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About a year ago TMC’s (News - Alert) Linda Dobel wrote “multi-site, multi-source contact centers have, at this point, come to appreciate the many benefits of transitioning to the cloud. Still, the biggest concern, and therefore the biggest hold back, is security.”

Things haven’t changed all that much between then and now. For hosted predictive dialers, that’s still a central issue; the common thinking is that, while cloud computing may be the big disruptor, if that disruption includes security concerns, count us out.

Paul Shread, editor-in-chief of the IT Business Edge Network, recently took issue with the concept that adopting cloud computing for a call center necessarily means a security tradeoff; that to get the benefits of cloud computing’s price, convenience and other goodies, you have to sacrifice your current comfort level of security.

He notes that there is a growing willingness among large enterprises to trust cloud computing in some form. He cites Amy Newman, senior managing editor of ServerWatch, InfoStor and Enterprise Storage Forum, who says plenty of companies like cloud just fine, as long as it’s not that big public cloud out there.

"Most of the cloud talk and momentum I see is around private cloud," Shread reports Newman as saying. "When I query vendors on public vs. private, the answer is nearly always private cloud.”

Newman goes on to say that companies without significant regulation or security requirements are much more likely to go with the public cloud, but even if companies aren’t willing to throw everything in the cloud, Shread says, they’re starting to put “some critical applications and data” in the cloud.

With the trust and comfort level enhanced by the reliability of such online CRM options as Salesforce, NetSuite and Oracle (News - Alert), the comfort level with call centers is growing.

And there are other advantages to the cloud for call centers. Last July, TMC noted that it’s possible to simplify call center routing with cloud switching, as officials ofLiveVox said in a blog entry.

LiveVox (News - Alert) is the company responsible for Private VoIP Cloud, cloud-based switching, which is intended to help move switching and routing from the premise fully into the network. The offering lets contact centers execute multi-site call routing “without site-based switching or expensive and limited intelligent networking hardware.”

And don’t just assume “Oh yeah, sure, sure, simplification. Got it -- no problem.” If you’ve never been up close and personal with one, friends, a multi-site contact center management and call routing is “phenomenally complex,” as they say, with complexity driven by such factors as “existing network topologies, integration between disparate hardware and site-premised switching requirements.”

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Expo, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012, happening NOW, in Miami, FL. The Cloud Communications Expo will address the growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. For more information on registering for the Cloud Communications Expo click here.

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