It’s Time to Go All-in on the Cloud

By Joe Manuele, vice president, global service provider-system integrator alliances and cloud at Avaya

Today, enterprises and their IT departments are migrating to cloud services faster than ever before. In fact, no other technology in our industry is associated with such dramatic triple-digit growth as cloud. Over the past five years, revenue growth for cloud reached 300 percent while growth in cloud-based data traffic is up 440 percent, according to a Bell Labs report published last December. Additionally, six out of 10 CIOs now consider cloud computing their top priority.

By 2020, the cloud computing industry will be a $40 billion market. Yet, while some companies are fully adopting cloud services, others are still trying to wrap their heads around the financial and operational impacts to their business.

Far too often cloud services are misinterpreted or misunderstood, or the right questions simply are not being asked nor correctly answered—all of which can lead to misinformed reasoning by IT departments and CIO’s for not evolving their premises-based customer experience management services or unified communications to the cloud.

Here are five cloud myths de-bunked, which may help decision makers fully understand cloud services as they lay out their plans to migrate to cloud computing.

Myth #1.     The cloud isn’t secure: IT leaders list security as one of their top reasons for not adopting the cloud. However, the simple fact is, the best cloud service providers (CSPs) have multiple levels of security controls, including encryption, firewalls, malware detection and back-up systems, through their hosted offering. An industry-leading CSP can actually provide greater security and reliability than those commonly found in-house. With that being said, organizations need to do their own due diligence and select a safe and trustworthy provider and thoroughly review their commercially hosted delivery models. CSP/Leveraging private-cloud services certainly can give IT leaders more control, along with all the benefits of the public Cloud, which is a great segue to the second myth.

Myth #2.   There’s no granular control in the cloud: Public cloud offerings usually come with preset options that can work great for businesses looking for a simple and cost-effective way to gain the advantages of cloud computing but those presets may not be perfectly suited for your organization’s needs. For companies requiring more granular control of their cloud solution leveraging a private cloud can be a better option. Especially for companies handling sensitive data like credit card information or social security numbers, the ready-baked security controls are often not enough to meet compliance requirements. For these and other companies, using a private cloud can provide the benefits of cloud computing while also maintaining tight controls on your data.

Myth #3.     The cloud must be all or nothing (public or private): Hybrid clouds are increasingly becoming the cloud model of choice by enterprises, bringing together the best features and functionality from private and public clouds. Almost 60 percent of businesses use a hybrid model versus solely private or public deployment at 23 and 18 percent respectively, according to a July 2014 report by ZK Research. Hybrid clouds provide organizations with greater financial and operational flexibility to better respond to increased customer demands and shifting technology trends. Recent advancements in standards-based virtualization technologies enable, IT departments to easily consolidate and simplify their networks using a hybrid-cloud model that makes sense of the complex maze of technologies. When built on a single fabric that delivers a simplified, agile and resilient infrastructure, network configuration and deployment of new cloud services is faster and easier than ever before.

Myth #4.     Cloud services contracts lock you into buying more than you need: One of the greatest benefits in the cloud is that companies have the option of only paying for what they need. While some providers will require that companies purchase longer term contracts based on a minimum number of seats, others are using a pure, utility-based pricing that allows pay as you go. This means better control over budgets and greater flexibility to scale up or down along with economic or seasonal business demands. A company’s investment in the cloud can grow or shrink with its business.

Myth #5.     The cloud is more collaborative: This one is absolutely true! The cloud, or collaborative cloud, delivers dynamic opportunities for businesses and teams of all sizes to work together more easily. Applications like video conferencing, traditionally only available from fixed devices or systems, now can be accessed anywhere in the world and on virtually any computing device – even wearables.

In today’s hyper-competitive business world, companies that can gain an edge through faster collaboration, better agility or decreased spending on IT maintenance are going to win against their competition. CSPs and their enterprise customers will benefit greatly from the wide array of cloud services available today, as well as revamped business models that are shifting to new OpEx models. With these myths de-bunked- or in the case of the last one on the list- reinforced, IT departments can act appropriately on moving forward to go all-in on the cloud.

Giuseppe (Joe) Manuele

Vice President, Global Service Providers, Systems Integrators, Alliances and Cloud GTM

Joe is Vice President of Global SP/SI, Alliances and Cloud GTM at Avaya. Reporting to Joe are the Global SP/SI teams, the Global Alliances team and the Global AOS/Cloud sales teams. In his role at Avaya, Joe is driving the cloud GTM strategy through the demand creation Private Cloud AOS team, as well as the SP/SI partner lead sales motions. In addition to this team, Joe is also responsible for the relationships with all strategic Global Alliance partners.

Joe brings over 25 years experience in both the enterprise and global carrier markets, an in-depth understanding of 2-tier distribution for small/medium business, large enterprises and complex infrastructure carrier deals with long sales cycles. Joe comes to us from Actelis Networks, where he was Executive Vice President, Global Sales, Customer Support and Field Marketing.

Prior to Actelis, Joe was Managing Director, Americas International and EMEA at Adtran. While at Adtran, Joe had full responsibility for Canada, Latin America and EMEA. Previous roles include Vice President Sales, Americas for Sycamore Networks, Worldwide Vice President Sales and Business Development at Tenor Networks, and various management positions at Cisco Systems.