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Five reasons to
collaborate in the cloud
Five reasons to collaborate in the cloud
A strategic trend for multinational organisations is moving workloads to the cloud, often in
conjunction with digital transformation. But many companies need convincing how best to
achieve cloud transformation when they have complex environments with legacy investments

M
oving to the cloud and digital transformation complement each other.
“But while 100% of organisations are pursuing digital and looking at
cloud at the same time, not all have moved to the cloud,” says Andrew
Small, vice-president, BT One, contact, CPE & mobile portfolio, at BT.

Hindering factors include the impulse to sweat investment in legacy technologies

and the internal IT estate, and not knowing where to begin on the cloud journey
with so many diverse services offered and no idea how to knit them together.

However, Small believes the mindset changes when organisations see what
benefits they stand to gain and how BT can help on their journey to digital
transformation. Here are five reasons to move to the cloud.

1. Cutting collaboration costs

The number one driver for large organisations with multiple employees in diverse
locations is to put collaboration technologies in the cloud to reduce costs. “It is a cultural
“The CFO will see reduced costs, but to simultaneously increase productivity, change, not just a
it is important to focus on ensuring the quality of user experience, so
collaboration tools are used effectively,” says Small. “It is not a trivial addition
technology change”
– it is a fundamental change in the ways people can collaborate, whether by Andrew Small, BT
video, shared whiteboards or mobile phones. It is a cultural change, not just a
technology change.”

Large organisations are sometimes disappointed not to see the cost reduction
they expected from cloud service providers because of a lack of transparency.

“BT One Cloud offers transparent pricing and organisations can pin costs down
to per-user, per-month,” says Small. “By offering pay-as-you-go, organisations
can predict costs.”

2. Accessing latest collaboration technologies to improve productivity

BT simplifies setting up unified communications across different sites and

geographies and its partnership with Microsoft via One Cloud means it can offer
organisations the benefits of collaboration tools such as Skype for Business with
Microsoft Office 365 – all with minimal disruption.

“One Cloud Microsoft offers a great user experience and changes the way
people work, offering a real choice in how to communicate, whether by voice,
video, instant messaging or presence,” says Small. “As user experience
improves, employees are more productive.”

3. Using legacy and cloud technologies to exploit the best of the

old and the new

A perceived drawback of moving workloads to the cloud is the reluctance to

decommission legacy technologies and the associated wasted investment.
However, BT One’s mission is to ensure that both strands work together during
the transformation to cloud.

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“A multinational organisation may have different technologies from different
vendors and it doesn’t want to replace them all,” says Small. “BT One can
“BT One can make
make everything work together. We are used to integrating legacy with new everything work
under one solution.”
together. We are
Small says BT One provides the glue to build bridges between technologies.
used to integrating
Cloud migration does not need to happen all at once, and it’s recommended to legacy with new
migrate to the cloud over time with a hybrid approach – the combination of an
on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services. under one solution”
“For example, we can provide One Collaborate video bridging between a
Andrew Small, BT
legacy video solution and Microsoft Surface Hub and a partner using video
conferencing technology on a different network,” says Small. “Organisations only
need to spend money where they need it and can continue to use their in-house
technologies with new cloud collaboration tools.”

4. A continuous path of improving user experience

If employees don’t take up cloud collaboration tools because they have not had
the necessary training, or their experience is degraded due to poor network
connectivity, then investments are potentially wasted.

The consultancy approach through BT One ensures that employees are

identified in categories by “personas” and the appropriate tools are made
available based on their working requirements. This is particularly useful to
large, complex organisations that wish to give the right tools to the right people.
Employees are given training and ongoing proactive support to encourage
adoption and a productive digital workstyle.

“We split people into groups of users to ensure that each gets the right services,
which reduces costs and promotes simplicity,” says Small. “The One Cloud
service offers a holistic approach to unified communications with assessments,
planning and training. Post-deployment, every call is monitored for quality and
pain points are immediately identified and rectified. This means more calls are
made via the network and conferencing costs fall as positive user experiences
make an impact.”

5. Increased agility, simplicity, security and resilience

Large multinationals in diverse geographies need to change their requirements

as they grow and open new offices. BT’s extensive network of datacentres are
“paired up” to ensure failover and resilience, giving organisations confidence that
new employees can be brought on board quickly and simply and collaboration
will not be interrupted.

“Employees have a consistent service everywhere,” says Small. “Data is secured

as we manage the network from end to end and the resilience of the service
with two datacentres in each region means that the system is very robust. BT’s
global voice network is encrypted, and security is built into our cloud platform,
ensuring that security is never at the expense of collaboration.”

The cloud creates real value for businesses by connecting the workforce with a
secure, reliable and collaborative infrastructure. Work becomes more creative,
captures input from the best experience in the company, and does this at any
time, any place, on any device. Whether you’re an SME or a large organisation,
it is important to realise the opportunity that cloud-based technology can offer
your business. n

Find out more about BT’s unified communications solutions.

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