We asked a number of CRM experts what they thought about Cloud Computing in 2012.
Keen to hear ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ we were quite astonished that in the whole scheme of things, no one really had a bad word to say.
One CRM expert at a global end user said that:
“We see several trends in 2012. First and foremost though is that Cloud CRM has become not only accepted but the norm.
The subscription model was pretty much invented by Salesforce.com and is now trending in SMB with SugarCRM and Microsoft CRM too. The nicest side effect is that the CRM login and user experience is now the same across all devices and browsers. And because of the browser based framework, there is no need to worry about troubleshooting an installation issue such as Windows 8 compatibility”.
Coming at cloud technology from a different angle we asked a sales focused expert at a leading NetSuite Partner, what they had to say on the subject.
“Thank God for a slow economy! We’re lucky to grow at a pace we can keep up with and not turn too many potential customers away.
As a provider of genuine cloud solutions, our business is doubling each year in difficult times. It’s been tremendously exciting for us, AND true “cloud” means we are not installing any troublesome on-premise or hosted IT systems!“
On the negative side, one CRM Administrator at a SME in London stated that:
“I have nothing to bad to say about the technology as a whole, but I often think that people often underestimate the cost of cloud technology. For global enterprises it make sense for them to ditch on-premise solutions and instead adopt cloud, but for much smaller organisations the cost of getting into the cloud can be crippling.
It is not just the cost of licenses; but the cost of implementing; backing up data; new security solutions. And if you are not ‘tech savvie’ then you absolutely have to get an expert in to do all this for you. However the benefits of the cloud marginally outweigh the cost of staying out of the cloud”.
All too often we can get caught up in the enthusiasm of our favourite cloud provider, but does the same hold true across the cloud market as a whole. We asked a leading writer within the on-demand, SaaS industry what he had to say on the subject.
“I can think of more than a hundred reasons why cloud is so successful; adaptability, affordability, accessibility are just a few of the reasons why cloud technology works…and that is just getting started on the a’s!
Cloud has enabled us to become technologically flexible and adaptable in a way that has never been seen before. Changes can be implemented quickly and rolled out globally, with much less effort than on-premise solutions. And, by moving the hosting outside of the enterprise, IT departments can now really focus on those tasks that make a real difference to the way we do business. Cloud is here to stay, but I feel that we are still far off it reaching its true potential”.
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