“The world is about Cloud First, mobile first.” the statement was given by new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in 2014. Almost four years have passed and with every passing day, we see cloud becoming more prominent technology foundation that enterprises want to invest in. The recent market study also predicted that 83 percent of the enterprise’s workload will be on the cloud by 2020 and almost 41 percent of the enterprise workload will be on the public cloud. Around 20 percent of the enterprises will be adopting private cloud closely followed by the hybrid cloud that stands close to 22 percent of the total cloud pool. As cloud usage grows 95 percent of enterprises around the world will be dependent on the cloud technology directly or indirectly for business operation by 2022. The number for the on-premises data center will shrink from 37 percent to 27 percent by 2020. Digital transformation is driving close to 63 percent of the public cloud engagement.
Security and governance regulations will be a major challenge for cloud vendors. Close to 66 percent of the enterprise cloud users had major concerns regarding data security. The recent data breach on the cloud platform affected hundreds of enterprises around the world and the major cause due to weak security policies and configurations complications. Cloud providers are heavily investing in innovative technology to improve security and reduce manual configuration challenges. In business communication, cloud technology has disrupted the market with Unified Communication (UC) as a cloud service. The innovation in cloud technology has made it imperative for the enterprise to take note of the cloud technology, rather than just hardware and the software-based concept of unified communication. Cloud setting has shifted the enterprise’s collaboration strategy for application development and deployment along with the operational needs of different resources. It’s estimated that around 64 percent of the enterprises have converged their collaboration and communication group to promote unified applications and improve the operation strategy.
An operations team includes different sub-teams that collaborate to perform a given operation, each of the individual team if using a different technology platform can cripple the communication. Unified communications will channelize the operation with the support of a unified- calling, meeting and messaging. Various other operational requirements are also added over time such as mail support, calendaring, file management, audio, and video support and social platforms. The key feature that assists the enterprises to develop a unified communication platform is the integration strategy to ensure that individual teams from remote locations will actually be able to collaborate without any communication barriers. Having a single technological channel to provide communications will help the enterprises to improve the security and collaboration technology rather than spending on various techniques.
The enterprises that have unified communications almost 17 percent of them are successful to meet the unified collaboration requirements with the current technology. Almost 36 percent of the enterprises are still relying on the legacy network for the communication between the teams leveraging different channels. Out of which 17 percent of the enterprises claim to have developed strategies to implement a unified communication to ensure that individual teams can collaborate to improve efficiency. The 17 percent of the enterprises that are planning to invest in Unified communication out of which 43 percent are planning for better vendors communication strategy, 45.8 percent planning to become more efficient, 48 percent to create new leadership and 16.7 percent will be investing the UC for better digital strategy. The shift of unified communication to the cloud-based service will not only change the current strategy of using the unified communications but also the specific roles that are developed in the unified communication. As many of the enterprises that have shifted towards unified communication as a cloud service demonstrated that the need of access and admin control, the cloud will eliminate the need of provisioning and to maintain the on-premise UC hardware.
Many enterprises believed that the shift towards cloud will actually reduce the staffing requirements, instead, we saw an increase in the demand of cloud-based technical admins. After an extensive survey, it was predicted that around 6 percent increase in staff requirement after the cloud adoption. The additional staff was responsible for maintaining cloud applications and monitor cloud providers management. Cloud IT admins are also required for the decision maker’s roles to help the current development strategy to align with the cloud deployment strategy. Collaboration teams across the world are taking initiatives to improve the current cloud communication development and to implement the adoption of new workflows in the enterprise. Enterprises that are investing in the cloud-based Unified communication rely heavily on the provider’s management strategy and technology support. So let’s look at some of the vendors that can effectively offer the UCaaS.
1. Vonage Business Solutions
Vonage Business Solutions is a cloud-based communication solution for small and midsize enterprises. They offer the business phone system that enables the enterprises to connect VoIP phone system to internet-enabled devices via text, over the phone or via video conferencing. The main offerings include call announce, screening, multiple devices on a single extension and do not disturb setting. All the calls are managed using the admin portal assisting in managing the employee dashboard visibility along with billing information.
2. NICE inContact
NICE inContact is a SaaS-based call center software that helps the enterprises to maximize the quality of leads and minimize the cost of such client interactions. The NICE inContact comprises several different features to process the inbound support requests and also help the enterprises connect with different customers using multiple channels.
3. Skype for Business Software
Skype for Business is a hybrid messaging platform available both on-cloud and on-premises. Skype for business even supports the Microsoft 365 improving the collaboration across the teams with file sharing feature. It also offers text, HD video communication and recording facility over its cloud application.
Many of the enterprises have adopted the cloud solutions for unified communication but it will strongly depend on the enterprise strategy and the requirements of the communication. Having a hardware specific collaboration will increase the cost and also the provision for the device and network, the cloud will help to be flexible and improve the communication application.
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