Is Cloud Computing Safe and Ready for Mission Critical Parts of Your Business?
Maynard Webb, CEO

Maynard Webb, CEO

We have all been reading a lot about “Cloud Computing”, what it means and is it ready for the mission-critical operations in enterprise environments.  The recent article on CIO magazine’s June 1 issue titled ”Cloud Control – Beyond the Hype, Some Companies are moving Cautiously to Cloud Computing” talks about the reservation many CIO’s have about cloud computing, but also the promise and cost savings for those who have adopted it.

In my opinion, the writers, Jarina D’Auria and Kim S. Nash, were spot on in describing cloud computing:

The core attraction of cloud is that companies can avoid buying and running hardware, software and other equipment by contracting with a services vendor to run selected systems or applications on its own infrastructure of virtualized servers. The “services” you purchase are delivered in a standardized, multi-tenancy fashion that observers say will save one-third to one-half of your current costs.

As a former CIO and now the CEO of a SaaS company, I am well aware of the top two concerns CIOs have when it comes to cloud computing: security and mission critical availability.

In my opinion, if you are a cloud technology provider security and mission-critical availability are the minimum price of admission!

LiveOps provides the “Contact Center in the Cloud” which enables companies to dramatically reduce the complexity and constraints of traditional call centers and provide contact center infrastructure capacity on a pay-per-use model.  Companies can match their infrastructure capacity to exactly what they need.  As call volumes change, the infrastructure technology scales up or down instantly, so companies never have to pay for idle infrastructure or worry about how to provision for a major spike in call volume.

We are successful in selling this solution to large enterprises by delivering mission critical availability and security and our number one proof point is that we run the world’s largest virtual call center using our own “Contact Center in the Cloud” platform.  Any major down time would be detrimental to our business and even more importantly we have invested heavily in security through every aspect of our operations.

Clearly as the CEO of a cloud technology provider, I believe there is much to gain “beyond the hype” for enterprises.   LiveOps is committed to the vision.  I also recognize that as a community of “cloud vendors” for adoption to accelerate, some providers need to reach the security and mission-critical availability bar faster if CIOs are going to embrace cloud computing.  Last March, I spoke at OpSource’s SaaS Summit about the barriers for SaaS and cloud computing in the enterprise and gave a call to action to vendors.  I got some great feedback from folks– check out eweek’s Chris Preimesberger’s piece.   I’d love to hear what you have to say.  What will it take for adoption in the enterprise?  If you are a CIO, what is the tipping point for cloud computing in your business?