A Conversation with Computerworld about the Cloud

This post was authored by Arnab Mishra. Arnab is VP of Products and Solutions at Transera.

 

A few weeks ago, Stephanie Overby from Computerworld wrote an interesting article discussing the merits and challenges of adopting a cloud-based contact center. The article raised a number of assertions that I would like to address in this blog post.

• Enterprises with “Cadillac versions” of call center software and hardware will see little benefit in migrating to the cloud.

Progressive enterprises think about the cloud technology in one of two ways:  How can my enterprise apply cloud applications to our current business challenges? or How should my enterprise incorporate the cloud into our strategy as premise-based investments reach end of life? I have been delighted to see that companies implementing Transera’s Scorecard Routing solution think about our cloud technology in the first way:  as an application that enhances existing investments and addresses strategic business needs.

• Enterprises need to ensure they have the right in-house skills to manage a partial cloud solution

It is important to distinguish between IT resources and administrative resources. SaaS does have the potential to reduce IT resources but in most cases requires the same level of administration as a premise-based application. With that being said, one would be hard pressed to find a successful cloud application vendor selling its wares solely based on a reduction in IT management costs.

• Make sure the solution scales to handle peaks in demand

The key questions I ask customers to consider are: How does the SaaS provider add additional capacity to the service?  Has the application been built modularly so that different components can scale independently as needed? Transera software, for example, is both highly scalable and modular and handles hundreds of thousands of calls a day for dozens of enterprise customers.

• Make sure the software integrates well with other complementary applications

To serve the medium-to-large enterprise market, it is incumbent on vendors like Transera to facilitate easy integration with both cloud and premise-based applications. Transera is unique in the on-demand contact center space in that a significant portion of its R&D activities are focused on this effort. To date, Transera has integrated with applications ranging from CRM and order-entry applications to IVR and ACD systems. A concrete recent example is Transera’s implementation with RightNow Technologies in Europe. See recent Office Depot press release http://www.rightnow.com/cx-news-17818.php

• Make sure the on-demand service is reliable

It is no secret that contact center applications are mission critical. Outages have the potential to harm customer satisfaction and increase costs. Transera is very focused on reliability and provides rigorous service-level commitments to its enterprise customers, which they have every right to demand.