Organizations of all sizes are faced with a multitude of options for their conferencing and collaboration needs. While there are pros and cons to the solutions on the market today, most organizations will base their purchasing decision on price and deployment options.
For medium to large size firms, a greater focus may be placed on deployment, for factors such as security, high availability, and disaster recovery. The two primary modes of deployment are still on-premises or CPE (customer premise equipment) and cloud/hosted.
Advantages to the Cloud
Due to the high overhead of maintaining physical data centers, there has been a significant push to move as much data and communication applications “to the cloud” in the past decade. The advantages to moving communication applications to the cloud will vary between organizations. Advantages can include:
- Reduced overhead
- Predictable OPEX pricing
- Lower barriers to entry
- Easier scalability
By reducing or eliminating the need for physical datacenter capacity, firms will realize net savings to their existing overhead. This includes the cost for a “smart hands” team that is responsible for the installation and general upkeep of the racks and servers themselves. Time spent on maintaining, updating, and replacing equipment is also reduced or eliminated. Pricing models will also shift from a CAPEX and maintenance model, to a predictable OPEX model, typically based on number of users and/or some amount of fixed capacity allocated to each customer.
Comparing CAPEX versus OPEX models, the switching costs can be minimal by moving to a cloud subscription provider. Typically, there are minimal upfront or onboarding costs associated with moving data and communication applications, making the switch relatively painless. Scalability is also simplified, as the cloud vendor is already well positioned to add additional customers, or to grow the capacity of the service to existing customers. In other words, there will be no “forklift upgrades” required on the customer-side, or separate contracts to maintain for each leg of the service being provided.
Disadvantages to the Cloud
The biggest beneficiaries of cloud-based subscription services are typically small and start-up enterprises. For these organizations, predictable spend, minimal overhead, and terms that are as short as month-to-month, enable them to be very nimble, and scale up or down based on their immediate needs. However, once these organizations scale up, they can approach a tipping point when an on-premises or hybrid model makes better business sense. Disadvantages to the cloud include:
- Vendor lock-in
- Ever-increasing costs
- Information security / cybersecurity
Communication vendors that do offer CAPEX purchase models can deliver a compelling return on investment (ROI) when compared to an on-going OPEX subscription model. Further, many subscription-based services can require a 1-year or even a 3-year commitment, creating a vendor lock-in scenario, where it would be costly or difficult to transition to a different provider. The third and potentially most important drawback to cloud-based subscriptions is data security. These vendors can include a term of service that essentially allows them to gather large amounts of customer data, which presents privacy concerns related to cybersecurity.
Which model is best?
Compunetix is uniquely positioned to offer on-premises, cloud hosted, and hybrid deployment models. Furthermore, our pricing models include both Subscription and CAPEX purchase options.
ConferenceManager™5v (CM5v) is the preferred enterprise collaboration application for Voice and Data conferencing.
With over 20 years of customer success, CM5v has evolved to deliver conferencing based on the exact needs and requirements of our customers’ workflow. With our flexible deployment options, customers are assured that their data is safe and secure; Compunetix does not collect, retain, or exploit customer information.
Best of all, ConferenceManager5v can be deployed on a customer’s premises, while still benefiting from a Subscription-based licensing options – providing the best of all worlds, for security, flexibility, and cost savings. Contact Josh Obusek, Enterprise Sales Operations Manager, for further information!
