The Push to the Cloud Set to Turn Premise-Based Applications into Nostalgia

In about a decade, the transfer of knowledge to the cloud will be a distant memory. Young professional workers probably won’t remember a time that they didn’t work in the cloud, and they’ll be accustomed to the flexibility and functionality cloud-based solutions will provide. In fact, most people will wonder why a switch from premise-based to cloud-based applications was such a big deal.

We’re not quite there yet. While most companies today operate at least one application in the cloud – customer relationship management is often the first for many organizations – there are plenty of laggards uneasy about putting certain things into a cloud-based application. Contact centers, most of which could benefit greatly from cloud-based applications, are still hesitant for a number of reasons. Will customer data be safe? Will the switch cause too much down-time? What about the investment we made in our current solution? Won’t that go to waste? These are all legitimate questions, but by and large, experts have come down on the side of the cloud: the cost benefits, the flexibility and multichannel elements, the remote working scenarios…all of them outweigh the minor concerns.

In the contact center, the switch from a premise-based solution to a cloud-based solution can happen in days, or even hours, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of Monet Software, which offers a cloud-based workforce optimization solution. Solutions providers have done it many times, and they can ensure that your organizations’ needs are being met in the interim.

“The cloud solution will be customized, prepared and tested before it is live, and can run parallel with your hardware solution during the actual conversion, so it can continue to function if an issue arises,” wrote Ciarlo in a recent blog. “Typically, however, the switch to cloud is quick and easy.”

Loss of control and the potential for security breaches are another common objection, but Ciarlo says these are usually overblown, probably due to the mental image that the word “cloud” creates.

“Maybe they should have found a better word when the technology was introduced, so it doesn’t seem like your data is traveling somewhere so distant,” he wrote. “But the reality is you are still in control, just as you were when the hardware was sitting in your contact center. Cloud solutions are actually more reliable than hardware-based technology because of their built-in fail-safes and redundancies. When all of your equipment is in one place and something goes wrong, you are out of luck. With the decentralized nature of the cloud, even a power outage won’t shut you down.”

More companies are getting the message, perhaps bolstered by positive experiences with the applications they do have in the cloud. A recent study by Oxford Economics found that 69 percent of businesses surveyed expect to invest in the cloud either moderately or heavily over the next three years. In no time at all, we will have arrived at that place where memories of premise-based solutions are simply nostalgia. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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