Executive Summary
Understanding the Drivers and Dispelling the Myths
CaaS is emerging as an answer to the pain organizations experience trying to keep up with rapid changes in both technology and capability in the unified communications and collaboration space. Virtualization, centralization and robust cloud services along with a need to streamline and optimize operations are causing organizations worldwide to seriously consider communications as a service. Organizations adopting these services are experiencing numerous benefits which may include Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) advantage, built-in business continuity, geo-redundant disaster recovery capabilities, lower risk of infrastructure obsolescence and the opportunity to refocus highly-talented IT resources on strategic business initiatives.
In Part 1of this report, we discuss why organizations should seriously consider cloud- based communications solutions right now. We discuss the eight drivers most service providers use to advocate their services along with the six inhibitors that naysayers use to counter initial exuberance for them, dispelling myths promulgated by both sides. We examine TCO specifically and point out why arguments in addition to TCO are compelling. We conclude with actionable recommendations for organizations that choose to pursue communications as a service.