Cisco, the world's leading provider of IP data and voice solutions, recognized that there was a growing trend towards managed services that involved its solutions. While many tier-1 telecomunication carriers were investing in Cisco solutions, Cisco saw that mid-sized CLECs and managed service providers (MSPs) were not always prepared to make the up-front investment in a complete Cisco platform.
MSPs were expected to carry the full business case risk of investing in the Cisco infrastructure while endeavoring to build a managed service business revenue stream.
Cisco made the decision to build its own Cisco managed service platform and rent the infrastructure to managed services buisnesses and CLECs on an "as a Service" basis.
This platform is called Cisco UCaaS (unified communications as a service) and is based on the Cisco UC on UCS architecture.
