Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few years you’ve heard about “The Cloud” as a broad term for how applications and services (such as email, ordering systems, banking, Hosted Telephony services, document storage and many others) would be delivered to individuals and companies over the Internet (e.g. the Cloud). There’s been a lot of talk about the greatly increased potential for providing these services through The Cloud. Most of this increased potential has occurred as a result of “thinner” or more efficient program platforms combined with a dramatic increase in Internet Access bandwidth. When combined, these two technology improvements have allowed “Cloud” based applications and services to be efficient and effective for most users.
It is interesting to note that “Cloud Services” have actually been around for users for quite some time. Ever heard of Gmail? It’s in The Cloud. How about Google Docs? On-Line Banking? Netflix? All of these services are in The Cloud.
The increased potential of The Cloud really shows itself in small to medium businesses. The Cloud allows these businesses to “host” their normal office services (such as Email, Telephony services and Web Site hosting) offsite; which can result in huge savings over maintaining these programs and platforms at each location or desktop. If a small business does not have the means to purchase their own servers and other hardware, they can “lease” space and technology in The Cloud and host websites, email, Human Resource programs, even their phone systems. Not surprisingly, these are called Hosted Services because the information is not stored on equipment belonging to the business. These services are hosted at a partner's site in “The Cloud”.
When it comes down to it, Hosted Services level the playing field between the SMBs and the Enterprises. Hosted Services allow SMBs to stop worrying about internal processes like email and phone services and spend more time selling their own products and services.
Here’s a Call Center example. It can often cost up to a million dollars for a Call Center to install all the fiber lines, premise based telephony hardware and software, plus hire a maintenance staff to make a call center run properly and efficiently. Instead that Call Center could purchase Hosted IVR services. Hosted IVR is a Call Center program that is hosted in The Cloud and can be accessed by a laptop anywhere with an Internet connection. It costs much less than if a business did everything themselves. Call Center employees can work from home with a Hosted IVR system and all that is necessary is a laptop and a USB phone headset. A desktop phone is not necessary. Hosted IVR systems also have tremendous call statistics (especially the GLOBALINX Hosted IVR) that are recorded and saved in The Cloud.
A Call Center can save so much money and get so much more with a Hosted IVR system. There are minimal hardware installation costs, no money spent creating call center software and a minimal on-site staff needed to support all of this technology, plus the company has access to complete call statistics and the Hosted IVR system can be accessed anywhere with Internet connection.
That’s the true potential of The Cloud and without a doubt there are so many more possibilities to come.
