The News: Mavenir, a supplier of mobile messaging and business messaging monetization solutions for service providers, announced today that it has acquired Telestax Inc., a global Communications Platform as-a-Service (CPaaS) enablement and application provider to the communications industry. Read the full press release here.
Mavenir Acquires Telestax to Expand 5G Monetization Opportunities through CPaaS Tech
Analyst Take: The Mavenir acquisition of Telestax is squarely focused on augmenting its Mavenir Engage, Mavenir’s omnichannel messaging monetization and customer engagement platform offerings by:
- Potentially enabling service providers to use new agile, nimble SaaS service models to better compete in the new digital economy
- Delivering specialization, flexibility, and simplicity that can meet the needs of businesses of all sizes across a broad spectrum of industry verticals
- Providing service innovation and feature velocity with easy-to-consume APIs and business-critical applications
I view Telestax as a solid bet by Mavenir, since both companies are Texas headquartered and the Telestax Restcomm API platform has been tested by over 10,000 telecom developers and contains over 6 million lines of code. Also, over the last year Telestax has signed up at least 10 major communications services providers (CSPs) to deliver CPaaS to their customers.
Telestax has shown consistent acumen in delivering CPaaS turnkey applications and capabilities including two-factor authentication, campaign manager, interactive Voice Response (IVR), number masking, call queuing, and programmable messaging and meeting enterprise prioritization of using APIs to advance their strategic business objectives. I anticipate that Mavenir can advance Telestax CPaaS capabilities and swiftly integrate Restcomm API features into the Mavenir Engage since the platform demonstrates Mavenir’s ability to meet the RCS (Rich Communication Services) Business, messaging monetization, chatbot, campaign management, and access to different messaging ecosystems such as Google RCS Business Messaging.
I have a minor concern that there is already fair amount of portfolio overlap between Mavenir Engage and the Telestax CPaaS offerings, although I expect that Mavenir will provide an update and roadmap direction regarding the overall integration of parallel portfolio capabilities like campaign management and programmable messaging.
From my perspective, the key aspect of the deal is Mavenir’s view on where it sees the Mavenir Engage platform playing a more influential role in the 5G ecosystem. Mavenir President and CEO Pardeep Kohli sees Communications Platforms, including CPaaS, becoming integral in driving CSP differentiation goals selling into the enterprise space. Specifically, 5G and API enablement are instrumental to unlocking enterprise value across verticals such as IoT, Smart Cities, and Automotive, as well as providing turnkey applications and boosting use case networking for logistics, fleet management, AI/ML chatbots, voice biometrics verification, immersive commerce/entertainment, and additional use cases.
Now Mavenir can use Mavenir Engage to address a broader range of 5G monetization opportunities and boost the API capabilities of portfolio assets such as MAVcore, MAVapps, MAVbiz, and MAVscale. Mavenir needed to acquire Telestax to further differentiate its 5G and overall mobile proposition as well as leverage its 5G/mobile expertise to stand out in the heavily crowded CPaaS segment.
Key Takeaways on Mavenir’s Acquisition of Telestax
With the acquisition of Telestax and its CPaaS assets, Mavenir augments its existing Mavenir Engage platform and overall 5G/mobile portfolio. Mavenir also ups its presence in the heavily crowded CPaaS market segment that already includes established stalwarts like Twilio, Vonage, Plivo, MessageBird, Infobip, Sinch, and Bandwidth as well as targeting of the segment by industry titans AWS, Cisco, and Microsoft (Azure Communication Services). As such, Mavenir has its work cut out in competing more directly against these well-established CPaaS foes.
Where I see Mavenir making CPaaS market inroads is through its 5G/mobile expertise and portfolio assets. As enterprises accelerate their adoption of 5G technology and CSPs expand their CPaaS offerings aimed at enterprises, including mobile support of work from home employees and bring your own device (BYOD) 5G devices, Mavenir can attain clear differentiation against other CPaaS players that do not offer the same level of integrated 5G/mobile capabilities in their portfolio today. Mavenir is now better positioned to take advantage of fast-growing CPaaS market opportunities, especially in industry verticals like IoT, Smart Cities, and Automotive and applications such as logistics, fleet management, AI/ML chatbots, voice biometrics verification, and immersive commerce/entertainment.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
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The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Ron is an experienced research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets. He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including software and services, infrastructure, 5G/IoT, AI/analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.