Soprano Design, a global leader in cloud-based enterprise messaging solutions has announced availability of Soprano Connect, its new digital interactive digital channels. Soprano Connect has been designed to meet customer demand for increased interoperability and two-way interactivity between enterprise and social messaging platforms. Soprano’s early adopter customers and telco partners in the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia are currently trialling the services across WhatsApp and Rich Communications Services (RCS) with global availability from end October 2019.
Commenting on the launch of Soprano Connect, Company Founder and Chairman Dr. Richard Favero says, “Today’s digital worker wants simplicity and the ability to send and respond to messages in their messaging platform of choice. The humble text message is seeing phenomenal growth as more people go mobile first, choosing the smartphone as their preferred communications device from business to leisure. Initial response to Soprano’s new digital channels has been extremely positive, designed to be as agile as our customers, enabling them to communicate on their terms, blending their work lives with their personal communications needs.”
This announcement coincides with two significant milestones for Soprano. This month Soprano celebrates its 25th year in business and is on track to achieve its strongest year to date, as its global messaging volumes are set to exceed seven billion in 2020*—representing nearly 40% year-on-year volume growth since 2018.
Soprano’s upward momentum is aligned with the growth in the worldwide voice and text messaging communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) market which shows no sign of slow down. A recent forecast from IDC market analysts suggest it will reach $10.9 billion by 2022, up from $2 billion in 2017.
Dr. Richard Favero continues, “Being a technology company, it’s too easy to be distracted by the so called next big thing. Having a strong customer focus has always been a massive differentiator for Soprano. We’re on track to send 7 billion messages this year and this reflects our approach in avoiding building stuff on a whim and then hoping to get lucky on the other side. Our team are tuned in to the complex problems our customers need help solving. It might be helping a hospital improve operational efficiencies to reduce patient wait times or helping first responders communicate more efficiently in an emergency situation. We have a team of smart people who are very good at taking a customer problem and turning it into something simple, elegant and beautiful.”
A recent Gartner Digital Worker Survey found that 58% of respondents reported using real-time mobile messaging tools daily, and 45% reported using social media networks daily. By 2023, Gartner expects nearly 60% of enterprise application software providers will have included some form of social software and collaboration functionalities in their software product portfolios.
Reflecting on the messaging market’s evolution, Soprano’s Vice President of Marketing, Matt Thompson comments, “Today we take for granted that our text messages just work, but this underpins why SMS has become so trusted by business. SMS provides ultimate convenience to mobile users, ubiquitous reach globally and unrivalled immediacy and response rates – a powerful trio of features that will continue to fuel SMS into the foreseeable future.”
Thompson continues, ‘However, businesses today are being compelled by their consumers to engage in a variety of new places on mobile devices, so we’re focusing on extending beyond SMS into new exciting interactive channels like RCS and WhatsApp. We expect to see more engagement integration of services as omni-channel interactions become a new source of competitive advantage for our business customers.”
Soprano’s solutions are now used by over 3400 enterprise and Government customers globally, including more than 100 of the Forbes Global 2000 firms.
Since its inception in 1994, Soprano has established regional offices in Europe, North America, South America, New Zealand and Southeast Asia to support its partners and customers. The business now operates in 13 countries and supports some of the biggest names in banking, retail, healthcare, telecommunications as well as government departments bypowerfully integrating IP, SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, WeChat, voice messaging and location into a seamless secure business mobile messaging experience for client’s customers. It counts AT&T, Telstra, BT, Vodafone, Orange, Starhub, Smart and Celcom among those telco partners that use its trusted platforms.