Results from a recent survey conducted by Infonetics (News - Alert) Research indicates that 82 percent of cloud service providers plan to offer hybrid cloud CaaS (cloud-as-a-service) by 2016. This shift indicates that providers are serious about tapping the cloud market far beyond traditional cloud services, making for a promising future.

Respondents to the survey include pure-play cloud service providers and incumbent, competitive and mobile operators, of whom offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), cloud-as-a-service (CaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)).

"Cloud service providers are catching the hybrid cloud CaaS wave, an emerging market where we can expect lots of innovation as the introduction of new IaaS and SaaS off-premises cloud services begin to wane," Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., directing analyst for data center, cloud and SDN at Infonetics Research (News - Alert), said in statement to the press.

Service providers have their sites set on building up a range of services for customers, including bundling off-premises cloud services with network connectivity.

Perhaps those in the contact center space need to keep a keen eye on this, as cloud services have already proven their wealth when it comes to contact center technology.

The primary advantage of cloud technology as it pertains to contact centers is that it enables companies, businesses and other organizations to reduce spending and save money by minimizing inherent IT and support costs. Migrating to a cloud-based contact center is relatively cheaper and provides all-in-one solutions that can include essential software such as IVR, IP-PBX (News - Alert), ACD, call recording and monitoring, workforce management, performance management, outbound messaging and delivery of reporting to management – all in one highly integrated fashion.

Many companies today are moving to cloud applications to help them respond to the rapid advances in today’s market environment while simultaneously ditching many of the high costs and hassles of maintaining complex internal systems.

The promise of a hybrid service like CaaS means that providers can offer more to their end customers, like those utilizing the cloud for the management of the contact center.

The benefit of minimal hardware and software costs is a plus for companies, as well. Along with no up-front capital investment, it's clear why so many executives are looking to cloud solutions for their contact center needs.