Cloud Computing is changing the way call centers do business in South Africa. According to market research conducted by market researcher with Frost and Sullivan, the business of call centers is growing at a rapid rate because of improvement in cloud computing services. According to research data presented by the company at the recent information technology Web’s Virtualization and cloud computing Summit in South Africa, cloud computing has already been able to capture an extra 24% of the market share because of call centers that seem to have realized the benefits of cloud computing of late and are rapidly shifting from hardware-based businesses to cloud computing. It would also be pertinent to mention here that although cloud computing could be immensely beneficial to almost all industry verticals, but all of them have picked up this new technology as fast as the call center segment. Of course, cloud computing has its own share of security issues, but that is not the only reason why it has not been picked up fast by other industrial segments - in most of the cases it is false information and lack of proper understanding of the concept of cloud computing. There are a lot of myths doing their rounds and they need to be busted immediately. Some of the more famous ones include:
- Cloud computing is a costlier option compared to a system of hardware and network cables.
- Cloud computing is not reliable compared to hardware systems because of the involvement of third party servers.
- Cloud Computing is seriously capable of pulling down your business to the streets because it has some serious security loop-holes in it.
Well, it goes without mention that most of these are not true and the cloud computing service providers need to create more awareness amongst business owners to make the concept more popular.
Going back to the report that was published at the information technology Summit, it states that only 8% of all call centers in the country have actually shifted to cloud computing and that alone has helped the sector acquire an extra 24% market share. This number is going to increase in the coming months as more and more cloud computing service providers start offering better deals and the awareness about the concept increases.
The biggest advantage that cloud computing offers to call centers is they do not have to rely now on hardware systems that are very much susceptible to lose performance because of the heavy workload. That definitely means that each call center would be able to do more business without having to worry about serious downtime because of hardware issues. Of course, in some cases cloud computing could prove to be a costlier option, but the return on investment is definitely higher and that could compensate for the higher prices. The other biggest advantage is cloud computing provides access to the most recent and modern technologies that would have otherwise cost a bomb for hosting them on local servers. It is estimated that the cloud computing market is going to generate at least $241 billion in the next five years.
