As technology continues to advance, businesses are ditching the face to face meetings and instead are opting for a video conference to save money, time, and the hassle of travelling.
There are many options for video meetings and conferences and the latest solution for businesses in Australia is a fully integrated version of Skype for Business.
Whilst Skype for Business has been on the market since 2015, there wasn’t any fully integrated options until now. Many cloud solutions, like Office 365, Azure or AWS, need to be purpose-built piece by piece.
ITonCloud are the first to offer the full functionality including voice, messaging and video capabilities, integrated into its virtual cloud desktop platform using Citrix. This solution is fully formed to make it easier for businesses to focus on their business instead of IT.
Despite only launching two years ago, Skype for Business has positioned itself to be the market leader in the UC (unified communications) category with an estimated 36 per cent of the market according to research from Spiceworks*.
Many cloud solutions can only offer part of the Skype for Business experience, for instance only the Standard version without telephony and video conferencing (VC) for groups. This new offering includes both telephony and VC running seamlessly in a hosted desktop environment.
Home Care Holdings, a mobile health provider, was one of the first to take advantage of the new Skype for Business Enterprise Plus as well as Standard to meet users’ needs appropriately. The first rollout has been completed with already 300 users utilising all the features, with another 200 being to be added to complete the first two stages of the roll out.
Home Care Holdings Group Chief Technology Officer, Jerome Barrientos said, “The Skype for Business integration with the ITonCloud platform has been a game changer for us. It will mean we can do away with landlines completely, enhancing our mobility and collaboration among our users.”
“It will also generate considerable cost savings for us, reducing our telephony costs. This is because we no longer have to invest in hardware and complex on-site systems, instead we have a managed service with a single supplier with is stable and has a reliability of cost.”
“It’s an offering that fits in with our overall IT strategy which is to focus on simplification and provide our network or users with systems that are robust,” added Mr Barrientos.
One of the many benefits of having your IT environment hosted in the cloud is maintenance, updates, regular back-ups and virus/malware protection are all taken care of for you, allowing you to focus your resources on business critical activities.
This solution is indicative of the way many businesses are looking to host their entire IT environment in the cloud, reducing the need for on-premise servers and significantly cutting set up and maintenance costs. Users can easily access programs and apps through an integrated virtual desktop hosted in the cloud, facilitating greater security, mobility and flexibility.
Increasing productivity has always been a goal of businesses world-wide, and an integrated video and messaging solution is the next step in efficiency and time management. Travelling to face to face meetings will soon be a thing of the past as we move to a more technologically integrated world.
Andrew Tucker, CEO of ITonCloud.
