The cloud communications movement is here and multiple fronts are predicting accelerated growth for this business communications trend. Gartner predicts that Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market to grow 18 percent in 2017 and cloud adoption strategies will influence more than 50 percent of ITO deals through 2020. Deloitte, on the other hand, predicts that spending on IT-as-a-Service for data centers, software and services will be $547B by the end of 2018.
This points to the obvious aggressive growth of cloud communions, unified communications-as-a-service (/unified-communications/ucaas) specifically, and its inevitable dominance of the business telco market.
However, even with all this optimism about the cloud, the numbers do not translate to more transitions. In 2016, a study showed that it is small and medium scaled-businesses who are more open to moving to the cloud. It is curious that last year, larger enterprises are less keen on adopting the new technology even if they are the ones who have the most resources for it.
So, while most are familiar with the many reasons why companies move to the cloud, here are some possible reasons why some enterprise is still hesitant:
Cloud communications not seen by some as mature technology
While cloud communications has been around for a while, it only really became more adaptable to businesses in the mid-2000s. While the technology has seen continuous growth, it is only in recent years where it really hit its stride by achieving true unified communications-as-a-service. For a while, unified communication was seen only as a buzzword but now, services like Gartner Magic Quadrant Report for UCaaS leader RingCentral have combined different communications channels like voice, SMS, fax, conferencing, and team messaging in one service. But even with those functionalities, advancements were only achieved in recent years and larger enterprises have been operating with on premise systems for years.
Familiarity with old technology
Speaking of operating with on-premises PBX systems for years, that is also one reason why some companies are not very keen on moving to cloud communications. While the number of benefits cloud communications or even just the cloud PBX can be enumerated, sometimes familiarity trumps benefits. They have been doing it this way for the last couple of decades and it has been effective for the type of operations they have. There is security in the familiar and there is fear of the unknown. For all the benefits of cloud communications, there is still that chance that it might not work well for their business.
Overall control over the system
While small and medium scale businesses count not having to invest in their own data center to host a service like a unified communications system, enterprises have the money to burn to build their own and manage it. Some enterprises may not be completely comfortable of having an integral part of their operations, like business communications, being controlled by a third party. Some large companies, nowadays, invest in a hybrid-cloud setup to get the best of both worlds.
Unfamiliarity with the Technology Leaders’ Brands
Microsoft, Cisco, and many other big brands are onboard the cloud, however, they are not the industry leaders in cloud communications. The problem is that many major companies only trust the major brands as well. While unified communications leaders like RingCentral is gradually increasing its brand awareness, there are still some sectors that are still stuck to the old technology leaders whose best services are still not cloud-based. Movement to cloud communications should rise as awareness for the true cloud industry leaders increase over the years.
Even with these reasons, it still feels like cloud communications domination is inevitable. It may take longer for enterprises to get there compared to small and medium scale businesses, but they will eventually be there as well.
Guest Blog by Mark Dacanay of RingCentral
