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Voice Services Steve Hodges
VOI C E IN TH E CLOUD
Steve Hodges explores the impact Cloud has had on voice and telephony; for both the industry and businesses looking to move their voice services to the cloud
As time goes on we are, without question, witnessing accel- eration in the adoption of services being purchased as main- stream alternatives to on-premise, on a global scale. What- ever buyers are looking for, from CRM to business backup, a cloud option is out there. It is the term ‘cloud’ that has won the battle to describe anything that isn’t located within a cli- ent’s physical location. However, issues have arisen because there are many variations of technology that fall within this offsite category including ‘hosted’ and ‘colocation’. The ge- neric definition associated with ‘cloud’ causes confusion not only amongst the industry but, most importantly, for custom- ers. Businesses trying to decide if cloud technology will play a part in the total IT infrastructure of their organisation face an even bigger challenge by the variation in definition. This is even more critical when choosing a solution for a service as business critical as voice.
To date, the acceleration in cloud-based service adoption in business has been less true of one of the most frequently used, business critical, IT delivered services – voice. Cloud delivered voice had a shaky start in life and VoIP services were quickly labelled as poor quality or an inferior service and, in the main, a consumer offering. The early benefits were believed to be simply low cost or free calls between ‘on-net locations’ which compounded the chal- lenge of the service taking off as this creates very little in terms of a compelling reason to change; when the cost base of fixed-line service is currently in a race to zero anyway.
LOOKING AHEAD
Looking to the future, all the promises of the benefits of cloud voice services, plus a whole load more, are not only available now, but changes in the technical and commercial landscape mean they are far greater than was ever imag-
CCI Magazine January 2013
ined. For example, Natterbox has built a [voice] Platform as a Service (PaaS) that is built in a highly available, load balanced, instantly scalable environment that has no dependency on a physical location or datacentre. It is available on any device with complete flexibility of access. With voice, by integrating IP cloud environments with mobile voice and data networks, capabilities extend beyond IP devices and applications and into the GSM networks making services, such as cloud-based call recording, no longer the reserve of the IP networks or App developers. It becomes an on-network service that is device agnostic and controlled through a web portal. This drives other benefits; such as, seamless integration with CRM platforms, such as
salesforce.com to enable advanced CTI and Customer Experience Management capability, another service which Natterbox offers. Genuine Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), again the likes of which has been promised for years by the industry, if delivered on a true cloud-platform, like Natterbox, become a reality. Then there are the work- force mobility features such as highly configurable call routing and cloud call recording that can be delivered to home, office and mobile devices from a single platform and managed by a single online portal. If you load on top the business continuity, disaster recovery and cost saving ben- efits, it is very easy to see a day, like many other IT services, where voice is only ever delivered from the cloud.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve Hodges
Hodges has over 17 years’ experience in the telecoms and IT sectors. Besides sales, he has also worked in operations, infrastructure, and support so he has varied, first-hand experience in the emergence of on-premise telephony alternatives; which are only just realising their full potential with the arrival of true cloud-based voice services, such as those provided by Natterbox. Hodges is currently sales & marketing direct for Natterbox
www.cloudcomputingintelligence.com
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