Aculab to Discuss How Cloud is Transforming the Market at ITEXPO

Cloud computing has “injected new life into the industry,” Faye McClenahan, head of strategic marketing for Aculab (News - Alert), told TMCnet – making it easier for businesses to produce applications cost effectively. And, perhaps more importantly, cloud computing has made a number of applications, which were typically only available to enterprises, available to SMBs.

“It is certainly a disruptive technology, especially when you also consider the growing popularity of social media communication,” McClenahan said.

Aculab will delve further into why cloud has become a “disruptive technology” in just a few days when ITEXPO East 2012 kicks off in Miami, Fla. Being touted as the world’s largest communications conference, ITEXPO will take place from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

At the ITEXPO collocated event Cloud Communications Expo, Aculab will join other industry leaders when it participates in two panel discussions: “The basics: Defining Cloud Communications” and “The Changing Face of Telephony Platform.” Before heading to Miami, McClenahan had a chance to sit down with TMCnet to discuss what is going on with cloud and where it is headed.

The conversation continues below.

How has cloud computing changed the communications landscape over the past year?

There are already a myriad of ways to connect/communicate. Some of them could be considered to be fundamentally different to using ‘POTS.’ On-line self-service via the Web, for example, has rendered a lot of tedious contact centre activities (e.g., calling by phone) redundant, which has been a good thing. I’d say that’s a fundamental change. The whole gamut of social media activity, from texting to gaming and from Facebook (News - Alert) to Twitter, has altered everyone’s perspective.

But if you’re talking about talking – to someone else – then I think we’ll still be doing that for some time to come (until man evolves to be telepathic). How we do it – physically – is another matter and, already, we’re doing it differently; it’s just that a lot of folks don’t even realize it. Broadband (or more exactly, bandwidth) is the key enabler and signposts the road to disruption (via perdition). Ubiquitous broadband should mean we can communicate any way we can, from anywhere we happen to be, but part of that will still involve talking to another human being. Some of those methods will involve ‘voice’ as an application as we will still wish to talk to customers, colleagues and contacts. Many telecommunications (using the word in its absolute broadest sense) applications will be delivered via cloud-based platforms (such as Aculab Cloud) and broadband access is key to such a paradigm becoming real – and disruptive.   

What are enterprises looking for from their communications providers and how can those providers leverage the cloud to deliver on those expectations?

I think enterprises are looking to reduce costs, yet deploy the best technology, but without necessarily writing off their existing infrastructure. They want it all and why not? What cloud offers is a means for providers to reduce the underlying cost of their service, be it hosted or premise-based. It can present the flexibility for enterprises to dynamically increase/decrease capacity as desired. It can let them continue to use their existing platforms and simply use cloud for overflow, or to monitor their systems.

Cost savings is always the first thing mentioned when it comes to benefits of cloud. Aside from cost, where is the value proposition in cloud communications?

I would argue that every benefit has some kind of cost saving associated with it. I guess it all depends on how broad a definition you are using. For example, cloud is actually allowing some SMBs and enterprises to take advantage of applications they simply wouldn’t have been able to afford in the past (cloud makes it affordable for more enterprises to ‘invest’ in new/different types of technologies or applications).

It may also see new innovations come to the fore, which simply would have been too expensive to develop in the past.

It’s also less hassle… you don’t own anything, you just consume a service. Not having responsibility for purchasing, installing, managing and supporting equipment can be a good thing.

How has your own business benefitted from cloud-based communications?

We have built our own conference bridge on Aculab Cloud and we use that for all our intra-company calls. It saves us money – and allows us to show off our technology. It’s a great showcase.

Will cloud serve to fragment the industry or strengthen existing ecosystems?

I think as with all disruptive technology, it will simply usher in the next evolutionary phase of solution providers. The ones that see the opportunity, and can best adapt their solution and business models accordingly. For example, the notion of a contact center will always exist; it’s just the look ‘n’ feel that will change as technology provides each new catalyst in its turn. Innovation shan’t dry up.

Is cloud communications primarily an SMB service? How can enterprises benefit equally?

I would say the answer to that is obvious already. Salesforce has been around for a good 10 years and that is a cloud-based product, which has been taken up by all sorts of organizations, including some big multi-national corporate enterprises. There’s the proof, right there. The cloud benefits any size of organization – if it has the desire to avail of it. Any corporate using Amazon’s EC3 for storage is benefiting from the cloud concept. It’s never been primarily an SMB service. In Aculab’s case, the developers using our cloud platform include some large pan-USA companies that provide services to SMBs and small organizations nationwide, but they are not in that SMB category themselves, so where is the demarcation line – you tell me?

What will be the greatest growth area as a result of cloud (e.g., mobility, video, social media, CEBP, etc.)?

At the moment, in terms of volume, you’d have to say it would be social media and video, excepting you might include YouTube in the social category. All of those things are cloud-based. Nobody has Facebook on an enterprise server. Twitter (News - Alert) doesn’t run on a corporate data center platform. Think of it this way; you download a Google (very thin) client (e.g., Chrome) for browsing and you surf the Internet, but what’s that if it isn’t the cloud? We’re all using the cloud, whether we like to think so or not.

One of the greatest growth areas as a result of cloud is embedded multimodal communications in applications such as Skype (News - Alert) and Facebook. What impact do third-party communications apps like these have on business communications providers?

They will force a continued reduction in the ARPU that communications providers gain from subscribers and a gradual loss of subscribers who will cease to see any benefit in paying for a fixed line tethered to a local telco. Most folks will end up using smartphones, tablets or VoIP clients on their PCs instead of fixed lines or PBX (News - Alert) phones over time and the relationships will fundamentally alter. You can see that already in the cell-phone providers arena – voice revenues are falling and are not being replaced like for like with data revenues, even if you include mobile broadband and mobile data/Internet. The reduction will trend towards simply getting revenue for data flowing through their pipes and if they don’t offer value added applications, content, etc., they will stagnate.

When will cloud make the on-premises PBX obsolete?

It is already obsolete; folks just won’t admit it. OK, it’s not obsolete in that there are millions of them in use, and folks even buy new ones, albeit they are IP-PBXs, but the PBX is obsolete in the sense that it is an obsolete concept – that being a need to own a big black box sitting in the corner on-site. The new concept is to avail of the functionality as a cloud-based service. Wake up, world!

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Expo, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012 taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. The Cloud Communications Expo will address the growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. For more information on registering for the Cloud Communications Expo click here.

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