Of all the changing trends and technologies in communications, one major initiative continues to gain momentum: The transition from on-prem service offerings to cloud.
Some service providers (SPs) have invested significant amounts of time and money (or significant resources) to create an unparalleled on-prem experience. Other SP’s recognised the value of cloud communications early on and ventured into the various technologies that enable them to optimise the cloud experience for users.
Those that have not yet made the leap to the cloud are now considering the world of cloud communications. According to various research and analyst reports, the global unified communications market size is “expected to reach USD 167.1 billion by 2025, exhibiting a CAGR of 16.8% over the forecast period.”
This means that the expansion of cloud communications is imminent and gaining a greater understanding of what the cloud offers is key.
To learn more about what’s happening in the world of cloud communications, we talked to 2600Hz COO, Patrick Sullivan, and head of marketing, Miriam Libonati, to learn what they see in the UCaaS and CPaaS markets and how 2600Hz is preparing for the future.
With a lot of talk about the cloud in UC, Sullivan said it is important to realise that it is not just migrating an on-premise system to a cloud server and saying, “we offer cloud services”, there is much more to it than that.
“A key differentiator — at least for 2600Hz — is having a truly redundant, distributed system that is fault tolerant to ensure uptime 100% of the time,”
“In addition, being able to provision clients instantaneously is more important now than ever. The faster you can get clients up and running, the better for your bottom line. Not only that, but nowadays no one wants to wait for anything, so being able to provision clients instantaneously isn’t just a “nice to have”.
Sullivan said that the most significant advantages of migrating to the cloud significant include getting started quickly, low upfront costs, ease of use, and ease of updates/upgrades.
“All of these advantages make migrating to the cloud well worth it and I’ve never heard a company wish they hadn’t made the move. These 4 advantages go hand in hand to make the transition to the cloud easily doable and successful for any organisation,” he added.
Libonati added that the advantages can depend on the business model, size and target audience.
“Some basics I think that mesh across the board would be: The ability to accelerate the deployment of services and applications as well as the option to reduce the complexity of the technical infrastructure,” she said. “There is a plethora of cloud-based vendors that offer “easy to use” services that can be spun up quickly and easily and introduced into the offering on demand. With these quick and easy deployments, there are no additional complexities with data centres and servers.”
Advice for those looking to make the jump
For cloud-native platforms such as ones offered by 2600Hz, cloud is a familiar world, but for those who have built their business on-prem may be both curious and hesitant in making the jump to cloud services.
Libonati said that there are several ways a business can explore the world of cloud communications without feeling they have to jump in with both feet.
“For instance, targeting a hybrid solution set that offers services run on both on-prem and cloud technologies. More times than not, businesses have invested a lot of time and money into their hardware and equipment and just removing it can be painful. Therefore, adopting a hybrid approach can help them not only maintain the control of their in-house platform, but elevate their offerings by adding even more functionality through cloud services, ”she said.
Sullivan added that understanding your target audience is key to success here.
“If you are selling directly to businesses and/or consumers, then you need services and features that are intuitive and easy to use. This will help increase end user adoption and overall success of migration to your cloud solution. If you are allowing VARs or Service Providers to sell your services, then a big focus is on simplicity for the end users while giving admin functions to all your partners. While this may add additional complexities, the benefit is a bigger distribution model,” he said.
Best practices
In the instance where a business decides to make the complete transition from on-prem to the cloud, Sullivan suggested a few key best practices.
“Make sure you review your options and fully understand the services you will be using”
“Starting a migration to cloud without knowing the ins and outs will make the transition harder. I would also recommend ensuring that your office is set up for success in terms of any prerequisites needed for the service you’re going to implement,” he said.
“For example, if you’re looking to do real-time communication instead of the old school POTS (plain old telephone service) lines, then your office internet must be able to handle the increased usage.”
Libonati said that service providers should avoid focusing on just one solution.
“As much as our own platform, KAZOO, has to offer, in the situation where a SP has built a completely custom solution that makes customers happy, completely uprooting that to try something new could cause major disruptions,” she said.
Libonati said that taking a gradual approach, like capping the usage of your current offering and adding new services through the cloud could not only enhance their offering, but allow the business to learn and evaluate the pros and cons of the offering and ease their way into new avenues over time versus rushing a new direction and creating a chaotic transition that could heavily disrupt the customer experience.
“But let’s not forget the ability to significantly increase scalability and mobility. Given cloud services can be utilised worldwide companies can stay connected across various devices and locations, allowing businesses to expand their workforce, stay connected and scale to new heights,” she added.
