When businesses make the decision to move to the cloud, one of the most frequently asked questions is, “Will we save money?” In trying to find the answer, you quickly learn that it isn’t as easy to calculate as you may think. The cost difference goes beyond the monthly provider and equipment costs and incorporates power usage and space, as well as the costs to your business in the event of an outage if you do NOT have a redundant platform. While the ROI varies by individual business, the benefits of moving to the cloud, especially in terms of communications and collaboration, are clear.
Robin Gareiss of Nemertes Research recently shared her views on clouding Unified Communications (UC) cost in an article on No Jitter. Her research, which included cost figures of 264 organizations, shows that only 16% of businesses are not looking into cloud UC. That means that 84% of all businesses are clouding UC, planning to do so, or are evaluating options.
Much of the potential increase in cost when clouding UC comes in the form of increased IT resources on the front end. According to Gareiss, “To make sure the cloud deployment is successful, IT leaders are devoting an abundance of resources to the rollouts to handle:
· Vendor relationship management
· End user marketing and training
· Troubleshooting problems/issues
· Integration with other apps”
Devoting an abundance of resources to clouding UC or a business entirely is a huge risk for organizations, but the act of doing so will grow a business in ways they can’t imagine.
While convincing upper management, legal, security, etc. to cloud may seem like a daunting task, ARG is prepared to take most, if not all of the risk out of the cloud process by being your Cloud Advisor.
ARG has vetted and researched nearly everyone in the UC cloud market, and has the ability to customize your cloud UC solutions based on what’s best for your business. By taking the time to understand our clients and then finding them the best fit for their organization, we pride ourselves on reducing the risk and trepidation that comes from moving any aspect of your business to the cloud. ARG manages vendors, the implementation and rollout, and our support team is there for troubleshooting after the fact- taking on most of the IT resource burden.
If you have any questions about moving Unified Communications to the cloud, or the risks and benefits of clouding your business, please do not hesitate to reach out. You can contact ARG at info@myarg.com or our Hosted Voice Specialist, Derek Smith, at dsmith@myarg.com.
To read Robin Gareiss’ full article, you can go here.
