Infancy of Enterprise Cloud Comms Adoption Creates Opportunities

Guest Blog by By Sascha Mehlhase, senior director of product management with Flowroute, an Intrado Company

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Flowroute Cloud Adoption Opportunities
Unified Communications

Published: October 24, 2019

Guest Blogger

The adoption of cloud-based communication services is widespread among businesses in the U.S. because these solutions allow companies to innovate offerings while reducing costs. However, global cloud adoption is still in its infancy with experts finding many international enterprises are now just awakening to the benefits of cloud-based telecom offerings.

The U.S. and Netherlands currently lead cloud integration with 18 and 20 percent market penetration, respectively. This level of market penetration might be shocking to some, but it demonstrates that cloud adoption is still in the early stages worldwide. Smaller market penetration also illustrates an opportunity for communication service providers (CSPs) to promote and deliver innovative solutions, which will allow them to increase their share of the global market.

By offering international capabilities, CSPs can play an integral role in helping businesses innovate their existing product offerings seamlessly, regardless of their location.

Global business and IT leaders on the fence about adopting cloud-based solutions into their enterprise communication offerings should consider three benefits that lead enterprises to make the switch from traditional telecom solutions to cloud-based offerings.

1 – Reduced Costs

The cost of installing telecom infrastructure can be steep. Hardware can include transmission lines, satellites, radios, answering machines, towers, switches and routers. Choosing to host communications in the cloud means an organization can forgo capital investment in hardware, as well as the burden of where to securely store and maintain it. In addition, businesses can manage cloud-based telecom offerings without a dedicated IT team, which reduces costs associated with the deployment and upkeep of legacy solutions.

2 – Increased Scalability

Unlike on-premises infrastructure, cloud-based systems allow teams to quickly scale solutions to offer new services or modify existing offerings. As such, business leaders who are looking to grow their company need telecom offerings that can grow with them, as well as accurately estimate capacity requirements. The cloud’s broad network access, elasticity and measured services (i.e., where cloud systems monitor and control the provision of services to ensure effective use of resources) enable cloud customers to expand and scale infrastructure resources at will.

3 – Global Presence

As more enterprises conduct international business, they need telecom solutions that span across the globe to reach new customers and employees without disruption or added costs. This opportunity is driving businesses to evaluate CSPs that offer international numbers and capabilities that businesses can seamlessly integrate into their existing product suite, regardless of location. Using the cloud can also solve connection issues common with telephone services not built to reach remote employees, resulting in a more unified, collaborative and productive office culture.

Despite the benefits shared above, some global companies are still hesitant to embrace cloud-based solutions, contributing to the slow rate of cloud integration. Below, we debunk three common misconceptions enterprise leaders face when considering migration to cloud-based communications.

Misconception #1: There will be less control

Business leaders may think they won’t have as much control over their PBX when it’s not hosted on-site. However, administrators have stronger control and greater flexibility with cloud-based solutions. Instead of relying on adapting physical on-premises hardware systems to fit the changing needs of the business, user setting preferences can typically be customised online in real time – often with the click of a mouse.

Misconception #2: The cloud is not secure

In most cases, the cloud can be more secure than on-premises systems due to cloud communication provider’s dedication to ongoing security practices. Cloud providers not only have dedicated internal resources, but also regularly rely on external auditing to maintain compliance and certifications. It’s also common for providers to duplicate and backup data on additional servers should there be an issue with service or internet connection.

Misconception #3: Sound quality is poor on hosted phone systems

Users in the past have reported sound quality issues when using VoIP and hosted phone systems. These issues arise if the ISP is not configured to prioritize voice traffic, causing latency (which is the time it takes for sound to travel from one caller to another). Thankfully, VoIP providers in recent years have solved this problem by prioritizing and dedicating bandwidth to support voice communication, with high speed and low latency. An appropriately configured ISP makes poor sound quality a thing of the past.

Though widespread cloud-adoption is still in its infancy, the trend toward cloud-based communications will continue to build as more enterprises look to take advantage of the features and functionality OTT solutions provide. Cloud CSPs will profit from offering international telecom services that can help their customers join the global network of businesses communicating in the cloud.

 

Guest Blog by By Sascha Mehlhase, senior director of product management with Flowroute, an Intrado Company
Sascha Mehlhase is the senior director of product management at Flowroute, an Intrado Company. He has more than 15 years of product management experience in software engineering and B2B SaaS platform development. Prior to joining Intrado, Mehlhase was the director of product management at Motorola Solutions, where he was the strategic lead as the company developed software solutions for mobile broadband work-group communications.

 

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