As the number of ways professionals can communicate with each other has increased, many businesses have yet to find a way to put it all under the same umbrella. Enter Unified Communications. With Unified Communications, a business’s phone, videoconference, instant messaging, interactive whiteboards, and associated services are packaged into one delivery service, with each of these communication methods interacting with each other.

UC in the Cloud

Businesses today are shifting from on-site technology to cloud-based options, driving a need for change in the UC space. As a result Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is gathering new interest, with experts predicting large vendors will eventually adapt it as an option. But how can UCaaS help businesses above and beyond what basic cloud telephony options already offers?

One of the biggest benefits of UCaaS is that businesses can choose options as they need them. If a company only needs instant messaging, videoconferencing, and phone services, for instance, other options can be turned off. Although purchasing these services separately could give a short-term cost savings, with UCaaS, a business could later choose to turn features on with just a simple request.

Trying it Out

Another benefit of UCaaS is that businesses can try out various services without signing a binding contract for those services. Because the items are offered as part of a bigger package, it’s often an option to decline a particular service if it isn’t right for an organization.

Employing a similar concept, Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) gives businesses the same scalability UCaaS promises. But Amazon’s EC2 goes beyond simple communications to offer scalability in storage, IP addresses, and more.

Both UCaaS and EC2 show that the future of cloud computing is in the ability to disable and enable options as they’re needed. Before committing to a new technology, such as electronic white boards, a business will demand the ability to try features out and decline to use them if they don’t work. Both plans also allow service providers to add new, exciting features as they become available.