Jumping Into the Clouds
Author: Gary Barnett, CTO at Aspect
At the Gartner Symposium last week, Cloud Computing was listed as the number one strategic technology area for 2010 (up from number three in 2009). Among other things, Gartner said that companies should figure out which specific cloud services might give them the most value. Voice portal in the cloud is one such service and, in my opinion, it’s here to stay.
You may be wondering why I am so confident about voice portal capabilities in the cloud. It’s largely because I see so many benefits. To start with, voice portal in the cloud gives businesses a choice between an OpEx model versus a CapEx model, allowing them to avoid spending their limited budgets on equipment such as additional servers and telephone lines. Leveraging voice portal capabilities in the cloud is also a great way for companies to get up-and-running quickly because it doesn’t require on-premise hardware installation, provisioning or integration.
I think it’s important to note that not all cloud voice portals are equal – there are hosted solutions and on-demand offerings, but also hybrid solutions that use a combination of hosted and premised-based options designed to help companies ease into cloud computing. Hosted and on-demand offerings are basically the same in overall concept (they are both “in the cloud”) but vastly different in terms of flexibility, cost-effectiveness, performance and reliability. With a hosted solution, your capacity is limited. So, handling unexpected or temporary spikes in traffic will be a challenge. Plus, it’s a real headache to determine appropriate capacity. In addition, a hosted solution requires that you pay for technology upgrades and that ultimately performance and reliability is limited.
An on-demand solution, on the other hand, allows you to adjust your capacity in real-time, as the needs of your customers and your business change. You don’t pay for the capacity that is dedicated to you; you simply pay per minute for what you use. In addition, you get the benefits of scale, evergreen technologies and business continuity, as well as carrier-grade reliability. As a result, you can create and deploy more effective self-service applications that drive more savings and return on investment to your organization.
If you’re a bit uneasy about making the jump from on-premise computing to cloud computing, a hybrid option might be your best approach. Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform, which is expected to be commercially available next month, is one such example. In this type of solution, the voice portal application resides on premise, but the storage is in the cloud. It’s a great option for companies that want to try out cloud computing or just save money on storage/server costs.
Next week, I’ll provide you with examples of how some of our customers are using on-demand solutions and share with you some of their results.
Author: Gary Barnett
Catergories: Contact Center Technology, Performance Optimization, Voice Self Service
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