According to the Gartner’s latest report, the cloud infrastructure adoption is one of the main reasons why IT services will reach an astonishing figure of $940 billion in revenue by the end of the year 2016. This estimation promises a great progress after a slight drop that we’ve witnessed in the past few months. Nevertheless, even during the year 2015 the need for UCaaS platforms increased for a strong 16%.
While most small businesses and medium sized companies are adopting cloud platforms in order to boost the overall efficiency of their business, and also in order to remain competitive on the market, the hybrid cloud still remains a popular choice of many. Primarily because it is the most economical solution still.
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However, a certain implementation of a less familiar cloud computing system is projected to become a dominating trend in the next five years, which will be evident by the end of 2016. Apparently, the need for employment of the Unified Communications as a Service systems, is on the constant increase. It is expected to reach a 41% of market penetration by the end of 2020, according to BroadSoft.
Surprisingly, although this cloud computing service may seem a little bit challenging when it comes to management, this solution it is more popular with the mid-sized companies and small businesses. This is why 42% of the 129 surveyed claims that more than half of unified communication will happen through a mobile device by 2020. Mobile accessibility and structural simplicity is winning small businesses over rapidly, BroadSoft claims in its report. 18% of the surveyed even believe that these type of platforms will push emails out of business.
The State of UCaaS
For those unfamiliar with the term, UCaaS is a cloud computing model which includes third party applications primarily for transferring various data. Through a single model, it integrates applications for collaboration, conferences and communication in general. This makes UCaaS a great platform for business streamlining and project management.
the question of quality of service still keeps UC away from the freemium market
The question of quality of experience and the question of quality of service still keeps UC away from the freemium market, and only paid solutions are available. This factor presents a serious problem for the providers marketing the product. Since the technology and the cloud servers behind the services of this complexity have to provide reliability, real time encryption of any data transfer, plus high responsivity through various performances – a free solution is simply not scalable for the moment. At least not for the current investors.
Conversely, Dave Michaels, a Principal Analyst from TalkingPointz suggests that there is a business model that will allow users to try out this service for free. How? By selling custom tailored solutions to business owners. Certainly, we have to count on the fact that IT and cloud computing standards are on the constant increase as well, and features are bound to become slightly outdated and consequently more cost-effective sooner or later.
[easy-tweet tweet=”The majority of #servers are now switching to #SSD storages says @DanRadak”]
For example, the majority of servers are now switching to Solid State Drive storages, which are undoubtedly a crucial factor when it comes to the quality of experience of the UCaaS, IaaS, SaaS and the PaaS cloud computing systems. But now when even private users have adopted SSD almost instantaneously because of its quality of performance, despite its still debatably high price, the idea behind this pricing model seems more eligible. If anything, providing prospects with free services inside of a basic UC package could present an inexpensive way of building the customer base.
Let’s not forget that the great deal of cloud computing vendors has implemented this approach successfully. Popular cloud platforms (like the project management collaboration platform Asana for example) often have millions of free users. However, that is the marketing strategy which brings conversions too. (Asana has hundreds of paying users today.) Implementing this marketing strategy to an UCaaS system is simply inevitable, the only question is which vendor will come up with the scalable solution first.
Dan Radak, Web Hosting Security Professional
Dan Radak is a web hosting security professional with ten years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of online security, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.