Cloud Communications

For many years, organizations have been tethered to on-premise installations of their communications systems. Applications that control telephone, messaging, email, videoconference, and collaborative sharing systems have been running on local area networks or dedicated in-house servers. IT personnel are required to operate and maintain these systems. When systems go down, which they invariably do, an organization is instantly handicapped. The challenges of running these applications, as well as the consternation they cause support teams, is fading as cloud communications becomes the norm.

What is Cloud Communication?

Although prevalent, the term “cloud” is a bit misleading. To a few, it conjures fears of data vaporizing, security breaches, and a lack of infrastructure control. In reality, the cloud just consists of off-premise servers accessed via the internet. IP-accessed applications are secure and highly reliable. Cloud servers are owned and maintained by companies that offer “server farms,” huge installations of servers dedicated to hosting software belonging to others. The most widely recognized server farm is that owned by Amazon, the online retail behemoth. Amazon took its years of server maintenance, online access, and data protection experience and began offering it to other companies.

Owners of server farms have three overriding promises to keep: data security, speed, and high uptime. Cloud communications and other types of cloud computing offer ease-of-use and simplicity but those benefits are moot if data security is lacking or applications are not accessible, if application access is slow, or if programs keep going off-line. Therefore, cloud purveyors spend a great deal of time ensuring data security and integrity. Most cloud server centers offer storage in a public cloud, a private one, or a hybrid of both where the application is in a public cloud but transacted data is stored privately.

Most cloud providers will demonstrate some type of compliance with computing standards like SSAE 16, a process and data security protocol, NIST or IEEE standards, or some other globally recognized method of assuring compliance. Trusted providers are usually quite happy to offer prospective clients their accreditations and certifications.

In order to guarantee speed and accessibility server farms provide multi-tenancy and scalability. Multi-tenancy means that there are several instances of a communications application or platform running on the cloud servers to seamlessly accommodate increases in demand. As a business grows, and their cloud communications needs expand, a server farm will dedicate more infrastructure resources to the client, scaling up as needed.

Why Communications in the Cloud?

Traditionally, communications platforms use local, on-premise servers where the software that runs these systems is stored. PBX, VOIP, videoconference, messaging, and document or knowledge-base collaboration applications are running on company-owned servers and maintained by company personnel or subcontractors. Often, these systems are installed as single tenants, with periodic backups, software updates, and maintenance being applied on a scheduled basis. In some cases a whole IT team is dedicated to keeping these kinds of systems and infrastructure operating properly.

As one can imagine, there is a great deal of associated cost with maintaining on-premise systems. Redundancy is typically marginal, system instability creeps in, and personnel are continuously busy keeping things running. And if part or all of the system does crash, either due to inherent bugs or environmental intervention like power outages or weather events, then an entire organization may be unable to conduct its business.

Cloud communications negates all of those concerns. ...