Voxeo Talks

What are some of the questions you should consider when debating whether to launch an application “in the cloud” or deploy the app on your premises?

In this series of blog posts coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, I’ve been answering these questions:

#1 Can the cloud offer better capabilities than what you can deliver in your enterprise?

#2 Can you deploy faster into the cloud?

#3. Is the same software used on your premise and in the cloud?

#4 Are you locked in to the cloud provider or can you move to another vendor?

#5 Can you get IP communications (ex. SIP) for rich integration into your infrastructure?

#6 What kind of real-time analytics and linkage to business intelligence solutions are possible?

#7 Can the cloud keep up with innovation better that what you can deliver inside your enterprise?

Now these are obviously just some of the many questions you should be asking when considering a cloud solution versus an on-premises solution, but they should give you a solid start in determining which option is best for your particular situation. Please… don’t hesitate to contact us if you have more questions. We’ve been doing this for a while and can help.

Next up, I’ll be looking at some more specific cloud security questions…

Continuing the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, let’s ask the question:

#7 Can the cloud keep up with innovation better that what you can deliver inside your enterprise?

Communications technology doesn’t stand still. Is the cloud communication provider you are considering keeping on the leading edge (or even the bleeding edge) of technology? Or are your enterprise data centers farther ahead that the cloud provider?

More to the point, when some new technology comes along, does the cloud provider have a history of rapidly making new technology available? Or can you make that new technology available faster on your own?

In my personal opinion, the cloud should be able to keep you on the leading edge of communication tech. This is to me one of the great strengths of the “cloud”… letting you play with new technologies and services, before you deploy them within your enterprise.

I’ll give you two examples from Voxeo’s history. Back in August 2009 when we added text messaging (SMS) and instant messaging (IM) to our hosted cloud, we made it so that with a change of a button within a web interface a voice app could also become a text messaging / IM app:

Beyond changing that button and confirming the application file you wanted to use for text messaging, that was all you had to do. The cloud just brought this capability to you.

Similarly, when we added support to Tropo.com back in March 2010 to create Twitter applications, it was again with a very simple addition of a web form:

Click the link, go through the Twitter OAuth process and… ta da… your application is now responding to Twitter messages!

That’s the kind of innovation the cloud should be able to deliver to you… and is something to consider in the “cloud vs premise” debate… can the cloud connect you with new innovative forms of communication faster and more reliably than you can do yourself?

Continuing the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, let’s ask the question:

#6 What kind of real-time analytics and linkage to business intelligence solutions are possible?

When you are evaluating cloud solutions, it’s not enough just to have a cloud platform run your application, you also want to understand how people used the application. You want to know how often people interacted with the app… what channels they used (voice, SMS, IM, web, Twitter, etc.)… how successful they were… etc., etc.

You want to be able to get reports that show you the usage – and dive into the business processes. Where in the call flow of the application did people hang up? Where did they start to press “0″ to get to an operator? Where were you able to successfully upsell them (if that is a goal) and where were you not? What can you do to make your application more successful?

You need to be able to get this data in real-time, too. If you have launched an outbound campaign calling people, you want to be able to see the results in as close to real-time as possible. If you can spot trends where the app isn’t working so well, you can try out fixes to see if you can change the results while the campaign is underway.

You also want to be able to tie these results into the business intelligence systems and “dashboards” that you already have within your business.

Can your cloud do that? If so, go nuts! If not, either find a cloud that can or look at a premise solution that can deliver.

Continuing the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, let’s ask the question:

#5 Can you get IP communications (ex. SIP) for rich integration into your infrastructure?

This is a key question to ask any cloud communications service – can you interact with the platform entirely over IP communications? Typically using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) or another VOIP protocol.

Here’s an example of why this is important… say you have a contact center and when people are finished talking to an agent you want to offer them the chance to take a customer survey. If they agree, they will be transferred over to the application running the survey. In the old legacy way of doing transfers, the contact center would just do a basic transfer over the PSTN to the phone number of the application….

WITHOUT any real context

No information about what the caller was talking to the contact center about… or what path they took through the contact center software… or how long they waited… or who they spoke with…

With the PSTN, there’s no real way to provide any of that rich context information – unless the contact center software perhaps appends a few extra digits… or calls a separate application for each possible work flow. Sure, there are creative ways to compensate… but they require a good bit of extra work and potential duplication… all to make up for the fact that the PSTN has no way to pass more than just basic information.

On the other hand, over in the IP communications space you can pass all sorts of headers rich in contextual information from the contact center software over to the application running in the cloud. The app can then deliver a very customized experience that, in the case of a survey, can really ask about the experience the person had. It’s personalized… customized… all because the application can get the rich headers from the original software.

What’s even better, the app running in the cloud can send all that information very easily back to the originating software so that that info can be passed back into the systems there.

So can the cloud talk SIP? If it can pass SIP headers back and forth, there’s an amazing amount of deep integration you can do. If the cloud can’t do SIP? Well, better let that one drift on by…

The fourth in the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, is simply this:

#4 Are you locked in to the cloud provider or can you move to another vendor?

What happens if you don’t like the cloud provider any more? Maybe you don’t like their pricing. Maybe it’s their support. Maybe you can get better capabilities somewhere else.

Whatever the case, how easy is it to move to another vendor?

Is your app based on open standards? Or a proprietary flavor of XML or proprietary language? Do you in fact actually own your application?

Many cloud providers talk about standards and portability, but when it comes down to it they maintain ownership of your intellectual property and/or lock you in with proprietary application development tools.

In our case, we take our core value of “Unlocked Communications” extremely seriously. We lead the industry in compliance with open industry standards like VoiceXML, CCXML and SIP. Voxeo customers own their intellectual property and applications can be easily moved to other IVR platforms. (But pretty much none of them ever do!) Additionally, Voxeo VoiceObjects offers one-click portability to more than 30 leading IVR platforms, including Avaya, Convergys, Genesys, Tellme and West.

Our focus is on providing you the best cloud platform in terms of features, capability, support and customer service… so that you stay with us a customer because you want to – not because you are forced to.

Next up in the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, let’s ask the question:

#3. Is the same software used on your premise and in the cloud?

This is perhaps a more subtle question… if you are looking at a cloud versus a premise solution… is the software the same?

Why does this matter?

You want to have options. Choice. Control.

Consider this… what if you start in the cloud and then decide later to move to a premise solution – how hard is it to make the move?

Likewise if you start on your premise and want to move into the cloud – how hard is it to make the move?

Can you simply move the application from the cloud down to your premise? or from your premise into the cloud? Or do you have to change or modify the application? Or do you have to completely rewrite the application?

Now, in our case, we do use the same software. You can install Voxeo Prophecy on your local system, develop an app, and then run the app on your premise or up in our cloud. Same software. Ditto with creating applications using Voxeo VoiceObjects on a local system, and then deploy them locally or up into VoiceObjects On-Demand.

There are, however, other vendors out there who don’t make things this easy. Often it is because they had one solution (either cloud or premise) and then acquired another company with the other solution… so now they do have both options… but when you dig deeper you find out that they are two very different solutions – and that the migration between the options might be annoying at best and incredibly painful (or not even possible) at the worst.

A subtle question to ask… with big ramifications.

Continuing the series of questions coming out of our webinar, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, let’s ask the question:

#2 Can you deploy faster into the cloud?

How agile are your internal processes? How fast can you deploy applications within your internal infrastructure? How fast can you make changes to internal applications if you need to do so?

Perhaps you have all the control you need… you can simply connect in to any box on your network and update/change/modify software at will.

Or perhaps you need to go through 5 levels of approval, document any and all changes, QA test every proposed change… and then wait for another group to do the actual deployment.

Your level of internal process can also dictate whether a cloud or premise solution may be the best choice for you.

Most cloud solutions out there exist in large part to make it easy for you to deploy. Some, like ours, remove the friction to the point where you don’t need even a credit card to sign up. You just create an account and start creating applications. Others require you to provide a credit card or put other steps in the way… but in the end, they, too, may get you deploying quickly.

What gives you the most agility? If your own process is lightning fast, a premise product like Prophecy or VoiceObjects may be the best fit. If the cloud would be faster, services like Prophecy Hosting or Tropo may be the best path for you. It’s your choice… what gets your app out there the fastest?

After the great discussion we had in our webinar this week, “Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid“, I thought I would expand on the questions that I included at the end of the webinar. So I’ll start with a series of posts about 7 questions to think about when considering a cloud solution versus an on-premise solution. These aren’t all the questions you should think about… but they are some good ones to get you started.

First up, let’s start with:

#1 Can the cloud offer better capabilities than what you can deliver in your enterprise?

Ultimately, this is the key question, right? Can the cloud do more for you than what you can do yourself?

If you already have a world-class, carrier-grade infrastructure with network security, geographic redundancy, etc, well… you are pretty much running your own “cloud”, and so a premise solution may be just fine for you. (subject to the other questions in this series) Some key considerations for running telecommunications in your own datacenters include:

• Do you have enough connectivity to the PSTN?
• Do you have redundancy in PSTN providers?
• Do you have “burstability” to handle spikes in traffic?
• Do you have 24×7 monitoring of all your telecom equipment?

For many companies, the answers in 2011 are that the cloud can very often provide better capabilities than the company can in its own data centers… but again, “it depends“.

The key is that you need to map out what capabilities you need to deliver your communications services… and then use that as a checklist when comparing cloud versus premise solutions.

As I said in the webinar, it’s very common for us to see applications start out in the cloud because there are so few barriers to get started (especially when we let you get started for free). As applications – and companies – grow, we see many of them stay in the cloud all the way, but some migrate to premise installations as companies take on more of their own infrastructure. Then, perhaps ironically, we see a migration back to the cloud as companies reach a larger size and decide they don’t want to run their own infrastructure.

Given that we offer both cloud, premise and even hybrid options (and do so for free to developers), we don’t really care which way you choose. You need to match the choice you make with the capabilities you need and that you may or may not already have.