It almost is too easy for businesses to start and run a call center in 2015.

Whereas running a call center operation required large capital outlays, a good workforce and expensive equipment that needed to be maintained, the cloud now makes the call center significantly more easy to run.

On-demand call center infrastructure is dramatically improving call center operations, in that now businesses can easily scale up or down their call center operations without this large investment and its associated headaches. On-demand call centers also make it easier to grab employees from anywhere in the world, as the virtual call center is an easy thing to achieve via the cloud.

Cloud-based call center solutions offer a number of benefits over their on-premise precursors.

First, they deliver big call center strengths without the investment. These strengths include enterprise-grade security and reliability without the cost and complexity of a traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) system. They also use the latest technology.

All this comes from the nature of on-demand call center solutions, which are hosted and maintained in the cloud. This frees up businesses to focus on the core work—and cuts out the hassles and the issues with scale.

Second, cloud-based call center solutions bring instant unified communications to call center operations. The call center is becoming the “contact center,” as phone communication is being augmented by chat, text and social media customer support, too. Cloud-based solutions bring instant unified communications intended to make this expanded role possible.

Third, the total cost of ownership is less with on-demand call center solutions. On-premise based call center systems usually rely on expensive office telephone equipment, as noted. But cloud-based solutions use the Internet instead and don’t require that businesses invest in all this gear.

This not only saves money, but it adds agility to the call center. Scaling up or down operations is a relative breeze, and the possibility to use agents from anywhere in the world means that the call center has a wider pool of applicants and can better shift depending on its needs.

Starting or running a call center operation has never been easier. And that’s mostly because of cloud-based call center solutions.