Lifting collaboration to new heights:Leveraging the cloud to make collaboration more flexible, agile, and cost-effective

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By Aleem Mohummed, Program Management, TELUS

Business collaboration is not new and neither are its benefits. For decades organizations have sought ways to better connect employees with their peers—both within and outside the organization—in order to more effectively share ideas, fuel innovation, enhance productivity, and ultimately improve business.

In fact, it can be said that the speed of innovation closely mirrors the efficiency and immediacy of collaboration. As a result, a new collaboration environment and tools have emerged that take advantage of unified communications, chat, mobility and video technologies. These further enhance employees’ ability to work together while at the same time improving communications with customers and partners. Still, despite the well-recognized benefits of current collaboration technologies, many Canadian businesses continue to struggle to keep pace with them—a problem exacerbated by the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) reality that business must contend with.

In many ways, this is an economic challenge more than a technology one. Since the global economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, Canadian businesses—already heavily CAPEX focused when compared with their counterparts in the U.S. and other regions—have been more reluctant to jump on best-of-breed technologies, wary of the impact a significant investment will have on cash flow. No business wants to risk being caught in another economic downturn without the funds to weather the storm; however, the result of this approach for many businesses is being tied to aging technology, and stifled innovation and competitiveness.

So how does an organization faced with relentless two-year cycles of new collaboration tools and technology keep competitive amidst ever-tightening purse strings? After all, top-notch collaboration tools enable greater revenue generation, but they don’t directly generate revenue.

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ENTER CLOUD COLLABORATION

Looking to the cloud

Just as cloud has revolutionized and disrupted storage and other IT resources, it does the same in the collaboration arena. A cloud collaboration environment provides organizations with the ability to manage costs in a predictable fashion based on users (or seats) and features—allowing them to pay for capabilities only when needed and eliminating the overbuilding of infrastructure to support potential future needs.

Cloud-based collaboration also supports emerging BYOD environments by offering platform independence. This affords employees the freedom to collaborate from any tablet, PC, smartphone or browser of choice, an increasingly critical component of inter- and intra-office productivity and connectivity. It supports rapid exchange of ideas between staff, management, and even partners and customers, all while freeing up IT from the management of the plethora of devices and the infrastructure.

In a cloud environment, upgrades to maintain best-in-class collaboration and communications features are continuous and software-based. Again, this offloads the burden from already cash-strapped IT budgets and frees up resources to focus on issues core to the business. Ideally, in fact, upgrades in a cloud collaboration environment can (and should) be managed to be as seamless to employees as possible.

From an economic perspective, cloud collaboration doesn’t simply reduce CAPEX. Operating costs related to maintenance are also decreased. Consider that most environments with 100 or more employees must dedicate a resource that spends 30 to 40 per cent of his or her time managing telephony and its collaboration features.

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With such benefits, interest is significant. A 2013 study by Forrester determined that two-thirds of businesses plan to leverage the cloud to either replace (26 per cent) or complement (41 per cent) their existing collaboration tools. As such, solutions must embrace a hybrid approach that brings the efficiencies of cloud, while integrating fully with existing infrastructure.

And despite significant savings and the benefits of predictable costs, many of the businesses turning to cloud collaboration are doing so for its other business boons. Forrester research found implementation speed and flexibility both topped costs as motivators to adopting cloud collaboration. Attitudes around cloud collaboration, like those broadly around cloud, are maturing. In fact, implementation speed, the ability to focus resources on other projects, improved agility, faster upgrades, and greater innovation are becoming top of mind.

CLOUD COLLABORATION CONSIDERATIONS

Like any solution, not all cloud collaboration solutions are equal. A few considerations are crucial when migrating to cloud collaboration and selecting a cloud partner.

Flexibility: One-size does not fit all employees. Different executives and employees rightly have different collaboration needs that any successful collaboration platform must meet. For example, most executives, sales representatives and other “road warriors” use multiple mobile devices and require vastly different services than a static workstation sitting in a warehouse. Effective cloud collaboration must meet all specific needs and, importantly, at different price points to ensure the most cost-effective service.

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Infrastructure: Similarly, infrastructure needs vary from business to business and over time as businesses develop new models. For this reason, a hybrid cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) approach is important as it offers the option of using dedicated servers or shared infrastructure that leverage economies of scale. For those with client data residency concerns—location requirements based on privacy—servers located in Canada are another important consideration.

Resiliency and reliability: Elements of infrastructure that cannot be overlooked are those of reliability and resiliency. What is the cloud provider’s history? Is the solution backed by a top-notch service level agreement? Does the provider offer the safety and security of Tier-3 data centres and geo-resiliency? Few businesses can afford to have their ability to work and communicate grind to a halt as the result of disaster. The solution should strengthen business continuity, not introduce new risks.

Expertise: One of the advantages of turning to cloud collaboration is removing the complexity (and associated costs) from managing the communications and collaboration platform. What management expertise does the cloud provider bring? Are the resources replacing internal staff fully-trained and certified? Do they have access to the latest advances and solutions?

Armed with a cloud collaboration solution from a provider that provides the right answers to those issues, there’s no longer any reason for organizations to be tethered to legacy systems and obsolete collaboration features. Employees can become more effective, productive and efficient, customers can be better served, and business continuity can be strengthened—all with reduced capital expenditure. All thanks to the cloud.

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About TELUS

TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is Canada’s fastest-growing national telecommunications company, with $11.8 billion of annual revenue and 13.5 million customer connections, including 8.0 million wireless subscribers, 3.2 million wireline network access lines, 1.45 million Internet subscribers and 888,000 TELUS TV customers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video, and is Canada’s largest healthcare IT provider.

In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $350 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 5.4 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Created in 2005 by Executive Chairman Darren Entwistle, TELUS’ 11 community boards across Canada have led the company’s support of grassroots charities and will have contributed $47 million in support of 3,700 local charities organizations by the end of 2014, enriching the lives of more than two million Canadian children and youth. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition.

For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.

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