At CASA25, the “State of CPaaS 2025” panel—moderated by Andrew Collinson—brought together four of the industry’s most experienced analysts and strategists: Nick Lane (MobileSquared), Amy Cameron (STL Partners), Raúl Castañon (S&P Global Market Intelligence), and Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey).

Rather than debating forecasts, the group aligned on something more important: Intelligent Engagement as the right framework for the next chapter of CPaaS evolution. They endorsed the core recommendations of the State of CPaaS report and added their own perspectives on how to drive growth—by improving trust, eliminating friction, and creating real business outcomes.

🧠 Shared Support for “Intelligent Engagement”

The panel broadly supported the idea that CPaaS, Network APIs, vCons, AI, and even CCaaS are no longer separate markets, but interdependent components of a single, evolving ecosystem.

This idea—Intelligent Engagement—shifts the focus from technology layers to business value:

• Using intelligence and data to create context-aware, proactive engagement
• Balancing automation with trust and consent
• Building an ecosystem where communication, identity, and AI reinforce each other

As Andrew put it, “It’s not about 80 or 100 billion—it’s about how these capabilities go together, and what value they unlock.”

🧩 The Analysts’ Recommendations

Each analyst offered practical advice on how telcos and CPaaS players can accelerate Intelligent Engagement, reduce friction, and rebuild trust.

Nick Lane (MobileSquared)

• Educate brands and consumers about richer, two-way communication.
• Help enterprises move beyond one-way alerts to conversational engagement.
• Tackle the trust deficit in business messaging by improving quality and verification.
• Learn from mobile advertising, where user engagement and ARPU are much higher.

Raúl Castañon (S&P Global)

• Focus on user experience, not just security: “Reduce friction first, revenue will follow.”
• Recognize that the success path is already proven—aggregation, developer ecosystems, and enterprise co-creation.
• Telcos need to close the execution gap, not wait for perfect conditions.

Amy Cameron (STL Partners)

• Prioritize anti-fraud and identity APIs—they solve a real enterprise pain point.
• Develop location and IoT-related APIs that can scale without full market coordination.
• Push toward 5G Standalone, since network monetization depends on it.
• Look at AI and automation as critical to operationalizing API use cases.

Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey)

• Trust must become the foundation: consumers no longer trust anonymous channels.
• Fix inflated or fraudulent traffic—clean up CPaaS to be the trusted layer of digital interaction.
• Recognize that the opportunity isn’t in technology alone, but in becoming the trusted broker that connects enterprises and customers safely and intelligently.

🧭 Different Perspectives, Shared Direction

While their expertise comes from different vantage points—Nick from messaging, Amy and Ferry from telco APIs, Raúl from a vendor-revenue base—they converged on one point:

The definitions may differ, but the direction is clear.

All agreed that fragmentation, slow API rollout, and poor communication of value are holding the market back. The path forward is not to obsess over individual segments or metrics, but to synchronize innovation across the ecosystem.

🔁 From Forecasts to Outcomes

Andrew closed the session with a reminder:

“We need to stop talking in acronyms, and start talking about outcomes.”

The real opportunity is not whether the market reaches $30B, $80B, or $100B—but how fast we can:

• Deploy APIs and services that solve real business problems
• Build trust into every interaction
• Reduce friction in communication and onboarding
• And align as an industry around Intelligent Engagement

🔚 Final Word: Trust as the New Growth Engine

Every forecast, every strategy, every API ultimately leads back to one thing: trust.

Consumers ignore messages they don’t trust. Enterprises hesitate to adopt what they can’t control. Developers disengage from complexity and inconsistency.

If the industry can make Intelligent Engagement synonymous with trusted, value-driven communication, growth will follow naturally.

Because in the end, Intelligent Engagement isn’t just a framework—it’s a mindset.

A call to work together, connect the layers, and make digital interaction smarter, safer, and more human.

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→ Read the full State of CPaaS 2025 report to explore how CPaaS, Network APIs, vCons, and AI converge into Intelligent Engagement—and what the industry must do next to accelerate it.

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Can CPaaS (and its adjacent technologies) grow to $100 billion or more?

The discussion was data-driven, often dense—and more importantly, deeply revealing. Because behind the market forecasts and API adoption charts lay a bigger truth:

The real opportunity isn’t in any one forecast—it’s in how we work together to unlock business value across the ecosystem.

📊 Where’s the Money? Mixed Forecasts, But Closer Than They Seem

Each panelist arrived with a different model and number. At first glance, they seemed miles apart. But dig into the definitions, and the picture gets clearer.

• Nick Lane (MobileSquared) focused on business messaging, especially SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS. Nick recently cut his CPaaS forecast for 2029 due to Meta’s new WhatsApp pricing. He now expects ~$11B rather than $19B by 2029, highlighting how sensitive messaging revenue is to platform moves.
• Amy Cameron (STL Partners) projected ~$31B in Network API revenue by 2030, but emphasized that STL uses a bottom-up use case model, estimating demand across fraud prevention, connected vehicles, predictive networking, and more. STL’s model includes APIs beyond the current Open Gateway set and even future capabilities like predictive network performance.
• Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey), often cited for the famous $100–$300B figure, clarified that the “core” Network API revenue is around $30B—but McKinsey adds in enablement revenue (e.g., edge compute) and telco-delivered solutions built on top of APIs to reach their broader total. His perspective focuses on what telcos could earn if they build full-stack, API-enabled enterprise services.
• Raúl Castañon (S&P Global) brought the grounded reality check, using a bottom-up approach based on observable revenue from today’s CPaaS providers like Twilio, Infobip, Sinch, etc. He agreed the potential is there, but emphasized that the key enablers still need to be delivered—especially real services, go-to-market skills, and trust.

🧭 A Word on Definitions: When “CPaaS” Means Different Things to Different Experts

One of the most important takeaways wasn’t in the charts—it was in the disconnect.

Each analyst defines CPaaS differently.

Nick focuses on messaging-centric CPaaS, anchored in the realities of commercial traffic volumes and pricing models. Amy is focused on telco platform potential and how mobile networks evolve to support new use cases. Ferry looks at the network API economy, and how telcos can monetize their infrastructure in an API-first world. Raúl focuses on actual financial performance, rooted in existing vendor results.

No wonder the numbers vary so widely. It’s not disagreement—it’s different slices of an evolving puzzle.

If anything, this diversity shows that the industry urgently needs a shared framing—a bigger umbrella that can encompass the shifting tech stack and unify business strategy.

💡 Intelligent Engagement: A New Umbrella for a Fragmented Industry

That’s where the concept of Intelligent Engagement comes in.

Intelligent Engagement reframes the market not in terms of CPaaS vs. APIs vs. AI vs. CCaaS—but as a connected continuum:

CPaaS remains a foundation for programmable communication. Network APIs bring context and capability from the network layer. AI and vCons make interactions more autonomous and personalized. CCaaS, where it aligns, becomes the operational layer for engagement.

This is no longer about technology layers in isolation. It’s about:

• Reducing friction
• Adding trust
• Creating meaningful business outcomes for brands, platforms, and end users.

✅ Analyst Recommendations: How to Unlock the Value

The panel closed with each expert offering actionable advice—not on how to predict the future, but how to shape it. Their top priorities:

🧠 Nick Lane (MobileSquared)

• Educate brands and consumers on two-way communication
• Help businesses move from alert-style messaging to real engagement
• Recognize that trust and relevance are key to consumer responses
• Learn from mobile advertising—where ARPU is 10x higher than messaging

🧠 Raúl Castañon (S&P Global)

• Focus on frictionless user experiences, especially for authentication
• Study how early CPaaS players scaled—aggregators, developer tools, use cases
• Telcos must stop saying “we don’t have the skills”—and start finding partners who do

🧠 Amy Cameron (STL Partners)

• Prioritize anti-fraud and identity APIs now—they’re real, needed, and monetizable
• Explore location and IoT-related APIs with direct enterprise relevance
• Push for 5G Standalone adoption—it’s the gateway to future network monetization

🧠 Ferry Grijpink (McKinsey)

• Focus on building trust—CPaaS and messaging have a spam problem
• Become a trusted channel consumers can rely on
• Deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right way—even silently
• Clean up inflated traffic and make RCS or future channels truly trustworthy

🔁 It’s Not About the Forecast. It’s About Working Together.

The final message from Andrew Collinson summed it up best:

“We need to stop talking in acronyms, and start talking about outcomes.”

The truth is, the difference between $30B and $100B is not a number—it’s a mindset.

The market will not grow because of forecasts. It will grow because:

• Telcos move faster
• APIs become productized
• Trust becomes the foundation
• We stop duplicating effort and start aligning strategies

And most importantly: we tell a better story. A story not about APIs or messaging formats, but about Intelligent Engagement—the outcome every enterprise is chasing.

🔚 Final Word: Trust Is the Starting Point

If there was one thread running through every analyst’s comment, it was trust. Consumers don’t trust anonymous messages. Enterprises don’t trust vendor lock-in. Developers don’t trust empty promises.

Becoming a trusted broker of intelligent engagement—for identity, communications, and AI interactions—is where the real long-term value lies.

That’s the real opportunity for telcos, platforms, and innovators. Not to chase forecasts, but to lead the next era of engagement by building smarter, safer, and more connected digital experiences.

To dive deeper, download the full State of CPaaS 2025 Report and explore how CPaaS, AI, Network APIs, and more are converging into the era of Intelligent Engagement.

At CASA25, one of the most anticipated moments was the keynote by Andrew Collinson—our Research Lead and a telecoms veteran with nearly four decades of experience. With humor, honesty, and clarity, Andrew unveiled the findings of the State of CPaaS 2025 report, challenging the room to think differently about our industry—and inspiring them to act.

“You Are the State of CPaaS”

From the moment Andrew stepped on stage, he made it clear: this wasn’t going to be just another stats-filled presentation. “I wrote this report,” he said, “but you are the state of CPaaS.” The crowd, slow to respond at first, quickly caught his energy as he asked for a louder welcome.

That set the tone: CPaaS is not a static category. It’s a living, evolving ecosystem. And the people in the room—platform builders, telcos, developers, investors, partners—are the ones shaping its future.

A Researcher Who Didn’t Get CPaaS (At First)

Andrew admitted something few in the industry would dare say out loud: despite decades in telecoms and years running a research company, he didn’t really “get” CPaaS until this past year. “It’s a concept about concepts,” he said, “and the language we use to describe it often makes it harder, not easier, to understand.”

That led to one of the report’s strongest insights: CPaaS needs a new story. One focused not on acronyms and abstractions, but on outcomes, value, and transformation.

Enter: Intelligent Engagement

Through hundreds of conversations and dozens of case studies—many pulled from our Service Provider Playbook—Andrew developed a new frame for the industry:

“You are not just in CPaaS. You are in the business of Intelligent Engagement.”

This phrase, inspired by conversations with leaders at Infobip, Sinch, BT, Q Advisors, and many others, captures something essential. It reflects the shift from tactical tools (like SMS alerts) to strategic transformation (like AI-powered customer journeys).

“Intelligent Engagement,” he explained, is:

• The real outcome enterprises are buying.
• A better language for differentiation.
• A more effective way to connect with decision-makers.

In contrast, the term CPaaS—even though it’s familiar to us—often loses customers in technical jargon. “If your pitch takes 5 seconds to decode, you’ve already lost the room,” Andrew warned.

Strategic, Not Just Tactical

One of the most powerful findings from the report: CPaaS isn’t just tactical. It’s increasingly strategic.

Across dozens of case studies, companies using CPaaS tools weren’t just solving communication issues. They were:

Scaling operations. Personalizing experiences. Building more adaptable, AI-ready businesses.

Strategic value—like improving agility or enabling growth—showed up more often than expected. It’s not just about better CX. It’s about building businesses that can evolve.

The Case Directory: Real Proof, Real Impact

Much of this analysis was made possible by CPaaSAA’s Service Provider Playbook—a massive resource of over 90 real-world examples. Andrew read every case. Then he read them again. And again.

“The value is already there,” he said. “We just need to surface it.”

That’s why we’re launching the Case Directory—a searchable, growing library of CPaaS use cases, business outcomes, and quantifiable results. This is where strategy meets storytelling. And it’s one of our key tools to unlock faster growth and broader adoption.

From CPaaS to Intelligent Engagement: A Maturity Journey

The report outlines a clear evolution path:

• Tactical CPaaS – SMS alerts, reminders, basic messaging.
• Customer Experience Management – multi-channel orchestration, automation, analytics.
• Intelligent Engagement – AI-powered, insight-to-action systems that enable real-time responsiveness.

Where’s the opportunity? Mostly at the far end of that curve. Businesses want insight-to-action loops. They want faster decision-making, more responsive operations, and tools that drive outcomes.

So, How Big Can This Get?

Everyone’s favorite question: is the $100B market real?

Andrew gave us three forecast scenarios:

• Steady Growth (~11% CAGR) → ~$55B market.
• Mid Case (~18% CAGR) → ~$73B.
• Ambitious Case (~25% CAGR) → ~$100B.

Yes, that last one is possible. But only if the industry gets serious about:

• Educating the market on new messaging channels like RCS and WhatsApp.
• Engaging telcos with network APIs.
• Showing how voice—now enhanced by AI—is a source of innovation again.
• Cleaning up fraud and inconsistencies in delivery, especially in gray areas of the industry.
• Talking about outcomes, not acronyms.

As Andrew put it: “You sit at the intersection of cloud, telecom, and AI. You’re already growing at 21% CAGR. You have every reason to be excited.”

Where the Money Is (and Isn’t)

A key insight from the closing slides: CPaaS isn’t just competing with UCaaS or CCaaS—it’s encroaching on digital marketing and customer care.

• ~$600B is spent on digital marketing.
• ~$300B on customer care.
• Much of that is poorly measured, riddled with fraud, and ready to be disrupted by better engagement tools.

This is the real prize. And CPaaS—if reframed as Intelligent Engagement—can go after it.

What Comes Next?

Andrew ended with a challenge to the audience:

Stop selling tech. Start selling outcomes. Don’t hide your value in jargon. Share your wins. Build a shared narrative that helps the whole industry grow.

The State of CPaaS 2025 isn’t just a research report—it’s an open invitation to every CPaaS provider, telco, and partner to evolve the story, raise the bar, and build the future together.

→ Download the report

Everybody can download the full State of CPaaS 2025 report here.

→ Contribute to the Case Directory

Got a great use case? Help grow our industry’s collective evidence base. Reach out to contribute to the Case Directory.

→ Continue the conversation

Join our Working Groups and events leading up to MWC Barcelona to shape the next wave of CPaaS growth.

Let’s stop talking about CPaaS like it’s a product category. It’s a movement. And it’s time we act like it.

This year, CASA25 isn’t just another conference—it’s a curated experience built for people who want to go deep, move fast, and leave with real takeaways.

We’ve designed the event around four high-impact half-day blocks, each focused on a critical theme shaping the future of CPaaS. Whether you’re a platform builder, a telco innovator, a go-to-market strategist, or an AI realist, there’s a block that speaks to you.

And alongside the main track, we’re introducing hands-on workshops—led by our Silver and Gold sponsors—designed for those who want to dive deeper, collaborate, and walk away with tools, not just talk.

Here’s how it all comes together:

Day 1 Morning – The Future of CPaaS: From Ethics to Intelligent Engagement

This opening block sets the tone. We explore the State of CPaaS, how AI is really impacting the communications industry, and how ethics, trust, and intelligent orchestration are becoming must-haves—not nice-to-haves.

Expect to leave with: frameworks to future-proof your business, fresh thinking on responsible AI, and a new lens on customer experience.

Day 1 Afternoon – Real-World CX: Messaging, Orchestration & Leadership

We shift gears into practical territory. Messaging is evolving fast. Customer expectations are rising. And the companies that win are the ones that can adapt—not just with tech, but with leadership.

Expect to leave with: use cases that work, insight into evolving CX playbooks, and ideas for leading through industry change.

Day 2 Morning – Go-To-Market Playbooks: Telcos, Channels & Strategy

This block is all about growth. We unpack the playbooks for building scalable go-to-market engines—whether you’re a telco, a platform, or somewhere in between.

Expect to leave with: actionable GTM models, partnership insights, and new ways to align sales, product, and ecosystem.

Day 2 Afternoon – Network APIs & What’s Next

The final block is future-focused. We’ll explore the momentum behind Network APIs, why they matter, and how to turn potential into performance. This session leads directly into our Analyst Summit.

Expect to leave with: clarity on API monetization, upcoming trends, and real stories from the front lines of Open Gateway.

And Then: The Analyst Summit – Powered by GSMA Open Gateway

New this year: a special half-day Analyst Summit (special invite required) hosted with GSMA Open Gateway, focused exclusively on Network APIs. Designed for product leaders, analysts, and platform architects, this session goes deeper into the business models, technical realities, and collaboration required to make Network APIs successful at scale.

No fluff. No filler. Just impact.

CASA25 isn’t about being everywhere at once. It’s about being in the right room, at the right time, with the right people.

And yes—there will be killer dinners, rooftop drinks, and late-night conversations that spark the next big idea.

Because some of the best breakthroughs happen over a cocktail, not a keynote.

Join us. Bring your brain. Leave with momentum.