INDIA DIALS on Cloud

Both mid-market and enterprises are adopting cloud telephony

“We have had over 60 quarters of consecutive growth” CHRIS WRIGHT chief Technology Officer, Red Hat

“Predictive analytics is part of an enterprise’s Big Data initiatives” YOAV DEGANI CEO of Voicesense

Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone in 1876 and subsequently it became the most critical communication tool for the world. In the 1970s the Internet was discovered by the US Defense Agency and the world of communication witnessed the next paradigm shift then. The combination of telephones and Internet (more explicitly the cloud environment) has spawned the creation of cloud telephony.

Cloud Telephony is the technology that moves your business phone system to the cloud. It is a voice and messaging service that replaces the need for the conventional business telephone system, say, – PBX, EPBAX, etc. The scenario for cloud telephony India is changing fast, which entails more engagements for all businesses, both enterprise and SMBs.

As the market moved towards “Uberisation” of businesses, the number of businesses whose monetization depended on successfully connecting a buyer and a seller has pushed cloud telephony India to new limits.

Today, cloud telephony in India is being used to power a lot of unique use cases: 1. Supporting field workforce like delivery agents, salespersons, servicemen, etc. 2. Safeguarding customer privacy (what is colloquially called Phone Number Masking) 3. In marketplaces to connect a buyer

and a seller 4. Automated calling using APIs 5. Improving operational efficiency and agent productivity in all of the abovementioned cases Today, if you want to scale from 10 telephone lines to 10,000 lines it can be done in a matter of minutes through the magic of cloud telephony. What happened to IT infrastructure - where one had to earlier buy servers, racks and other hardware to grow - with the introduction of cloud computing, is happening to telecom infrastructure.

Capacity can be added on tap. Which is why cloud telephony is also called hosted telephony. The hardware can be hosted anywhere but services could be provided wherever required.

More than mere cost savings, cloud telephony players say that the biggest attraction to customers is the analytics and actionable intelligence that they can provide.

So, cloud telephony masks your number when Uber or Ola direct your calls to a driver. When the driver calls you through a call centre, he does not have your number - the data is secure with Ola or Uber.

Apart from number masking, call directing, recording functions, cloud telephony now can provide services like fax, sending bulk SMS or voice messages, call forwarding, conferencing and various other facilities. However, start-ups and SMBs have been the most aggressive adopters of cloud telephony. SMBs in