We live in a digitally disrupted world that thrives on data and interconnectivity. Businesses that operate with their teams working in silos will find themselves irrelevant and redundant, more so in the newly defined post-pandemic business as usual. Be it a small or large enterprise, collaboration and data exchange across multiple functions or business applications is a significant part of your everyday operations. This is why the need for integration is imminent. On-premises, cloud-native, modern, or legacy applications – integration is the lifesaver of your organization.

Add to this equation an interesting growth projection: In 2020, the enterprise integration market had been valued at USD 9.65 billion; it is now predicted by 2026, it will reach USD 22.69 at a CAGR of 15.42%. So, what can businesses extrapolate from this?

One, data drives innovation and business change, and two, integration is a key feature that is critical to achieving sustained business success and for businesses to remain relevant.

Read more: How Can Organizations Profit More from Collaboration Software?

Furthermore, businesses globally are looking to build their digital resilience in order to stay afloat in the face of change. In this context, simplifying integration as a core asset would be vital as it would mean the following. 

• Optimization of business processes: Integration facilitates organizations to build a central framework or software architecture that enables cross-functional teams to connect efficiently and transmit data between multiple systems for better collaboration. This essentially translates to lesser bottlenecks and improved accuracy. Integration eliminates manual, time-consuming processes by significantly minimizing communication delays and increasing efficiency and speed. It automates them to deliver optimized business outcomes driven by high-value strategic processes. 
• Better responsiveness and preparedness for change: Integration helps build a conducive environment that embraces change and paves the way for unique technological opportunities. This forms the core of a digital transformation process that translates directly into better business performance by fostering innovation.
• Improved decision-making through data-driven insights: Connected data offers holistic enterprise-wide visibility. Thereby enabling both customers and employees to see the big picture and base their decisions on qualitative evidence and not just on discrete, non-contextual information.
• Reduced costs: By integrating legacy systems with modern infrastructure rather than entirely replacing them, integration drives enhanced revenue and reduced costs. By connecting disparate systems to one another and building a central framework that allows both old and new models to co-exist, integration allows businesses to keep revamping existing infrastructure incrementally. 
• Supports cloud initiatives: Existing systems and processes can seamlessly connect to cloud-based services through integration. By connecting to the cloud, organizations typically cut down costs as it precludes the need to invest in separate solutions that serve distinct purposes and instead consolidate several functions under one hood through the cloud. 

That brings us to the following question: How do you choose a business platform that makes integration simple?

Simplified integration is at the cornerstone of your organization’s success. Seamless integration across multiple functions and connected processes within an organization helps eliminate silos, prepares an organization for any eventuality, fosters growth and robust development, and drives overall operational as well as strategic efficiency.

Read more: Why is It Necessary to Safeguard Data Privacy in Project Management?

So, what are the essential checklist you should consider while choosing a business platform that simplifies integration?

• Flexibility and API implementation support: A business platform can simplify integration if it works within an agile environment and contributes to a seamless process workflow. This improves efficiency and allows for easy configuration through robust APIs. 
• Ability to handle hybrid/coexistence scenarios: Since legacy systems can’t be entirely replaced for modern infrastructure and will need to be scaled appropriately, a business platform should be flexible enough to accommodate integration across multiple scenarios such as cloud-to-cloud, on-premises to cloud, and on-premises to on-premises.
• Strong architecture support: Integration is seamlessly carried out if a business platform supports multiple architectures such as Microservices, SOA & ESB (Enterprise Service Bus).
• High volume data processing. One of the most crucial parameters while considering an integration platform is its ability to process huge volumes of data in seconds. Batch processing support and high-volume requests are vital pre-requisites for a robust integration platform.
• Security: Data security is indeed the most critical aspect to look out for while choosing an integration platform. While choosing an enterprise integration platform, ensure that it is well-built with security features and that the overall flow of data is not dependent on third-party servers.

How does a robust business platform such as InfinCE be your best bet for seamless integration?

Whether you want to consolidate disparate units of data from enterprise silos, cut down on tedious manual task flows and replace them with automation, or want to leverage key data insights to drive better decisions, InfinCE is equipped with an array of tools that help facilitate seamless integration across all your business processes and functions.

With InfinCE that simplifies integration at its core, you will get a bird’s eye view as well as an insightful take into important aspects of your IT infrastructure. This will help you prepare for the future as well as guide you in managing your business operations proficiently. By taking stock of critical trends and changes early on, you will be adept at making evidence-based strategic decisions at a quick turnaround time.

InfinCE works as your unified business platform to offer meaningful and deep insights into different layers of your IT resources and helps you see how each process/system is interconnected to the other, thereby making integration both simple and seamless.  

Get in touch with us to know more about InfinCE and how it can help your business.

Embracing cloud technologies is one of the typical components of digital transformation. According to a Gartner report, “By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software, and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud.” This statement speaks aloud how cloud computing is becoming the most disruptive technology for businesses in this digitally forward era.

As with adopting any technology, moving to the cloud also requires having a robust plan. Most organizations move to multiple clouds to make the most of the technology and have the utmost flexibility. This is where the hybrid cloud comes into the picture, as it facilitates all the demands of such enterprises by providing paramount agility and cost-efficiency. However, it is also seen that a hybrid cloud infrastructure can create many security vulnerabilities if it is not deployed properly.

Read more: Top Cloud Trends Your Enterprise Should Pursue to Succeed in 2021 and Beyond!

How to Deploy a Hybrid Cloud Approach Perfectly

Hybrid cloud infrastructure merges the workloads on the public and private cloud to allow enterprises receive the best of both models. This gives businesses enhanced flexibility to shift their cloud and on-premise workloads as and when required. Hybrid cloud is also a better option because it allows organizations to have better control over their data. Companies can store their sensitive data on the private cloud while they can manage the other workloads on the public cloud. At the same time, they can have a unified platform to configure and manage the capabilities of both and enjoy simplified administration.

It is a known fact that cybersecurity concerns are on the rise, which is why enterprises that move with their digital transformation strategies also need a reliable approach to avoid cyberattacks. Reports say that most of the data breaches in recent years have been due to the misconfiguration of cloud services. In fact, it comes only second to hacking. Although migrating to the cloud allows businesses to prevent that by outsourcing the services to a reliable partner, it does not make the cloud totally protected from cyberattacks. That is why cloud services providers are stressing the need for adopting identity and authentication approaches to improve security.

Read more: 6 Ways InfinCE Simplifies IT Infrastructure Management For Enterprises

How IAM Can Bridge the Gap in Cloud Security 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) can be a vital ingredient in protecting access to resources and data in a hybrid cloud environment. With a hybrid cloud identity strategy in place, businesses can rest assured that only the right people with pre-defined, secure digital access can use the resources and data. It is like an authentication authority for the hybrid cloud infrastructure, with capabilities like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Single Sign-On (SSO), which reinforce cybersecurity. Apart from that, hybrid cloud identity can also allow for seamless experiences for the employees and customers, in turn leading to improved overall productivity.

Cloud SSO can reduce the usage of traditional passwords, which can not only provide a better employee experience but also decrease the costs of password resets. On the other hand, IAM in the hybrid cloud can help to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty rates by providing secure, password-less logins and unified profiles. At the organizational level, IAM helps to monitor user access to the distributed resources over the public and private clouds. Administrators can set specific rules for users and grant them different levels of access based on their job roles and requirements.

Who Needs a Hybrid Cloud Identity and Access Management Solution?

A hybrid cloud IAM solution can also be integrated and deployed at any level, regardless of whether the data and resources are stored and managed on the public cloud or in the on-premise data center. However, it is essential that enterprises identify their IT and business requirements before deploying hybrid cloud IAM so that it fits their needs in the best way. Ensuring this alignment between the varied demands of the company will be a key defining factor in the efficiency of a hybrid cloud IAM solution.

Read more: How InfinCE Cloud Orchestration Platform Can Be A Game Changer For New Business Owners

Companies That Operate Globally

Large enterprises with branches all over the world usually have a huge suite of applications that they use on a daily basis to manage their workflow. These apps and resources can have complex requirements and may require re-architecting to make them compatible with the hybrid cloud infrastructure. Therefore, such organizations retain some apps to be managed in on-premise data centers while deploying others on the public cloud. This makes it imperative for such enterprises to ensure high-end security on both ends to keep their data and resources secure.

This is where hybrid cloud IAM becomes the preferred option by allowing the company to secure applications at every level as necessary. When defining Identity and Access Management (IAM), Gartner says that “Enterprises that develop mature IAM capabilities can reduce their identity management costs and, more importantly, become significantly more agile in supporting new business initiatives.” With a hybrid cloud IAM solution, they can integrate and secure local workloads while defining enhanced security for the resources on the cloud.

Companies That Need to Comply With Regulatory Requirements

Many enterprises need to fulfill specific regulatory requirements, especially if they are doing business on a global scale. This can range from local regulatory norms to national data residency requirements. According to a Gartner report on market trends and cybersecurity, “Personal data privacy has become an intangible asset in this data era. Protecting privacy by standing on the consumers’ side is a differentiator to build a strong brand for any company that is in the consumer business.”

As hybrid cloud IAM is built to support data sovereignty, it allows such companies to host and store their data required for a specific location in that region, while managing globally intensive data on the public cloud. Meanwhile, they can also define user access and control over the data access, usage, and sharing with a well-designed hybrid cloud IAM strategy in effect. That in turn allows such businesses to ensure compliance on every level without compromising on customer expectations.

Companies That Look to Reduce IT Costs

As businesses are becoming increasingly digital-dependant, the IT and admin teams are required to deal with a wide variety of requests. At the same time, they may have to work with limited resources while having to deliver a broader range of requirements. With a hybrid cloud identity plan in place, businesses can save significantly on IT operational costs while not having to cut the quality or amount of support they have been providing to their customers.

Hybrid cloud IAM allows enterprises to handle the challenging use cases efficiently without having to break the bank for the same. It can facilitate centralized identity management on the enterprise level as well as across multiple clouds while providing the tools to automate and maintain the IAM solution. In other words, hybrid cloud identity allows organizations to free up their IT staff from managing infrastructure, which helps them to focus on other higher-value activities.

Read more: Why InfinCE Digital Workplace Should be Your Remote Work Companion

Start the Hybrid Cloud Journey Today

Having a smart digital transformation strategy is what businesses need today to stay competitive in the industry. As migrating to the cloud can be described as a stepping-stone toward digital transformation, enterprises need to realize the flexibility a hybrid cloud infrastructure can provide. Know more on how a hybrid cloud identity solution can boost security, improve productivity, and deliver seamless experiences for the employees and partners. Connect with us today, or Sign Up with InfinCE for free to experience infinite cloud for your business.

Why should small businesses invest in a cloud business phone system

In the past, a business phone system was not a small business priority. But did you know that nearly 65% of consumers prefer to interact with a business over a phone call rather than utilizing a web contact form? As companies rush to find more ways to engage their loyal customers, keeping their contact options flexible and open to customer demands is a critical area that they cannot ignore. In this context, having a business phone number is essential as customers may want to get in touch with you directly for various reasons. Traditional telephonic communication systems have transitioned into their digital avatars. Today VOIP based telecommunication is the backbone of every small business phone system out there.

The latest and most trending internet-enabled telephonic communication infrastructure for today’s digital-savvy small businesses is a cloud business phone system. The trend is attributed to the ROI that cloud business phone systems can provide to small businesses. Cloud business phone systems help companies deliver a seamless experience for customers to get in touch with them. 

Let us explore the top 7 benefits that a small business can enjoy if they switch over to a cloud business phone system:

1. Global access

A telephone system managed in a cloud environment enables businesses to globalize their communication infrastructure. It allows the staff to utilize the business phone for communication from anywhere in the world in just a few clicks. All it takes is a few configuration steps to be done on your cloud phone system. In a matter of minutes, your business phone system will be ready for use in any country you may shift your operating base to or open up new offices. All data related to your contacts, workflow mappings of different departments, or executives can be seamlessly moved to your new work location without any effort.

Read more: 5 Ways an Integrated Cloud Platform is Beneficial for Your Small Business

2. Cost-efficient

As we all know, cloud business phone systems rely on VOIP technology to make phone calls from the internet. Voice is transferred as data packets and not as analog signals found in traditional line-based telephonic infrastructure. Voice services over the internet are relatively inexpensive irrespective of the geographies connected through the line for customer interactions. Availing a cloud business phone system also allows small businesses to avoid hefty license fees as they can opt for economic subscription plans that best suit their needs.

3. Simplified infrastructure

A cloud business phone system doesn’t require enterprises to have physical telecommunication infrastructure components like a PBX box, telephones, and operational lines. Also, they do not require office premises to be modified to lay cables and wires to support a large user base of executives accessing different official phone numbers. The cloud system offers all employees a simple one-click call from their smartphones, and the cloud service provider handles all call routing, network optimization, and traffic management.

Read more: 8 Ways Cloud Automation Significantly Improves Your Legacy IT Operations

4. Flexibility of scale

Small businesses always need technology that can flexibly align with their growth prospects. Cloud telephone systems allow enterprises to seamlessly scale up the number of people who can access the business phone system with just a few clicks and no physical infrastructure additions. They can increase the number of subscribers in their monthly or yearly billing contract signed with a service provider. The same applies if they want to scale down operations as well.

5. Device independence

With a cloud-based business phone system, employees can make calls from any of their devices such as smartphones or laptops or any other work gear and have the recipient receive the call from the official business correspondence number. All call features such as recording, analytics, reporting, etc., can be done on the cloud. Companies can even route incoming calls to an employee’s number to another employee easily in the event of leave or absence.

6. Limitless geographical extension

One of the highlights of using a cloud-based VOIP business phone system is that it gives businesses the freedom to establish a local presence in a country with a business phone system tagged to a local number. They can do it remotely from anywhere globally, thereby empowering businesses to expand their reach to international customers seamlessly.

7. Recovery and security

With a cloud-based business phone system, your business’s entire telephone system has a virtual infrastructure hosted and secured in a cloud environment. In the wake of a natural calamity or a sudden migration of office space to a new city or locality, your business phone system can be up and running from the new area in a matter of seconds.

Download White Paper: The Business Value of InfinCE for Business Owners and Employees

As the world is increasingly transitioning to digital-first interactions, keeping your telecommunication system agile and flexible is vital for sustainable business growth. This is where investing in a cloud business phone system can make a tangible return on your investment. Get in touch with us to see how InfinCE can help create the perfect digital backbone for your small business by bringing all your enterprise applications, telecommunication, and collaboration capabilities under one roof on a SaaS model. 

Why Businesses Should Make Cloud their Number One Priority

In the initial days of business technology adoption, many companies were using technology only as a supporting tool for their operations. But today, these companies are turning their technology ecosystem into a mainstream revenue source. 

If you were to enquire about the most influential tech that spurred such a digital innovation for businesses of all sizes in the past decade, the answer will be cloud computing. The world of digital was thrown open for SMBs primarily with the growth of cloud computing over the last 10 years. Experts say that on a global scale, cloud-hosted workloads have grown from 45% in 2018 to 60% in 2019.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have started realizing more about the advantages of cloud-hosted digital channels. 57% of businesses that were surveyed recently report that their cloud adoption has increased anywhere between 26-31% after the pandemic’s strike. 

Besides, the growing digital-savvy consumer base is more than happy to welcome cloud-powered digital channels launched by their favorite brands. So businesses cannot turn away from the cloud-enabled customer and employee engagement channels.  

There are several factors that make cloud-based IT services the need of the hour. This post explores the top 3 reasons that accelerate cloud adoption among businesses:

1. Cost advantage

With cloud computing, an enterprise has the option to pay for only what they use from a technology perspective (pay per use). It could be anything from the number of users, storage capacity, computing power, bandwidth, or any combination of these. 

Unlike the traditional model of building an on-premise technology ecosystem that serves a large workforce to run critical business applications within a business premise, companies can tap into the power of modern-day digital platforms powered by Cloud, with just a web browser or through a mobile app or mobile site. This brings in a huge reduction in the IT operational costs and is one of the key reasons for the growth of cloud computing over the years.

2. Freedom to scale at will

For most businesses today, the rate of growth of their business will be highly dynamic in nature. There may be sudden spikes of consumer demand according to seasonal events like for example, retailers facing increased consumer spending during the holiday season. As with the spike, there may be periods of very low sales or growth volumes depending on various factors like for example the reduced spending by consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The traditional model of having a dedicated in-house digital platform to handle operations would thus require you to invest in installing high power machines and processing power at all times to meet surges in demand even though the surge will only be witnessed occasionally. With cloud-based digital platforms, businesses have the freedom to scale up or down depending on demand from their end consumers. They do not have to maintain any dedicated infrastructure, pay for full performance all through the year, or waste computing power without purpose. 

For instance, InfinCE’s cloud-based remote work collaboration platform offers you a dedicated IT infrastructure that’s well supported, maintained, and upgraded by us from time to time. This saves you from making any additional investments to spruce up your infrastructure forced by your public cloud service provider. 

3. Access to Continuous Innovation

One of the major disadvantages of on-premise software is that they turn obsolete in very short time frames. Newmarket innovations happen almost yearly or at even shorter time frames. This will force businesses to continuously invest in buying newer systems every year to keep up with competitors in terms of features. Cloud-based software on the other hand guarantees you access to a digital platform that will be constantly upgraded by the service provider based on market trends. 

As a business owner, you do not have to focus on R&D for identifying trends, incorporating newer features, and expanding the scope of the platform. All of these would be done by the service provider and offered to you instantly when the new feature is rolled out by them to the market. Be it AI or ML, big data analytics based insight generation or implementing blockchain, IoT, etc. your business will enjoy access to all emerging technological capabilities without having to worry about integrating the same to your digital channels.

Cloud-based technology infrastructure and applications will reshape the business world in more ways than one. As a business owner, your aim should be to pick the best cloud platform to manage and grow sustainably. Here is where InfinCE can be the game-changer. Some of the world’s growing SMBs trust InfinCE to handle their online work collaboration seamlessly. With capabilities such as CRM, ERP, private email, virtual private servers, custom website builder, marketing automation, etc. all available in one place, InfinCE is your one-stop destination to transition fast into a cloud-first business. 

Get in touch with us to know how you can leverage this all-in-one collaboration platform to manage work from anywhere.