By Darach Beirne, Vice President of Customer Success at Flowroute, now part of Intrado

The abrupt shift to remote work this year has required businesses to rely more fully on digital technologies powered by the cloud. Since initial migration, IT teams have leveraged the cloud to transition their workforce to remote operations. Some businesses have also shifted their customer service, retail, delivery and other aspects of their services to online or contactless settings.

As IT teams continue to reap the many benefits the cloud offers, they might also run into a few questions that often come with navigating a new terrain. 

For example, with an uncertain future of in-office vs. distributed workforces at hand, some decision makers are asking, "now what?" as they evaluate next steps for how to navigate their new cloud-based services and workforce. As they ponder, they're wondering how they can leverage cloud-based tools for everyday use and to scale their services for future growth.

Understanding how to overcome common pain points of cloud migration will help businesses stay on the cutting edge and position themselves for continued growth in the future. Outlined below are a few useful tips for new cloud adopters to ensure long-term success.

Scaling without disruption

The cloud removes the physical constraints to scalability. Unlike on-premises infrastructure, cloud-based systems allow organizations to quickly scale to accommodate new staff, new office locations and/or offer new services or modify existing offerings.

One common pain point IT teams and decision makers might face is determining how to scale services without disrupting current operations or services. To streamline scaling and overcome this hurdle, decision makers might consider autoscaling. Autoscaling is the process of dynamically allocating resources to match performance requirements. It includes both the capacity of a resource as well as the instances of a resource. As the volume of work grows and customer preferences change, an application might need additional resources to maintain the desired performance levels and satisfy service-level agreements (SLAs). Alternatively, as other demands lessen and the resources are no longer needed, resources can be de-allocated to minimize costs.

Autoscaling leverages the elasticity of cloud-hosted environments while also reducing the need for an operator to continually monitor the performance of a system and make decisions about adding or removing resources. As such, business leaders can rest assured that the goings on behind the scenes are keeping operations running per usual.

Integrating cloud-based IT offerings across departments

Another common roadblock to communication and collaboration in the cloud are information silos. In enterprise systems, information silos emerge when processes and data are kept in separate servers or data centers and are unable to interact with other systems. Silos have occurred in cloud-based IT with the increasing adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) and other cloud tools. For example, one department might choose to use one software provider, while another department uses another.

To overcome cloud systems that do not communicate with each other, one solution is turning to an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) provider. These providers can integrate data and applications from multiple sources and help businesses communicate internally more effectively.

Choosing between cloud options for communication services

There are a multitude of ways to leverage the cloud, with several cloud-based tools available to strengthen and streamline communications. Choosing the best cloud-based telecom options can feel dizzying. Outlined below are three popular configurations for cloud-based communications that decision makers can consider if they're interested in the cloud.

Purpose-built software solutions

This solution is industry-specific and pre-integrated into a workflow. In this set-up, communication becomes an embedded capability within a critical and valuable software solution. For example, the healthcare industry would use this business process application as a way for dental or medical receptionists to better schedule patients using SMS notifications. They might also leverage it in sales to handle communications within their CRM or in the claims processing unit to automate claim status.

Cloud-hosted PBX technology

Cloud-hosted PBX offers the least amount of disruption to an organization while providing the same capabilities customers are familiar with. This could include making and receiving calls on a traditional handset, making multi-party conference calling and more.

Be Your Own Carrier (BYOC) model

A BYOC configuration leverages Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and allows developers to build and customize communications within their applications using APIs. This helps developers avoid the complexity involved with operating network infrastructure while still maintaining control over their customer experience.

When the current health crisis abates, certain aspects of consumer and workforce behaviors will change permanently. With millions of people having experienced firsthand the benefits that cloud technology can bring to their business operations, they won't want to look back on their pre-cloud solutions.

With an understanding of how to utilize cloud-based services before, during and after cloud migration, decision makers can evolve their operations and communication efforts to ultimately gain more control over their own IT and communication applications. Rather than functioning as a fast solution to an unforeseen remote work environment, cloud adoption can help organizations maintain and drive forward future innovation and growth.

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About the Author

Darach Beirne is vice president of customer success at Flowroute, now part of Intrado. With more than 25 years of experience building and leading B2B customer success, Darach leads Flowroute's dedicated customer support team, driving strategy for customer success and improved customer satisfaction. Prior to joining Flowroute, Darach lead professional service and sales engineering teams for providers such as Contenix, Huawei/3Leafsytems, InQuira, Siebel/Scopus and Ingres. He also has assisted high-tech companies develop strategies to improve the customer experience and increase scalability.