Cloud computing, mobility and the consumerization of IT are causing a sea change in what can now only loosely be termed, the work environment.

Indeed, mobility is enabling widely distributed workforces to do their jobs not only at headquarters and branch offices, but also from client sites, while on the road, from home, or other locations.

At the same time, consumerization of IT also has greatly changed the game for companies and their employees. As you no doubt remember, some employees used to have a BlackBerry (News - Alert) for work and an iPhone for personal communications. But now, most individuals use a single smartphone – and maybe a tablet and/or laptop as well – for both personal and professional use.

As a result, there’s really no difference between working from the office and working from home, as many of today’s devices are on double duty.

But while technological innovations like the smartphone and new broadband wireline and wireless networks have taken us a long way toward more flexible communications, old school on-premises phone systems – on which many businesses continue to rely – create barriers for the distributed workforce and the ability to work at any time from any place.

The problem is that traditional phone systems cannot scale to support today’s distributed workforce. It’s not a matter of cheaper, faster or better, explains Naveen Gupta, chief product officer at RingCentral (News - Alert). It’s simply that traditional phone systems just plain don’t work in deployments involving distributed workforces.

However, he says, cloud-based phone solutions are a perfect way to address both the distributed nature of today’s workforce and the need to scale.

RingCentral’s cloud phone system also speaks to today’s work environments because it presents a consistent, company number to clients and prospects whether they are communicating with employees via the employees’ cellular or home phones. It also addresses the trend of multi-modal communications, which has people interacting using various channels such as social media and video conferencing.

To learn more about all of the above, join me, Gupta and RingCental customer Joe Ballarino, president and founder of Amerivest Realty, for a complementary webinar.

The webinar – titled It’s a New World of Work with BYOD: Why it’s Time to Scrap Your On-premise Phone (News - Alert) System and Move to the Cloud – will take place Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 2 p.m. EDT / 11 a.m. PDT. 

To register, click here.