Happy New 2011! Yesterday, I came across a great post from TechCrunch “2011: The Enterprise Resets“
“On a recent call, an analyst shared a story about a company whose IT infrastructure was completely wiped out in a natural disaster. Forced to start from scratch, the company reinvented the spirit and composition of its enterprise IT strategy, and the set of solutions that emerged from the rubble made their organization inherently more mobile and efficient.”…
To this point, the author – Aaron Levine, CEO and Co-Founder of Box.net – is expecting the trend to tip in favor of corporate enterprises moving toward cloud based IT solutions. According to a recent forecast conducted by IDC, IT spending will be $1.6tn in 2011, an increase of 5.7% from 2010 and the biggest growth area will be in public cloud services. This essentially means that organizations will move a wider range of their business applications into the cloud and SME business cloud use is predicted to surge in 2011, according to the IDC.This is great for us.
M5 Networks has been preaching and offering a managed hosted VoIP service since 2000. While early M5 adopters saw the benefits of moving a mission-critical system to us, we’re certainly seeing the momentum build as mentioned in the article. Indeed, enterprises are no longer questioning whether moving their phone service to the cloud makes sense – they are challenging us to help change the way their businesses communicates. Take a look at a couple of our client success stories: Haley Stuart and LifeWorx. While it is true that “…enterprises are no longer comfortable investing in on-premise systems when trusted web-based alternatives exist.” it becomes even more critical to perform due diligence when selecting a cloud vendor. For example, when selecting a cloud VoIP offering the obvious considerations are the cost, features, and technology. However, the operational organization behind the technology is an equally important consideration. The experts behind the technology matter- a lot.
Another exciting area for us is mobility. According to recent research, over 30% of today’s workforce is mobile or remote and as employees are starting to spend more time away from their desks it has become difficult to reach them via a phone call. As this trend continues, enterprises will seek out cloud providers that can connect disparate mobile devices and carriers while providing access to the business data and intelligence of those mobile workers. Just like M5 already has connectors to popular CRMs, we see seamless interoperability with mobile devices as the next area of focus.
M5 Networks owns voice like Facebook is owning social. Bold statement? Yes. Proven track record? Certainly. Stats: Over a decade focused on hosted managed VoIP, 1,500 clients, and 40K users and an NPS score of 40. 2010 reliability at 99.97% Don’t take my word for it, we publish it here.
2011: The Enterprise ResetsAaron LevieJan 2, 2011This post was written by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net. His last guest post for us was “Building The Simple Enterprise.”.On a recent call, an analyst shared a story about a company whose IT infrastructure was completely wiped out in a natural disaster. Forced to start from scratch, the company reinvented the spirit and composition of its enterprise IT strategy, and the set of solutions that emerged from the rubble made their organization inherently more mobile and efficient… read the full post