My WebRTC PaaS Report: December Release

This latest update of my WebRTC PaaS report brings with it new vendors as well as a new price calculator.

It is becoming a ritual. Every 8 months or so I update the WebRTC PaaS (or CPaaS) report. Every time I am surprised by the changes that occur. They come in 4 different areas:

1. There are new vendors joining this market
2. There are old vendors leaving this market
3. There are changes in the feature set of existing vendors already covered in the report
4. There are new trends that needs to be covered

How did we do since last time?

New Vendors Covered

ECLWebRTC by NTT Communications

I’ve been watching the work done by NTT Communications for quite some time. It started as a project that has signaling capabilities in it. At the time, they called it SkyWay. Later on, they developed and added an SFU into the mix. In September 2017 they decided to open up their platform globally. That’s the point where it made sense to add them to the report.

Phenix

Phenix has been an enigma to me in the past two years. From afar, it looked like a vendor trying to go after the broadcast market with a low latency technology based on WebRTC. Recently they approached me to explain what it is that they do and to check if it fits into this report. And it did. Phenix is focused on the large scale interactive streaming sessions. Places where you want to pick one or a few broadcasters and have their interactions shared with a larger audience.

Vendors Closing Doors

We had those as well.

Tropo by Cisco

Acquisitions of a WebRTC CPaaS vendor is sometimes beneficial and sometimes terrible for its customers. TokBox’ acquisition by Telefonica was a good thing. Tropo’s acquisition by Cisco… not so much. Two years after its acquisition, Tropo closed doors to new customers. The signs were out there, since the platform didn’t really evolve. The service is still up and running, but I don’t think Tropo customers are happy to be using Tropo right now, and I don’t think Tropo/Cisco are happy to be needing to serve these customers. A lose-lose situation here. Cisco simply pivoted. They decided that Tropo was not the right strategy and wanted to double down on Cisco Spark APIs and developer ecosystem.

forge by Xura

Forge is another sad story of our industry. Starting life as Crocodile RCS, it has been acquired by Acision. Acision was acquired by Comverse. Which got rebranded to Xura. Which was taken off the market by Siris Capital. Forge, and probably other assets of Xura were just collateral damage in this process.

M&A and Pivots in WebRTC PaaS

Apidaze acquired by VoIP Innovations

VoIP Innovations acquired Apidaze. This is a good signal for the platform’s health. Looking at the investment section of Apidaze’ 4-pager in my report shows the story: A lot of the attention and focus was taken from Apidaze API platform and put towards Ottspot, a “slack business phone app”. This acquisition by VoIP Innovations might mean a renewed focus on the Apidaze platform and the developers who use it.

TrueVoice is now Voxeet

TrueVoice was added to the report earlier this year. At the time, Voxeet added it as another product offering. This time around, Voxeet is making the APIs the main product. This caused the TrueVoice brand to be removed, and Voxeet to be the actual thing. Building a platform for developers is an all consuming process. Larger companies might be able to cope with doing that in parallel to other activities, but the smaller vendors will struggle. The fact that Voxeet decided to pivot and focus on developers is a good sign.

Putting it all in a Visual

Here’s what it means visually: 2 in. 2 out. A few minor changes elsewhere. The report shows the transitions in this market since 2014.

What’s in the report?

The report is quite long. It now contains 223 pages. This includes:

• The explanation of WebRTC from the point of view of someone who has a build vs buy decision to make
• KPIs to use in the selection process - and why they should matter to you
• Vendor sections (20 of them) - 4 pages per vendor
• Old vendors - to give an understanding of why they “left” the market, and maybe use it as signals to the existing vendors and their future stability
• Appendixes. 9 of them

Want to get a sneak peak into the report? You can check out these two PDF resources:

• Table of contents and introduction
• TokBox 4-pager

As you can see, this time, TokBox were kind enough to sponsor their 4-pager of the report and have it publicly available. Here’s what Badri Rajasekar, TokBox CTO had to say:

2017 has been a big year for WebRTC. In what many considered a very significant piece of the puzzle, Apple announced support for WebRTC in Safari, finally allowing developers to use WebRTC on any browser platform. At the same time, we've seen a surge in adoption of live video communications driven in part by consumer demand. BlogGeek.me's evaluation of this market is a valuable read for those looking for snapshot of this year's trends in WebRTC.

Check out TokBox 4-pager from the report. You can expect to see 19 other such detailed profiles of the other vendors that the report covers.

Report Tools

The report doesn’t come only as a “standalone” PDF file. You can access to a few additional tools:

• Price calculator - an Excel sheet designed to make it easier to estimate your costs using different vendors
• Online vendors comparison matrix - an online comparison matrix you can use to quickly validate which vendors offer the feature set and capabilities you need
• Vendor selection blueprint - an Excel sheet and Word workbook with a step-by-step guide on how to narrow down and score vendors for your application
• Presentation visuals - the presentation visuals from the report, easily available for use in your own internal or external presentations

Want to Learn More?

There’s a ton more in the report, and work I do with vendors in this space - those offering such services, looking to offer such services or want to use these services. Feel free to reach out to me or to enquire further about the report.