Don't Fear the Cloud

10/10/2012- Votacall VoIP – Boston, Massachusetts-Innovation is an interesting animal that can easily be stunted by fear. Any organization is susceptible to comfort zone thinking which can literally be false hope that their way is the right way, look no further. Large scale organizations can believe that their way of doing business drives the market, so why risk the present environment, money, market-share and resources to change (Remember in the 80's that large computer manufacturer that couldn't see the vision of a young developer and turned down his proposal to purchase his idea...). SMB organizations fear disruption to day to day business, they fear the draining of resources which already have a maxed out work load and they worry that there is an inability to adapt to something new within their customer base and organizational chart. These are all valid concerns and should not be taken lightly because in the SMB world time, resources, a single customer and the organizational message are so valuable that one misstep can bring a strong SMB down. However, fear cannot supersede change. An organizations fears should be acknowledged, discussed and understood to advance appropriately. The Cloud, specifically Hosted VoIP has exposed the fears of many Carriers, Manufacturers and VARs which has lead to an unwillingness to truly be innovative. Hosted VoIP is destroying business models that have been in place for decades. Hosted VoIP and VoIP Phone Systems in general have kicked the dust off of what was once a stagnant industry. VoIP has changed the conversation. Customer discovery sessions now include discussions on Business Continuity, fixed mobile convergence and innovation paths. VoIP gave birth to terms like Unified Communications and Collaboration which are a lot sexier topics than Digital vs analog. These are exciting times in technology and communications, but they will only be exciting if you check your fears at the door.