Cloud Communications — Hype or Help?

Recently there’s been a lot of buzz about the “Cloud” and “Cloud Communications.” Is the Cloud worth taking a look at? Are there real, tangible benefits to cloud communications, or is it all just hype to drive more sales and greater profits to cloud providers?

Well — Let’s just say it’s a little bit of both “hype” and “help”.

On the “Hype” side of the equation — Cloud communications providers benefit from the subscription model of Cloud Communications and its monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Therefore, the more they can promote Cloud Communications and drive market awareness, the greater the MRR opportunities, resulting in greater monthly revenues.

On the “Help” side of the equation — There are benefits to cloud communications. Research shows that users of cloud communications are recognizing distinct benefits. As more service providers offer and deliver cloud communications to their customers, confidence in these services grow and that is continuing to feed the momentum and encouraging further adoption.

So why are so many businesses moving communications to the cloud today?

Here are 10 tangible reasons:

1. Predictable monthly costs:

This may seem like old news, but many companies don’t realize just how much they can save by moving their communications to the cloud. For cloud communications businesses are charged on an “as needed” basis, paying only for what they use. That makes cloud-based communication systems especially cost-effective for small businesses — eliminating the need to pay for the installation, support and maintenance of a traditional phone system. Depending on your voice communications bandwidth demand, you may be able to even use your existing Internet connection to support your cloud communications.

2. Management:

Due to the complexity of today’s communications systems and the demands of your organization’s user community, management of an on-site phone system can become very expensive and time-consuming. Cloud-based communications can help alleviate the burden by eliminating maintenance, IT workload and some of the more costly internal infrastructure, including PBX common equipment, telecom and network servers and storage systems.

3. Scalability — Scale up or down based on users:

Anyone who has moved or expanded an on-site phone system knows just how difficult it can be. Whether a business is growing, moving or down-sizing, the cloud provides the flexibility and scalability. With cloud-based systems, you can access and add new features without any new PBX requirements. If you need to add phone sets, those can be couriered to you overnight.

4. Vendor management —One vendor for everything:

With cloud communications, a vendor manages the communication systems off-site, and IT departments are freed up to focus on other high-priority issues.

5. Technology — Stay current:

With cloud communications, upgrades are deployed through automatic software updates pushed out by the vendor. This enables organizations to stay focused on their business and leave the upgrades to the cloud communications vendor.

6. Quality of service —Maximize uptime and downtime coverage:

For many organizations uptime is pivotal. To keep things running, they rely on the ability to scale and leverage remote work teams or serve customers from anywhere. For these kinds of businesses, cloud communications maximizes uptime and coverage through multiple, remotely hosted data centers, helping to avoid costly interruptions and downtime.

7. Affordable Redundancy —Leverage shared resources:

With a traditional on-site communications system, hardware and software geographic redundancy can be challenging to deliver. But when multiple businesses share resources in a cloud environment, they gain access to a level of redundancy that would be too expensive to procure with an on-site solution.

8. Disaster recovery — Business continuity made easy:

Organizations are using the cloud to protect themselves from the effects of disasters. With cloud communications, organizations can get up and running quickly after a disaster, or in some cases, continue running during the disaster. Some organizations reroute calls to remote locations and cell phones. Others rely on remote access to voice mail or use cloud-based auto attendants to continue taking calls and providing information. It’s a hard-to-resist combination of reliability, resiliency and redundancy.