Historically, enterprises adopted CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) solutions primarily for reliable telephony and call routing. Native ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) guaranteed predictable distribution of inbound voice traffic, while embedded telephony ensured call quality and carrier connectivity. Choosing a contact center platform meant choosing a phone system first, with everything else being a secondary feature. In this blog, we will explore why today these capabilities are becoming a baseline feature rather than a unique CCaaS differentiator. Reach out if you would like more insights.
Why telephony and ACD are becoming commoditized utilities (and why they still matter)
While telephony and routing still remain important, the underlying technology for routing a voice call or a digital interaction has been largely solved and democratized. Thanks to open APIs (Application Programming Interface) and the proliferation of CPaaS (Communication Platforms as a Service), voice transport and call distribution have become plug-and-play commodities. Instead of building their own telephony infrastructure from scratch, CCaaS providers often leverage these cloud communication APIs (for example, Twilio APIs) as the foundation. This means the heavy lifting of telephony, i.e., PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) connectivity, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), call distribution logic, etc., is handled by a commodity cloud service, giving CCaaS providers access to high-quality communications. The result: what differentiates CCaaS is no longer owning the communication pipes but orchestrating the flow within them.
From an enterprise’s perspective, this API-driven model provides flexibility. Enterprises can now adopt a BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) approach, keeping an existing carrier or PBX (Private Branch Exchange) in place and integrating it with a modern CCaaS platform via APIs. In fact, Google’s CCAI platform has a formal bring-your-own-carrier program so customers can retain existing numbers and carrier contracts while layering Google’s AI-powered CCaaS on top. The message is clear: telephony is an interchangeable service endpoint, not a strategic anchor.
That said, the “old world” of tightly bundled telephony isn’t obsolete. In specific contexts such as regulatory environments, global call compliance, end-to-end SLAs, and simplification mandates, a native stack can be the pragmatic choice. Regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector) often prefer native, vendor-owned voice for recording and PCIDSS controls under a single audit trail. Lean IT teams that prize simplicity over composability also prefer to have fewer moving parts, which the traditional CCaaS approach brings.
The modern CCaaS: A CX orchestration engine
Customers now engage on their own terms: via SMS, webchat, social media messengers, WhatsApp, video, among other channels. The voice channel, while still vital, is now one thread in a much larger tapestry of communication. Today’s CCaaS platforms need to coordinate intents, channels, policies, bots, and humans across the journey in order to drive outcomes like first-contact resolution, containment with satisfaction, and efficient handoffs. This orchestration spans across CRM and ticketing systems, WEM suite, knowledge base, fraud/identity tools, billing, logistics, and even real-time language translation. It’s a control plane that treats channels as interchangeable surfaces while governing data, AI models, and workflows centrally. Done right, this makes adding a channel, carrier, or router as routine as adding another microservice.
The new CCaaS differentiators
1) AI and automation that turn intent into outcomes – Generative and agentic AI have shifted from “assistive features” to the primary engines of routing, containment, and guidance. Best-in-class CCaaS providers use LLMs and domain models to power self-service across voice and digital, summarize and classify interactions, surface next-best actions to agents, and continuously improve through closed-loop learning. The providers pulling ahead are building AI into the orchestration layer—not just bolting it onto channels
2) Ecosystem integrations that erase silos – Enterprises don’t care which system owns the interaction; they want resolution. Modern CCaaS embeds deeply into CRM, marketing, billing, field service, and data platforms, and allows “bring your own channel/carrier/router” patterns so orchestration isn’t constrained by one provider’s roadmap. Salesforce’s recent moves to broaden partner-led channels and routing underscore how convergence around the CRM/data platforms is accelerating
3) Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) as a growth lever
WEM is no longer just schedules and scorecards. It now includes AI-driven insights, real-time guidance, unified agent desktops, coaching automation, and performance intelligence, tight loops that boost EX and CX together
4) Data & analytics as the operating system
An orchestration engine needs clean, unified engagement data to train models, measure business outcomes, and automate confidently. Platforms emphasizing an open data fabric (rather than locking data inside channel tools) make AI improvements durable and portable across the stack
5) Developer agility and extensibility
CPaaS style programmability, including emerging “network APIs,” means enterprises can adapt routing logic, extend agent tools, or embed contact center capabilities in their own apps without waiting on a vendor release train
New breed of CCaaS vendors: Open and AI-native approaches
The value proposition of CCaaS has clearly shifted upward from the infrastructure layer to the intelligence and integration layers. Several emerging CCaaS providers exemplify this evolution by explicitly de-emphasizing native telephony and focusing on higher-layer value.
Verint’s new Open CCaaS platform is one clear example. Traditionally known for its workforce engagement and analytics solutions, it entered the CCaaS market with an open, data-centric approach. The Verint Open CCaaS is designed to allow enterprises to integrate any ACD/call routing platform into its ecosystem and still use Verint as the unified contact center interface and intelligence layer. Verint’s platform provides the common agent desktop, the AI-powered bots and automation (via its Da Vinci AI suite), the engagement data hub, and the workforce management/analytics capabilities.
Another example is Kore.ai’s AI for service platform. Kore.ai comes from a conversational AI background, so AI for Service Contact Center AI (CCAI) was built with automation and AI-first from the ground up. It places heavy emphasis on AI Agents, LLMs, and agent-assist AI. While it leverages Twilio for telephony, it is flexible in terms of telephony: it can sit on top of an existing telephony system or operate as a complete standalone contact center with its own native voice gateway and telephony integration if needed. This approach acknowledges that many organizations have significant investments in voice infrastructure, so the platform meets them where they are, layering AI and orchestration without uprooting the phone system.
It’s worth noting that even some established CCaaS and CPaaS players are moving in this direction. Twilio’s Flex platform, for instance, is a “programmable contact center” that gives developers full control to compose their own contact center solution on top of Twilio’s communications network. Amazon’s Connect service similarly provides a cloud contact center with an open framework to integrate AWS AI services or third-party tools. These offerings underline the same trend: the future of CCaaS is open integration, customization, and AI-driven experience design – not a one-size-fits-all phone system in the cloud.
What to ask and expect in modern CCaaS RFPs
For enterprise IT buyers and CX leaders, in evaluating CCaaS options, the questions to ask in 2025 are very different than those a decade ago. It’s less about “Can it handle calls and chats?” – it’s more about “Can it make our entire customer engagement smarter, more cohesive, and more agile?” The following aspects become paramount:
- Proof of openness- BYOC/BYOT (bring your own telephony), “bring your own CRM,” and documented APIs/events for every major capability
- Data portability- Access to raw customer interaction data and the ability to bring your own ML models
- Automation roadmap- How the platform operationalizes GenAI (guardrails, feedback loops, model choice, observability)
- WEM depth- Realtime guidance, coaching automation, unified desktop, and analytics that tie EX to CX outcomes
- Ecosystem breadth- Prebuilt integrations to CRM/ITSM/marketing/data stack and a healthy marketplace
- Developer experience- SDKs (Software Development Kits), webhooks, reference architectures, and published SLAs for API reliability, plus support for CPaaS/network APIs where relevant
The bottom line
Native ACD and telephony still matter, but as essential utilities, not differentiators. The competitive edge in CCaaS now lies in how well a platform orchestrates journeys, unifies engagement data, and applies automation across channels, bots, and processes. Winning providers will treat the contact center as an extensible AI-ready orchestration engine and make the infrastructure serve the plan, not the other way around.
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