How a Cloud Integration Platform Changes Everything

Whether you’re a road warrior with your smartphone close at hand or a desk jockey facing the latest hi-res monitor, you have something in common—many, if not most, of the apps you depend on are hosted in the cloud.

Cloud-based services are everywhere these days and delivering crucial benefits to businesses. Companies who have moved to the cloud no longer have to depend on overworked and stressed IT staff to maintain existing apps, roll out new ones, and ensure support for a growing array of mobile devices—so much of that is now seamlessly handled by cloud vendors.

That’s great for businesses. But employees are only getting the most our of these business applications or workflow tools if they are integrated with a business' communications system.

Cloud integration platforms cloud-based applications to seamlessly interact with company data, CMS software and other common tools. This flexible, customizable platforms let users of cloud services like Salesforce, Office 365, NetSuite, Zendesk—well, the list goes on—integrate with their personalized cloud-based phone system, along with calendar, contacts, and customer, account data and more.

With a cloud integration platform, all this functionality is activated with a single login. Cloud integration transforms the entire user experience by eliminating the need to access numerous apps at the same time to grab information or take an action, such as sending a text or setting up a calendar meeting.

A cloud integration platform enables companies to:

• use almost any SaaS solution and connect to existing processes, applications and data stores, no matter where they sit—on internal servers or in the cloud
• quickly deploy new applications and services and integrate them with everyday tools
• easily scale to accommodate growing number of users and apps over time
• increase the productivity and engagement of their

Companies with on-premises applications, which are often homegrown and customized, can use APIs to integrate these legacy systems with the cloud services they are using. Vonage’s Nexmo APIs, for example, enables businesses to add built-in communications functions to their applications, such as SMS, chat, mobile user authentication, text-to-speech, inbound call processing, and much more.

As with any platform, companies have the option to run a cloud integration platform in the cloud or on-premises. The final decision will depend on the mix of cloud services and locally running applications a business is using, whether those services need extensive integration with each other, and its available IT resources. If a business wants to integrate only a few local applications, then using APIs to connect legacy software with a cloud integration platform in the cloud may be the best approach.

Cloud services have revolutionized the way businesses buy and use software, eliminating many IT maintenance tasks and capital expenses. A cloud integration platform addresses the other side of the equation—it adds value by enabling applications and processes to connect with each other, precisely as a user might imagine.

With this enhanced integration, for example, mobile workers see screen pops that display who is calling, along with related business data. Automatic call logging creates a detailed trail of contacts with customers and colleagues, and automatic call tagging and note-taking help track activities with leads and contacts.

By selectively tapping the key functions of different applications and displaying them in the right place at the right time, cloud integration platforms save time, improve performance and add value to every engagement, enabling companies to increase productivity and boost the bottom line.

To learn how integrating a cloud phone system with your company’s business applications can boost your bottom line, contact Vonage Business.