Global Crossing CaaS Debuts with a Cost-Savings Focus

| Mar 2, 2011 | Voice and Unified Communications Services
| Analyst: Brian Washburn

Event Summary

February 28, 2011 - Global Crossing debuts the first phase of its Communications as a Service (CaaS) offer, which combines the carrier's IP-VPN, SIP trunking and Ready Access brand of hosted audio conferencing services. Global Crossing CaaS offers a shared-seat pricing model that lets enterprises share concurrent calling capacity across their organization, including free unlimited on-net calls and unlimited audio conferencing use. In future releases, the carrier intends to add video, IM presence and e-mail support to its CaaS offer.

Quick Take

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Moderate on Global Crossing’s launch of its first Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS) offer, because the carrier has set up its framework for building a broader unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) service as enterprises' vision of what UC should be continues to evolve. For now, Global Crossing's package of conferencing, voice and network services mainly benefits enterprises by letting them share concurrent call capacity across their business locations, which helps reduce costs.

• Vendor Importance: High to Global Crossing, because the carrier's enterprise customers are interested in pulling together disparate business communications experiences, which vary depending on device (i.e., office phone, remote access voice, mobile handset and video). Global Crossing's CaaS 1.0 release provides some basic services bundling, plus mobile audio conferencing application assistance. But with its 1.0 release, Global Crossing has laid the internal groundwork that in future iterations should support a greater variation of services through APIs.

• Market Impact: Moderate on global providers of voice services, because Global Crossing is starting to express its UC&C strategy, but in its 1.0 iteration the differentiators are billing-related. Bundling IP-VPNs and SIP Trunking is not new; VoIP access to audio conferencing also is not new, though Global Crossing’s main differentiator at CaaS 1.0 is unlimited usage; shared concurrent calling is not widely deployed by global competitors, but the concept debuted by Verizon in late 2007 is one that major competitors have watched closely, and more should adopt.

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Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses

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Buyer Actions

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