If You Don't Trust the Cloud, Don't Go

The Future of Cloud

If You Don't Trust the Cloud, Don't Go

By TMCnet Special Guest
Jason Alley, Interactive Intelligence
  |  January 28, 2013

Security. Reliability. Functionality. Flexibility. Most of the questions about the cloud have been answered to the point that contact centers are turning to cloud solutions en masse. And yet, among certain decision makers in the business, IT, and the contact center, there are still those that are reluctant to move operations to the cloud.

“We just don’t trust it.”

Okay. Maybe some of these decision makers don’t trust that sensitive customer data will stay secure. They don’t believe the cloud is as reliable as providers promise. They don’t think companies providing cloud services are experienced or stable enough to partner with. The concerns are legitimate, and cloud service providers must be prepared to address them.

Issues like security and reliability are vital to the cloud’s mission and a business’s success, and are always central to the discussion. This speaks to the level of trust one can expect in the service and the technology behind it. However, customers tell us there is more to evaluating trust. They also want to know the provider of the service has the level of contact center experience and corporate stability they expect in a partner.

In essence, customers need to know that both the service and the provider of the service can be trusted before putting the lifeline of their business – their customer interactions and revenue stream – in the hands of a third-party organization.

Secure and Reliable Services

To address global regulatory and compliance issues, a cloud solution should be operated with consistent operational guidelines across multiple jurisdictions, with common security and privacy requirements in mind. It should also meet the specific security, privacy and compliance needs of the contact center and business that uses it. Additional trust could stem from providers offering a single-customer, multi-instance platform that leverages virtualization technology to deliver a superior level of isolation and protection. Following security measures such as SSAE 16 best practices promotes trust, as well.

Cloud providers should base their solutions on proven technology. Offerings should come with applications built solidly on five 9s uptimes, for example, along with tiered service levels and the ability to keep the voice path local. Other trust-driving measures should include geo-redundant data centers, full-time intelligent and proactive monitoring, and quick and seamless failover.

Experienced and Stable Providers

Cloud providers should make you smarter by bringing both a deep and broad level of experience to your team, gained through thousands of previous contact center deployments across the globe. When the provider also develops the code that powers the service, there is a major jump in the level of expertise available to customers (some leverage third-party technology they have little or no control over).

The cloud space is highly fragmented. Some providers will survive and some will not, some will be acquired, and a handful will emerge as preferred providers. Thus, companies are looking for a stable partner — a public company whose sustained financial stability and growth is well documented and who is recognized as a worldwide leader with a proven record of innovating and executing in the contact center.

Someone once said, “If you don’t trust the pilot, don’t go.” I guess the same holds true for moving your contact center to the cloud. The good news is there are cloud providers that are proven and trustworthy. It’s just a matter of doing your due diligence and hopping on board.

Trust is central to Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert). We seek to gain, maintain, and defend the trust and confidence of our customers – and to alleviate the concerns of any decision makers who still don’t trust the cloud. To learn more, you can visit trust.inin.com.

Jason Alley is solutions marketing manager at Interactive Intelligence.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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