Cost Benefit of Cloud Telephony Platforms Should Not Be THE Single Biggest Motivating Factor for Business Transformation

Businesses rapidly taking to cloud technologies in a big way in the hope of garnering the various cost advantages on offer are surely missing the point, aren’t they? Sure, cloud means there’s no CAPEX upfront because the cloud service provider pays – hardware, software, rent, electricity, salaries etc. The real advantage is strategic. The true benefits accruing from cloud services are innovation & growth.

Only a few years ago the cost advantages of cloud were real and quantifiable. It cost serious money – thousands of dollars – to set up servers, cooling racks, etc. etc and cloud was the most sensible go-to thing for businesses looking for a quick fix cost advantage.

Fast forward to now – for 5K, you can have your own data center. With telephony equipment, routers, server cost going southwards cost is not the single biggest worry for most business owners. So businesses taking to cloud services for cost advantage only are setting themselves for a major disappointment.The advantages are elsewhere.

As cloud providers like to say, it’s about empowerment. Cloud empowers business users, IT users and eventually the Customers. However, in cloud telephony context, it is more about increasing the speed at which businesses can deploy and reducing the development cycles.

A good example is opening a branch office in a new location. It can take days and months to set up IT and Telephony needed for a branch operation. In the time it takes to set up infrastructure needed for a new branch operations the early mover advantage is invariably lost.

Now consider a new branch office powered with cloud technologies. There will be almost no business lag time. Cloud based services help businesses to hit the ground hard running, providing the early mover advantage.

Besides rapid deployment with no time lag, cloud telephony has a big role to play in reducing the development cycle through innovation and R&D. Organizations embracing cloud based technologies –telephony, data, social media – tend to overwhelmingly see quicker returns on their investments in the form of processes centric efficiencies, The challenge with many businesses is that they are trapped in their existing infrastructures. It is extremely hard and costly to upgrade or move forward. So they struggle with what to do. Then one day, here’s this new technology providing them with a broad array of capabilities to go to the next level.
Another facet of cloud telephony is facilitating collaboration. With offices no longer hierarchy led structures they one were collaboration tools – like cloud based telephony, cloud fax, cloud conferencing, cloud data sharing – will only grow more in importance.

In this light, businesses should start looking at cloud telephony more as a strategic tool than as a cost reducing tool. Thousands of businesses have successfully harnessed the power of the cloud for strategic reasons and benefited by faster ramp-up-to-scale, process efficiencies and enterprise-wide innovations. In this light cost reduction is only of the strategies and not the only strategy of moving to cloud.

Author Bio: Mr. Ambarish Gupta, CEO  at Knowlarity Communications, Graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur with degree in Computer Science in 2000 and with a MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 2007. Mr Ambarish Gputa started knowlarity with his two friends in early 2009 by making the company pioneer in cloud telephony.  Knowlarity has won several awards like Nasscom emerge 50 (League of 10), Deloitte fast 50 for the 11th fastest growing start-up in India. Best Startup Company in 2012 by Silicon India, Techcircle Fastrack 2012 winner, Red Herring’s top 100 Asia Awards.