As the conversation around how we communicate and collaborate in business moves into the new decade, it’s no longer a case of cloud-based solutions being regarded as fringe or innovative. Just as challenger finance providers were once considered too risky but have now become mainstream for forward-thinking enterprises, the flexibility and scalability of UCaaS is enabling providers like PGi to deliver UCaaS solutions entirely independently of on-premises installation.
Frost & Sullivan’s recent white paper “Public Cloud Brings out the Best in UCaaS” highlights the benefits that organisations of all sizes are achieving through transitioning away from legacy PBX deployments, to public cloud solutions — solutions which have now reached the effectiveness and high standards needed to allay former concerns about reliability and voice quality. As a strategy for the future which removes significant admin overhead from support staff internally, UCaaS solutions offer a range of advantages over previous approaches to business communications.
Changing times, changing solutions
Today’s businesses in every sector need agility and speed, in uncertain economic times and when rates of changes in available technology have never been more rapid. Being able to scale up and down fast is fundamental, as is the ability to act globally, according to shifting combinations of local opportunities and constraints. In order to maintain competitive differentiation, providing robust and accessible communications through any changes in the background — both internal communications and customer service — is essential.
Scalability benefits doesn’t only apply to account numbers — although user-subscription financial models are a welcome and obvious boon for financial directors, particularly with endpoint hardware increasingly shifting into subscription-based models. Elasticity of capacity — being able to rapidly provision additional storage or relocate data centres to meet compliance requirements, while ensuring fail-over resilience in the event of overload and latency, are all key benefits of public cloud solutions for UCaaS. With the right combinations of tools and instant deployment, UCaaS solutions enable every member of the workforce to remain productive, regardless of role or location.
Demand shifts to a cloud-based future
At this inflection point in its uptake, the UCaaS market comprises a variety of structures, including cloud-native solutions, hosted telephony servers, uplifted UC platforms, and other proprietary platforms. The demand going forward is for cloud-native development, and the hybrid era will typically be transitional — UCaaS applications designed and created for public cloud usage will be the future.
So, presently it’s a moving target — but the use of public cloud services adds additional value here, by effectively outsourcing the research and development, and ensuring your business communications remain able to take advantage of every innovation while remaining sustainably competitive, in ways never possible with former on-premise infrastructure investments. UCaaS providers like PGi are continually enhancing their solutions to take advantage of changing potential, while clients continue to benefit from a fixed per-user cost.
Choosing the right partner will mean careful investigation of issues such as reliability, scalability, and security, to ensure alignment of business objectives and long-term ROI. Smart customers will need to stay abreast of UCaaS trends and shifts, and understand how their industry is likely to be impacted, to position themselves for future success.
