies is no easy task. To be successful, business leaders must uncover every means possible to win and keep customers. Given the challenges they face, it s not surprising that today s businesses are demanding more than just out-of-the-box solutions. Current and aspiring market leaders seek tools that allow them to approach their business and their customers in original and unique ways. They want to deploy technology that will specifically address the distinct needs and challenges of their individual organization and market, plus help them engage in processes and activities that will differentiate them from the competition. ENGAGING WITH CUSTOMERS: What Have You Always Wanted to Do? With the right communications platform, almost anything you can dream up can become reality. Below are just a few examples of customizations made easy with platform solutions: Provide personalized directions on account activations Play unique messages to help process payments Integrate automated phone calls or IVRs into existing applications to streamline workflow Automate order confirmations, appointment reminders and shipping notices via call or SMS Conduct customer polls, surveys and contests Issue instant alerts about emergencies, system outages or fraud detection Automate user authentication or password verification Spark sales with mobile coupons and timely promotions Send staff reminders, broadcast open shifts and allow employees to confirm availability with two-way SMS

3 A cloud communications platform can help businesses to do just that and more. It empowers users to extend and enhance critical business software systems by integrating functionality such as voice, SMS, video and chat. In addition, it also provides the tools to build entirely new, one-of-a-kind communications applications that can support the demands of a particular business and its customers. But buyer beware. Since the communications platform market is relatively new, complex and widely varied in terms of vendor offerings, the potential for confusion is great. And although a true platform can offer almost infinite flexibility to create solutions that businesses had previously only dreamed of, there are many factors to consider when selecting a platform vendor. To ensure you are equipped to make a well-informed decision, it is important to first understand the nuances of the technology. Not all offerings are the same when it comes to scalability, security, customization and ease of management. Understanding these differences, and the advantages associated with each, is vital in determining which platform solution is right for your business. UNDERSTANDING CLOUD ARCHITECTURES Platform as a Service (PaaS) is one of three main as a service models included in the cloud computing stack. To better understand communications platform offerings, it is helpful to briefly review these aas models and how they relate to one another. Software as a Service (SaaS) End user applications created and typically delivered by a vendor over the Internet in an on-demand, one-to-many model. Platform as a Service (PaaS) A set of hardware and software tools delivered by a vendor to allow users to develop, deploy and manage custom, web-based software applications without the need to buy or maintain the supporting infrastructure. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Virtualized computing resources - including hardware, storage, networking - delivered to end users by a vendor, typically over the Internet.

4 Together, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offer a spectrum of choices that allow you to forge a solution that can speak to the unique needs of your business. Using this basic understanding of the cloud computing stack as a foundation, we can now further explore communications platforms. COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORMS: DEFINING DIFFERENCES Thanks to the advantages a communications platform solution can offer, more and more businesses are exploring it as a means of expanding and enhancing their customer experiences. But over time the term platform has taken on multiple meanings, which has led to confusion in the marketplace. In order to better understand the benefits you could achieve with a platform solution and how much effort and money it will take to make it happen it s important to understand the various flavors of platform offered today. A common term you will hear when discussing platforms is API (Application Program Interface). An API is a software intermediary that makes it possible for applications to interact with one another, share data and achieve specific functionality. This model offers extensive flexibility for customization, giving users the ability to bring new products or features to market faster with no restrictions by the vendor. COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (CPAAS) Similar to API-based platforms, true CPaaS solutions also allow users to build, deploy and modify their own custom apps on their own timeline. Most CPaaS solutions also provide dynamic programming capabilities, giving users a deep level of control over functionality and allowing for complex logic to be built into apps. However, the defining factor of a true CPaaS offering is that the cloud vendor (versus the customer) provides full hosting, scaling and management of the infrastructure that user-built apps live on. Rather than spending time and money to purchase, spin up and manage hardware, developers can simply write and deploy code directly to the platform. APIs can then be used as needed for integrating with other third-party systems. This results in lower costs, the ability to scale apps quickly and easily, and more opportunities for users to focus on their business versus their infrastructure. COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM AS AN API-BASED SOLUTION In this scenario, a platform solution allows users to create custom software applications by developing code that interacts with the vendor s solution through APIs. The customer is responsible for buying, managing and scaling the infrastructure that their app lives on, while the vendor manages the backend telecom.

5 The chart below provides a side-by-side comparison of the two communications platforms mentioned above in terms of the benefits they offer: API-BASED SOLUTION TRUE CPAAS Feature Flexibility Control & Speed to Market Equipment Cost/Maintenance Ability to Build Unique Apps Scalability Support for Complex Logic WHY KNOWING WHERE THE APP LIVES IS IMPORTANT Milliseconds matter when it comes to real-time communications. In that regard, there is one last technical, but very important difference between API-based and true CPaaS solutions. To understand it, you must think about the concept in terms of where the app lives since the app s location not only impacts its ease of management, but can also affect the timeliness and quality of communications delivery. The diagrams and explanations below help to illustrate the point.

6 API-BASED PLATFORMS TRUE CPAAS PAAS VENDOR TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE *optional third party integration COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM With a solely API-based communications platform, API requests and responses are sent back and forth between the platform backend infrastructure, the customer s app and perhaps even third-party systems such as a CRM, allowing the systems to talk to each other and perform corresponding actions. Barring no problems, each request and response typically takes a few hundred milliseconds. That s pretty fast in the minds of most people and nearly undetectable with something like an SMS where the receiving party doesn t know exactly when the message was sent. However, on a phone call where people expect an instant response, even the slightest delays become noticeable. In a complex scenario, say, a high volume call center or an app with complex call routing logic, those milliseconds can add up quickly causing more latency or even issues with queue race conditions* that result in misrouted calls. TRUE CPAAS With a true CPaaS solution -- where apps live directly on the platform -- app logic is located on the same infrastructure as the call endpoints themselves. This minimizes, or even eliminates, the number of API calls involved and the associated milliseconds of time, reducing latency, avoiding race conditions and resulting in a better experience for the caller. Key Considerations: WHAT S THE BEST CHOICE FOR YOUR BUSINESS? As with many technology offerings, the best solution is a relative term predicated on what is right for a given organization or even a given use case within an organization. Thus, before exploring different platform vendors, be sure to ask the following question: Which flavor of platform is the best fit for our business? *A race condition is an undesirable situation that occurs when a device or system attempts to perform two or more operations at the same time, but because of the nature of the device or system, the operations must be done in the proper sequence to be done correctly. Source:

7 WHICH FLAVOR OF PLATFORM IS THE BEST FIT FOR YOUR BUSINESS? There are a number of factors to consider when it comes to choosing the right solution, many of which are unique to platforms and PaaS models. Asking yourself and/or your prospective vendors the following questions will help ensure you gain the full flexibility and longevity that platform solutions can offer. 1. User Interactions What is the use case? What type of interactions will your app support: one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many? What are the primary ways that users will engage with your app and how time-sensitive are those interactions? 6. Infrastructure Management Will you be responsible for managing the infrastructure that your app lives on? What will the associated costs include (servers, hosting, etc.)? Do you have resources available who can source and manage the infrastructure? 2. App Complexity Will your app need to support complex logic? Will it need to support and access numerous assets such as audio files? 3. Media Channel Capabilities Does the platform support the required media channels for your use case or future expansions, such as voice, SMS, MMS, WebRTC or video? 4. Programming Capabilities Is the platform developer-friendly? Does the platform support tools and languages that your developers are familiar with and/or work seamlessly with existing apps? Does the platform provide modern APIs to support integrations with your existing systems? What kind of assistance does the vendor offer if you don t have, or prefer not to use, your own developers? 5. Development Tools How much time and effort will be needed to start development? What types of tools does the platform provide to support rapid development, testing and deployment of apps? How accessible is usage data and what kind of reporting is offered? 7. Redundancy & Reliability What safeguards and SLAs does the vendor have in place to ensure service uptime? How much of the app s uptime will fall under your responsibility based on who manages the infrastructure? If you are responsible for the app infrastructure, what measures will you need to take to support redundancy and what will those cost? 8. Scalability What kind of growth do you expect for your app? Will it need to support specific seasonality or usage spurts? What measures does the vendor have in place to support your scalability requirements? If you will be responsible for app infrastructure, what measures will you need to account for scalability and what will those cost? 9. Regional / Global Coverage Does the platform vendor s footprint cover the geographic areas required for your target user base? 10. Compliance & Security Does the platform vendor support any compliance requirements necessary for your app, such as PCI or HIPAA? How does the platform vendor handle intrusion protection, customer segmentation, fraud prevention and other key security measures? What compliance and security measures of the vendor s will be inherited by your app and what measures will you be responsible for?

8 CASE STUDY: THINK OUT OF THE BOX ShoreTel s Summit platform is just what we were looking for. We struggled to find a platform provider that was HIPAA compliant and dependable. Our patient interactions are extremely time-sensitive so ensuring calls and texts are received in real time is critical. ShoreTel s platform delivers low latency and excellent call quality. Our experience has been great. -Ganesh Elangovan, M.D. Co-Founder, Callidus Health You don t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out new, creative ways to meet your customers needs, but you could get some inspiration from one. Dr. Ganesh Elangovan used ShoreTel s Summit platform to modernize and streamline a common pain point in the healthcare industry how to efficiently and effectively manage patient needs outside of regular business hours. As a neurosurgeon, Dr. Elangovan understands firsthand the importance of time-critical requests from patients. He also understands the frustrations on the part of both doctors and their patients with traditional answering services. Elangovan set out to make it better by launching a software solution -- CareLink from Callidus Health -- that handles multiple aspects of patient care and administration such as after hours call processing, e-prescriptions, patient reminders and more. With CareLINK, a patient is able to call into a specialized number for the doctor or their office and leave a voice message. CareLINK leverages the Summit platform to determine the appropriate doctor and alert him/her of the new patient request via or text. Thus, instead of having to call an outsourced answering service to get basic details about the request, the doctor receives useful information immediately and is able to acknowledge and act on the message. Meanwhile, the text, or voice recording is stored in the CareLINK medical records system against the patient s record. In addition to the fact that doctors can more quickly and easily respond to calls directly from their cell phones, their back office operations benefit as well since they can now eliminate the extra overhead of hiring an outsourced answering service. Dr. Elangovan launched a business by looking at the pain points within his industry and thinking out of the box. Learn more about his unique application here.

9 SUMMARY A true CPaaS solution can provide programming and integration capabilities to support extensive customization and creation of functionality so that businesses can mold technology to fit their preferred processes or support their unique customer needs. This level of customization allows companies to differentiate themselves in increasingly competitive markets or take advantage of new business opportunities. But with the many flavors of platform being touted in the market today, it s easy to get confused. Understanding what defines a true CPaaS offering and the advantages it offers is the first step in choosing a solution that will work for you. SHORETEL SUMMIT ShoreTel s Summit platform is a true CPaaS solution and the only solution of its kind in the real-time communications market. Here s why: Apps are committed to Summit, then fully hosted, scaled and structurally supported by ShoreTel. The as a Service structure of Summit offers valuable benefits in terms of call quality and cost. Full code-level access and dynamic programming capabilities give users an increased level of control over functionality and provide support for scenarios with complex logic, such as complex call routing. Learn more here. ShoreTel. Brilliantly Simple Business Communications. ShoreTel (NASDAQ: SHOR) provides businesses worldwide with communications solutions that make interactions simple. From business phone systems, unified communications and contact center solutions to a fully hosted voice and SMS development platform, ShoreTel delivers unmatched flexibility and ease for companies looking to increase productivity and drive innovation. ShoreTel offers solutions in the cloud, onsite or a hybrid of both, giving customers the freedom to choose the best fit for their business needs now and in the future. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., ShoreTel has offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit shoretel.com. p: e: summitsales@shoretel.com Copyright 2017 ShoreTel. All rights reserved. The ShoreTel logo and ShoreTel are registered trademarks of ShoreTel, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other copyrights and trademarks herein are the property of their respective owners. Specifications are subject to change without notice.