There’s lots of buzz around the cloud these days and cloud communications is no exception. But buzz isn’t always an indicator of a business case for technology purchases. Smart businesses are asking what’s driving the rush to the cloud—and they’re getting solid answers. So why are so many businesses moving communications to the cloud today? Here are 10 real-world reasons.
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. By hosting a phone system over the Internet, 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 and maintenance of a traditional phone system.
Outsource IT support to the provider. The management of an on-premise solution can be very expensive. Because of the complexity of today’s communications systems, it can often takes an entire IT department to manage. Cloud-based communications can help alleviate the burden by eliminating maintenance, IT work load and some of the more costly internal infrastructure, including servers and storage systems.
Scale up or down based on users. Anyone who has moved or expanded an on-premise phone system knows just how difficult it can be. Whether a business is growing, moving or sizing down, the cloud provides the flexibility and scalability the business needs now and in the future. And with cloud-based systems, businesses can access and add new features without any new hardware requirements.
One vendor for everything. With cloud communications, a vendor manages communication systems off-site, and IT departments are freed up to focus on other high-priority issues. (Let IT get back to that email fix!)
Instant updates. With cloud communications, service is outsourced, and upgrades are deployed through automatic software updates. This allows organizations to stay focused on their business and leave the upgrades to the cloud communications vendor.
Maximize uptime and downtime coverage. For many businesses, 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 them avoid costly interruptions and downtime.
Leverage shared resources. With an on-premise communication system, hardware and software geographic redundancy can be challenging to deliver. But when multiple businesses share resources in a cloud environment, they get access to a level of redundancy that would be too expensive to procure with an on-premises solution.
Business continuity made easy. Businesses are using the cloud to protect themselves from the affects of disasters. With cloud communications, they can get up and running quickly after a disaster, or in some cases, continue running the entire time. Some reroute calls to remote locations and cell phones. Others rely on remote access to voicemail or use cloud-based auto attendants continue taking calls and providing information. It’s a hard-to-resist combination of reliability, resiliency and redundancy.