EN-CA
How are we going to pay for this? It’s the question on every IT pro’s mind. And with shrinking budgets and rising demands on IT, it’s a question that gets harder to answer every year.
With a premises-based approach to business communications, an IT pro can often save on communication costs in years when they don’t have to replace hardware or conduct major software upgrades. They bought the system. Now it’s doing what it was designed to do.
However, IT pros can be caught off guard with unpredictable cost spikes when upgrades, replacement or expansion are required. The larger the business, the larger these costs. And as much as they try to plan for communication technology hardware upgrades, replacement cycles are getting shorter and capabilities are advancing at an ever-increasing rate.
Servers can simply stop working with no regard for whether an IT pro budgeted a replacement. And when a related system undergoes an update, they can be caught with surprise compatibility problems that force an unplanned upgrade.
Even sudden business growth can wreak havoc with IT budgets, which may have predicted lower system usage rates. And costs for expanding, replacing or upgrading a premises-based communication system are not scalable—they’ve got to be done in big blocks all at once.
Some IT pros prefer the relative predictability of cloud communication costs. Most cloud communication providers charge on a simple per-user basis per month, quarter or year. The company using the system won’t get the budget breaks they do with a premises system, but they also won’t have large, unpredictable spikes in costs.
The enterprise grows? The cloud communication system can grow with it—and not in awkward blocks that leave periods of strain and periods of underused capacity.
