Digital Transformation isn’t coming—it’s already here. As enterprises work to make the most of this evolution, their priorities are often centred on ensuring flexibility and high availability. As these organisations think about moving to the cloud to maximise everything the digital transformation has to offer and enable a more flexible and robust IT deployment, the first order of business is identifying the core applications to be migrated.
Text and e-mail are usually at the top of the list, but also of increasing importance are conferencing and collaboration applications. Connections—to customers, to business partners, to vendors and suppliers, and to fellow employees—are the backbone of any business. Next-gen communication solutions enable the kind of information sharing that supports a better customer experience, enhances employee productivity and ultimately drives revenue.
For anyone still developing the value proposition for upgrading their communications systems or solutions (think call centre technology or cloud-based phone systems, to name a few), the following example scenarios may help highlight why cloud platforms such as Avaya’s are a high priority for many companies.
Consider a service firm with 1,500 employees spread across multiple sites, each linked back to a phone system in the data centre. How quickly can an enterprise with a dispersed workforce spin up new users? Or think about a smaller business, such as an insurance agency, that must quickly scale up its workforce to support customers after a natural disaster. Organisations with seasonal needs encounter similar challenges as they work to expand staffing levels to handle peaks in their yearly sales cycles.
Achieving this level of flexibility is extremely difficult to do—and difficult to do without significant investments in infrastructure—in a traditional on-premises environment. But an IT deployment in the cloud provides broad scalability and quick access to additional resources as they’re needed. With the right solution, billing is based on consumption so businesses aren’t stuck paying peak traffic rates all year long.
Not only can users in a scenario such as a call centre be added in a matter of minutes, a flexible solution enables integration with public cloud platforms or be designed to create a hybrid model, connecting over the network to Avaya endpoints and phone systems. Calls coming into either environment can travel over Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks, allowing the organisation to modify the call centre experience to suit their internal needs, as well as customers’ expectations.
Flexibility isn’t the only benefit of cloud technology. Companies can also take advantage of powerful automation coupled with self-service solutions that streamline administrative tasks and reduce the time staff must spend managing features and functionalities. Rather than making a call to spin up new users, for example, everything can instead be done through an online portal. This network architecture also gives businesses the ability to connect their contact centre with other providers’ applications, including workforce automation, business analytics and a host of popular platforms that help to move today’s digitally-aware companies forward.
For any organisation that must support a large customer base over the next three or four years, applications in the cloud offer serious value. For one, the cloud reduces utility costs associated with physical data centres, as well as the expenses to lease or purchase that real estate. Hardware costs and workforce levels are also reduced as a result. In return, the cloud delivers a high level of availability and a flexible financial model that’s based on utilisation, not static pricing tiers that can only be changed when contracts renew. All of those resources can then be applied to more strategic initiatives.
Forward-looking IT teams can leverage Avaya’s cloud presence to be more aware of what’s going on within their networks, to think deeply about what technology solutions mean to their business and to be ready for the next stage of planning that will drive their business in the coming years.
Guest blog by Ed Wadbrook, Vice President, Cloud Solutions, Carousel Industries
For more than 25 years, Carousel Industries has been helping IT and business leaders bring more confidence and clarity to their IT decisions. We help you drive innovation in your business through integrated solutions across a wide range of technologies and services.
