The mantra is that the Cloud is the future. That may yet be true, but caution is warranted.
So what's really going on with the Cloud in communications? We kept returning to the issue of the Cloud at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2014, and there seemed to be a stronger belief than ever, among the analyst community at least, that the Cloud will be coming to your enterprise communications architecture soon. They may be right that it's coming, but from what I could see, it could be a bumpy landing.
For a general session in Orlando, we asked the analyst/consultants who have led our mock RFP sessions in the past--Brent Kelly, Dave Stein and Marty Parker--to talk about whether the Cloud really is right for an enterprise today. In general, all three endorsed the Cloud in concept, though I'd say that they varied in their levels of enthusiasm: Marty was fairly bullish; Brent a bit less so but still positive; and Dave was the most skeptical.
Here are some key points that I took away from that session:
* It's not about cost: It just isn't. Average 5-year TCO was 78% higher for Cloud solutions than for comparable premises functionality.
* Agility is a key cloud benefit: Marty noted that Cloud services are excellent for prototyping new applications or implementations. And though he said you may not be able to roll out an enterprise-wide service any faster with the cloud--you still have to train users, place phones, and manage networks--Brent actually said a rollout can be easier with the Cloud. Brent described a conversation he'd had with someone who adopted a Cloud service from their incumbent network provider, and the enterprise, "Just plugged in the phones, and that was the install."
* Agility and flexibility may not be the same thing: These two qualities tend to get lumped together as Cloud benefits, but what I heard as moderator of this session suggested that you may not get the flexibility that you anticipate with a Cloud service. You may be able to build in some elements of flexibility up front--say, by contracting for a service that lets you expand and contract capacity to accommodate peak workloads--but you may not have as much flexibility when it comes to making changes that aren't inherently part of the offered service.
The example that all three panelists pointed to was the fact that, if you're using a hosted service that's implemented in a multi-tenant environment, the service provider is going to handle things like software upgrades to the platform in a way that affects all users on that platform. That may affect the clients or desktop OSs you run, which you may have to upgrade in lockstep, regardless of whether you're ready to do so or not. "I may not like this idea of automatic upgrades if I'm in a multitenant environment," Marty Parker said.
And it may not affect just clients--which you might be able to push an upgrade for without too much pain. We discussed the fact that enterprises already have trouble upgrading from one version of a vendor's software to the next, and Dave Stein noted that with the Cloud, "The loss of control is absolutely essential."
"A lot of my clients are several versions behind" on CPE software releases, Dave said. "Why is that? Well, it's hard to change. But it's more than that. I have built integrations from that platform to support new things.... I'm nervous, I'm apprehensive about changing that."
And if you think that going hybrid Cloud/CPE is a way to deal with the issue, the panelists pointed out that with some communications vendors, the code set for the Cloud software may be completely different from the CPE code.
* Service provider issues are critical: If you're going to migrate from buying just your circuits from a carrier, to buying services from a carrier (or, for that matter, from any hosted provider), the issues get much more complex. Marty cautioned that communications decision-makers have to talk to their enterprises' procurement and legal departments before diving into a Cloud commitment. These contracts will have new types of variables and risks in them, and it's vital to address these appropriately for your enterprise in the contract.
And I raised an issue that I don't believe the panel completely disposed of, but that I think is crucial: If you migrate your whole communications platform to the Cloud, you're taking carrier lock-in to a whole new level. Most enterprises can and do source their circuits from 2 or more carriers, in order to ensure flexibility, diversity, and leverage in negotiations. But you can't really dual-source a hosted service with two completely different providers. You pick your provider and take your chances.
You could argue that an enterprise takes the same risks with CPE, but I'd argue that if you make a bad choice, you still retain, within your organization, more opportunities to mitigate the effects of your bad choice. Pick a bad Cloud provider, and you're going to have, for the duration of the contract, very little control over how much things improve.
It may seem kind of like I'm nitpicking here, raining on the parade that is the vision of agile, flexible Cloud communications. But the details are where implementations either succeed or fail.
The mantra is that the Cloud is the future. That may yet be true, but I think that caution is warranted.
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