Expos, forums, blogs, symposiums and advertisement; everything seems to be about clouds.
It all started with the marketing buzz phrase, cloud computing. I first read about cloud computing in an article in mid 2007 describing Amazon’s S3 storage solution. Hosted or off-site storage was nothing new, but it took a marketing group to put a bit of buzz around the service for it to go mainstream. Now one can’t pick up a magazine without seeing the words cloud ______. Fill in the blank.
It all started with the marketing buzz phrase, cloud computing. I first read about cloud computing in an article in mid 2007 describing Amazon’s S3 storage solution. Hosted or off-site storage was nothing new, but it took a marketing group to put a bit of buzz around the service for it to go mainstream. Now one can’t pick up a magazine without seeing the words cloud ______. Fill in the blank.
Last month I attended a local Texchange meeting that among many topics discussed was the right sizing of IT within our current down market. The panel included some of the brightest minds from Freescale Semiconductor, National Instruments, and others that are responsible for IT within their respective companies. I heard discussions and questions about outsourcing, insourcing, offloading, off shoring and yes, offsite cloud application services. Everything from cloud storage, cloud customer support, cloud marketing applications, cloud email to cloud CRM. It quickly became apparent that the current economic conditions have forced IT executives to review how their departments are operating, and how they can move towards a more efficient tomorrow without negatively affecting their “peopleware”.
On the drive back to the office I was going over in my head everything that was discussed and the ideas that were put out for review. I then realized the one cloud application I didn’t hear mentioned was voice telephony. You know, PBX, Key Telephone Systems, those hand held devices that every office desk, common area and conference room has on the desk, wall or table.
The one IT application that consumes a double-digit percentage of many businesses operational budget and is one of the first, if not the first, capital expense of a new business; has yet to be thought of as a cloud based application. It cannot be due to any concern of security. With all the discussions and marketing of cloud based storage or cloud based email or even cloud based CRM applications. Security cannot be the a concern if one is porting all of their critical business data to the cloud or even keeping their entire customer and potential customer’s information offsite. It has to be from the lack of knowledge that cloud based, or as we call it, hosted PBX services are here and a viable solution for adjustments in IT expenses.
Just ask TexasNIC, ‘The People Behind eGovernment’ services. When recently looking over the expansion of their aging Cisco Call Manager, they reviewed the option of going with a hosted PBX solution. A fine decision it was if I might say. DoubleHorn displaced their Call Manager and the costly PRI’s in a matter of weeks.
Isn’t a hosted PBX service or SIP Trunking to legacy telephone systems really the silver lining in cloud based applications?
On the drive back to the office I was going over in my head everything that was discussed and the ideas that were put out for review. I then realized the one cloud application I didn’t hear mentioned was voice telephony. You know, PBX, Key Telephone Systems, those hand held devices that every office desk, common area and conference room has on the desk, wall or table.
The one IT application that consumes a double-digit percentage of many businesses operational budget and is one of the first, if not the first, capital expense of a new business; has yet to be thought of as a cloud based application. It cannot be due to any concern of security. With all the discussions and marketing of cloud based storage or cloud based email or even cloud based CRM applications. Security cannot be the a concern if one is porting all of their critical business data to the cloud or even keeping their entire customer and potential customer’s information offsite. It has to be from the lack of knowledge that cloud based, or as we call it, hosted PBX services are here and a viable solution for adjustments in IT expenses.
Just ask TexasNIC, ‘The People Behind eGovernment’ services. When recently looking over the expansion of their aging Cisco Call Manager, they reviewed the option of going with a hosted PBX solution. A fine decision it was if I might say. DoubleHorn displaced their Call Manager and the costly PRI’s in a matter of weeks.
Isn’t a hosted PBX service or SIP Trunking to legacy telephone systems really the silver lining in cloud based applications?
