Oracle will soon release its Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) that aims to help organizations “reimagine how they do business”.
The platform serves up communication, network, and IoT capabilities to customers, who can use those to innovate within Oracle’s industry applications.
In addition, Oracle’s team may leverage the platform on the back-end of these applications to quickly create new capabilities and develop new vertical-specific use cases for customers.
However, the goal is to ultimately support customers in extending the value of their deployments themselves.
Indeed, Andrew Morawski, EVP & GM of Oracle Communications, shared his hopes that the ECP will become the “communications backbone” for businesses when making the announcement on LinkedIn.
With this backbone, an organization may add new arms and legs to its Oracle deployment, bringing new visions of user and customer experiences to life.
Yet, the platform is not a new concept for Oracle. Indeed, Morawski confirms that it has been four years in the making, and – on the back end of many Oracle products – it’s already making a difference. He stated:
We’re already seeing incredible impact in the way industries such as healthcare, the public sector, hospitality, and energy and water are using this platform to help solve some of their biggest challenges.
An excellent example is how the ECP has already contributed to innovation within Oracle’s Public Safety suite, which boosts first responders’ efficiency and real-time situational awareness.
There, it has grouped multiple voice calls to emergency services and verified the location of an incident within a blended map view.
Moreover, it has enabled mobile video capture from body, external vehicle, and security cameras – alongside dashboard-mounted tablets.
In each of these instances, the platform helps businesses leverage 5G-enabled IoT to improve communications throughout emergency services operations.
While this is only one example, Caroline Chappell, Partner at Analysys Mason, sees significant potential in such innovation.
“Oracle’s Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) provides a critical bridge between the power of 5G networks and the industrial processes that can benefit from those properties,” she said.
ECP shows that there is an exciting opportunity for operator network APIs when the market is application-led.
Yet, beyond the network and IoT, the platform may also help in connecting disparate communications devices – from smartphones, PCs, and tablets – with enterprise software to enable new customer journeys.
In addition, Oracle’s customers may layer in the video, audio streaming, recording tools, authorization, authentication, device management, and edge-distributed processing capabilities.
Will Oracle Become the Next Big CPaaS Player?
The Oracle ECP already powers Oracle’s industry application innovations. Now, the vendor is ready to put its capabilities in the hands of customers.
Those customers will receive a platform full of APIs, SDKs, and cloud technologies that pave the way for real-time communications, which businesses can inject into customer journeys and operations.
By this definition, the ECP is essentially a CPaaS platform, and Oracle has become the latest entrant into the market, which Gartner predicts is set for substantial growth.
Indeed, the research firm predicts 90 percent of businesses will leverage CPaaS platforms by 2026, up from 30 percent in 2022.
Yet, Oracle doesn’t use the term “CPaaS.” Instead, the emphasis is on adding value to existing customer implementations and aiding the delivery of vertical-specific solutions.
As such, it seems more about supporting customers in finding new value in their investments – as opposed to a new business-winning platform in itself.
However, as Morawski concludes:
The launch of Oracle ECP represents a significant opportunity not only for our business but also for how the world communicates, interacts, and engages.
From this, a future where Oracle pushes the ECP beyond its customers and into the broader market seems very much possible – and the tech giant may well take its place alongside the likes of Cisco, Twilio, and Vonage in a burgeoning space.
