01 Introduction

Moving collaboration to the cloud

Cloud collaboration: Benefits and barriers

Piecemeal legacy strategies are forcing change

Collaboration is more important than ever. Remote work and work-from-home are no longer luxuries: they’re the future of work.

The shift has many companies taking a hard look at their collaboration strategies
and technologies. With workers distributed across geographies, a seamless,
integrated experience for meetings, messaging, calling, and file-sharing is critical
to success and innovation.

Meanwhile, collaboration costs are rising. Piecemeal strategies, built over time as investments were necessary, are driving up integration and connectivity costs. Their siloed architectures make scalability difficult, especially with remote work needs shifting rapidly. IT teams spend an inflated amount of time managing the sprawl—from telephony, to call center, to meetings, video conferencing, and beyond.

To address these challenges, cloud collaboration platforms provide an attractive answer. It’s a highly scalable, easy-to-access solution that offers substantial benefits.

But one lingering question gives pauses to technology and business leaders:
“What about the on-premises investments we’ve already made?”

Four reasons organizations choose cloud
for collaboration

The right approach is often cloud-first, but not cloud-only

Despite what some collaboration vendors will tell you, moving to the cloud isn’t an
all-or-nothing proposition.

And it’s a simple matter of fact that “rip and replace” isn’t a viable or attractive option for organizations with thousands, or tens of thousands, of users. An instantaneous leap to cloud would massively disrupt business. Organizations have spent significantly to build on-premises collaboration platforms, and it’s an investment many can’t leave behind.

On top of that, support processes and IT workflows would require roadblock-sized overhauls. Different departments with different operating strategies for collaboration can demand a large amount of added effort.

Hybrid cloud collaboration offers the right balance

Faced with a desire for cloud but unable to commit to wholesale adoption,
IT leaders are turning to a hybrid approach for collaboration. Hybrid deployments
allow them to make the transition to the cloud at a pace suitable for their organization while maximizing existing investments.

According to Nemertes Research, “Hybrid enables organizations to adopt cloud strategically, delivering less disruption and faster access to specific capabilities like meetings and team collaboration from the cloud.”