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How can CPaaS technology support remote work?
CPaaS technology offers a lot of benefits, but it's not a quick fix for enterprises considering how they might use it to support increasing amounts of remote workers.
Communications platform as a service offers a lot of benefits, and with companies now trying to find the best ways to support a growing number of remote workers, IT is investigating what role, if any, CPaaS technology might play.
The answer? It can't -- not directly.
Remote work requires your workforce to make use of cloud-based services. It means you need to either shift a lot of your everyday software tools to SaaS or you need to offer decent VPN access to your on- premises software. But most VPN options, as well as internet connections to on-premises installations, are limited in capacity, making them viable only for a percentage of the workforce.
Employees and enterprises are looking for ways to meet their business goals. If these exist as ready-made applications, they will opt for such an approach more often than not. With the current frenzied rush toward work from home, most companies have had to settle for strategies that didn't meet many of their needs but were simply good enough. There was just not enough time to plan ahead.
CPaaS enables companies to create their own tailored experiences. It's a way for companies to design a communications foundation that supports their individual workflows even as the technology integrates with multiple systems. Yet, CPaaS requires development, and this takes time. It means, if you want to roll out a remote work initiative based on CPaaS, advance planning is an absolute must.
There are two ways CPaaS technology can dovetail with remote work strategies:
- Indirectly, as part of a SaaS product being used. As the shift toward the cloud continues, SaaS has become the backbone of many enterprises' business. Many of these SaaS products use CPaaS to deliver their own communication features.
- Directly, by developing customized experiences. Companies that require specific business flows may well turn to CPaaS to develop them, either by using their own in-house development capabilities or by outsourcing specific projects.
There's an invisible chain of assumptions here that makes CPaaS a part of the remote work movement. It goes like this: Remote work is done best by employing the cloud. Cloud-based services are usually SaaS. SaaS offerings rely on CPaaS for their communication needs.
