Cloud communication tools – Part I

Cloud based social and communication tools help companies improve their performance in terms of efficient communication, reducing budget and increased collaboration. Businesses are not obligated any longer to pay separately for business tools, such as teleconferencing and videoconferencing, but they now have the flexibility to leverage cloud communication tools and apps that offer them more availability, flexibility and scalability.

There is a list of cloud communication tools that SMBs should be focused on. Here are the ones that are essential to every company:

• Voice. Cell phones or regular phone services are used by most of the SMBs. However, they can replace this service with a cloud hosted voice service, that would be more cost-effective.

• Email. The benefits of cloud based email has been recognized from the very beginning. The bottom line is that in-house exchange services are at risk of loss of data in case of a service failure.  Added savings from eliminating capital equipment costs and maintaining in house servers allows businesses to reduce costs and maximize productivity.

• Collaboration. Cloud has made it all possible: collaborative editing on documents, access from anywhere and anytime, document synchronization when online and many other features are now available with cloud based collaboration tools. This has helped SMBs win new business and helps employees become more efficient and a happier employee.

• Online backup. Technical issues and other situations can cause data loss. But online backup gives us the opportunity to eliminate loss of data.   This becomes even more important when several people are working on the same document at the same time. Emails, files and everything is backed up to a secure site that you can access online.

• Mobility. You use to get your work done in front of a PC or laptop.  Employees now have a wide range of options to work remotely. Many tools allow mobile devices to sync with email, calendars and contacts, whether you use Blackberry, iPhone, iPad or Android.

• Security. In my opinion, there has never been a better time to switch to these new cloud tools. With all the tools that are now available, allowing you to reap all of the benefits, security becomes essential. In order to limit the risks of data leakage, email encryption is a must have.  Fortunately most enterprise level email solutions provide an encryption solution.

If you’re looking to reduce overall IT costs while making your company more efficient, I would recommend looking into these cloud tools.