The marketplace is experiencing an explosion of cloud technologies and services. The number of cloud services from which organizations, both commercial and public sector, have to choose from is mind blowing. While many understand how such cloud solutions can and will simplify their business operations, it is difficult to comprehend just how beneficial such services can truly be.
Keep reading below to learn about some of the benefits of subscribing to a cloud-hosted collaboration solution:
Have a Lack of In-House IT Experts?
When cloud service providers began offering self-provisioning services, many saw this as a way to cut out the IT middleman. However, one of the biggest challenges our customers face is the fact that as a school, a retailer, a manufacturer or a construction company, they may not necessarily have the IT expertise in-house that is able to effectively run, manage and maintain their IT infrastructure and various collaboration tools.
In such an event, it is advantageous for businesses to outsource some of their IT, especially if it is not in their core business model. A partnership with a hosted solution provider can offer a turnkey solution, where they can get all of their IT support needs fulfilled through the reseller and a cloud service provider. Plus, providers like collab9 come with tier 2 and 3 support included.
Need to Decrease Operational and Capital Expenditure?
With a turnkey hosted cloud solution, organizations can substantially decrease operational expenditure and switch to an OPEX model and capital expenditures when the solution is used for collaborative tools. For example, if a customer wants to implement a voice over IP system, they may need to hire someone internally to implement the system, which would incur a large capital expenditure and investment for the hardware, software and licensing, as well as the engineering and provisioning costs.
However, with a hosted solution, similar to the one collab9 offers, you can replace all of those elements with a monthly operating cost determined by the number of registered users and the resources utilized. This delivery method utilizes a “pay for what you use” consumption model as opposed to a large, up-front capital expenditure on a solution with very little capability to scale up or down as your organization changes. A cloud service or OPEX solution has the ability to mitigate overall costs and bring TCO inline with organizational goals.
Consider the following scenario: you deploy an on-premise voice over IP system and have 1000 users, with a 10% growth expectation. Then you purchase the licensing, the software and the hardware to meet that requirement. However, let us say something happens, and you lose 10% of your workforce instead. You are still stuck with the same hardware, licensing, and extra capacity that you no longer need.
As a result, a primary benefit to hosted solutions is that it is completely dynamic. Lose 10% or gain 10%, you are only paying for what you use.
Have a Need for Increased Mobility?
Additionally, hosted solutions also enable greater mobility and the ability for telework, 100%. For example, with hosted mobile capabilities, you can work from anywhere with the same capabilities and functionalities as someone who is on premise.
While traditional on-premise systems can offer mobility features and functionality, another advantage to a hosted solution, like collab9, is that security is also included. Accordingly, you don’t have to implement additional security and firewall capabilities through your internet architecture- it is all provided within your hosted service.
We can also offer Security with a Public Sector Focus:
Unlike other cloud solutions, collab9 was built from the ground-up with inherent security measures. collab9 is the only Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) provider in the process of obtaining FedRAMP authorization.
Unlike some cloud service providers (CSP), we designed our solution to be federally compliant rather than just bolting on federal compliance as an afterthought. This ground-up structure enables better security, decreases security accreditation costs and reduces implementation time, enabling business continuity for organizations of all sizes including public sector agencies, large organizations, and SMBs.
Ultimately, collab9 is a flexible solution that meets the stringent security requirements set forth by the Federal Government while also being able to serve SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers. Our services are developed to cater to large enterprises and the public sector, while still being suitable for smaller outfits.
collab9 offers a turnkey, cloud-based Voice and Unified Collaboration solution – powered by Cisco’s leading architecture – with more functionality and at a lower cost than many other leading on-premise solutions.
To learn more about hosted collaboration, click here.
