One of the biggest benefits touted about the cloud is the ability to drastically improve spending on technology. Companies are promised tens of thousands in savings – if not more – and the ability to streamline operations and even eliminate unnecessary positions. The same benefits have been touted about hosted phone systems, but are these promises based on reality?
A recent blog by BroadConnect points to some powerful figures in favor of leveraging the cloud. The hosted phone systems provider points to a MeriTalk survey. Underwritten by AT&T (News - Alert), the survey suggests that the federal government has the opportunity to save roughly $19 billion each year by simply migrating to the cloud. Agencies throughout the country have the opportunity to reduce spending by 18 percent on average, which is 50 percent more than agencies leveraging limited cloud strategies.
“While cloud is not appropriate for every agency, in every instance, there’s no question it can deliver compelling efficiencies for many, if not most, applications and we’re seeing increased appetite from government customers for cloud conversion strategies,” said Chris Smith, AT&T Government Solutions vice president of technology of the survey’s findings.
Even with these clear benefits, only 41 percent of agencies are actually considering the cloud as a solution for their overall IT strategy. Progress toward the cloud is also lacking as the majority of IT managers rated themselves as a “C” when grading their progress toward the cloud. Still, the cloud and hosted phone systems are an important strategy for consideration due to proven advantages. Let’s examine three reasons why the cloud needs to be a priority on your list.
Overall Costs Go Down
Your overall CAPEX spend goes down as you’re able to eliminate dedicated servers in favor of the private cloud. You no longer have to pay to maintain or upgrade numerous on-site servers or the energy for their use.
Security Is Improved
When you leverage cloud-based access, your data is airtight in servers inaccessible to anyone else. All of your data and your communications are protected, regardless of the location of the interaction or the device in use.
Data is Protected
Keeping track of your data is essential and the private cloud offers the necessary redundancy. When you have to capture interactions and store them for compliance or dispute resolution, you need to be sure you can get to them later.
There’s no doubt that it’s a big step moving to the cloud and trusting your communications to hosted phone systems. But these benefits alone are reason enough to consider making the change.
Edited by Alisen Downey