Currently, the US government is saving $5.5 billion annually with their current cloud implementations, but that number is expected to rise as more and more agencies buy into the ‘Cloud-First’ concept. The 2013 IT budget is $78.9 billion, and IT executives have reported they’ve been able to save an estimated 7% already, equaling $5.5 billion.

Of course everything is clear in hindsight. Federal agencies could have saved between $27 and $35 billion over the past three years had they been more aggressive in investing in cloud computing, and now that the benefits of cloud computing are becoming clearer and clearer, there is little doubt that the additional savings will be sought after during the coming years.

Next year, about 11% of the IT budget will be spent on cloud resources, totalling $8.7 billion, and expansion upon that is dependent on a couple of things. For one, many IT managers are still worried about the security of the cloud, a reasonable concern considering the nature of the data, but the ability to create a secure environment does exist, it’s just a matter of ensuring the security is in place.

Many government agencies in both the US and Canada have chosen Telax as their contact center solution of choice, giving them the freedom and savings the cloud offers. We’re proud to be a part of the $5.5 billion dollars the US government will save in 2013, and we’re looking forward to being a part of the additional $6.5 billion they’re going to save over the next few years.

There’s no need for a huge system to make these types of calls, and I remember the quality of the calls in those movies was suspect, as if we didn’t really expect the technology to be that good, but it is.

Microsoft debuted the official Skype app for Windows Phones this weekend, and I’ve already had the opportunity to witness its awesomeness. A friend of mine took a call on Saturday from another friend who was vacationing in Maldives, almost 9,000 miles away. It took a couple attempts to make the connection; the growing pains of learning new software. But then we had a great, jealousy inducing view of the beach.

Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype back in May 2011, a hefty sum, but if users of Windows phones are going to be able to have video calls to the other side of the world without incurring massive charges, Microsoft has a great chance of turning that acquisition into a very profitable one as more and more users opt to buy Windows Phones in favor of iPhones and Blackberrys.

Between Skype, Twitter, VoIP, and countless apps giving us cheap or free methods of communication, it really is becoming a small world. Just ask vacationers in Maldives.

The only way to manage time effectively, whether it’s personal time or work time, is to know what you spend your time doing, and that’s a tough thing to know with no reporting. The Google tool reports on the volume of emails you’ve sent and received, where you spend your time on the web, and even the time spent on sites that require your Google email address to access them.

Of course reporting is not a new concept, well maybe it is for web browsing, but it isn’t for us here at Telax. We’re big on reports that help determine where time is being spent, and it doesn’t end in a contact center. With proper reporting, a company might find that managers and high level executives are spending time on tasks that could be delegated to others, or that they’re spending too much time putting out fires when they could be working on improving the company’s offerings.

The main goal of reporting is visibility. If you know what people are spending their time doing, you have a better idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your day to day operations, especially when you look at an entire week, month, or year at a time. It’s hard to get an idea of how much time is spent on one activity over long periods of time, unless you have a report that does it for you.

The premise is simple. You have a list of customers that need to be called for whatever reason. Rather than break the list up and distribute it to your agents, who would  have to record that the call took place and whether it was answered or not, why not simply upload the list to our system and let us process the calls for you.

Contact center agents will attest that having a system automatically dial a number while bringing up the customer’s details at the same time makes the whole process much easier, and it will ensure that none of your customers are forgotten.

Our Scheduled Dialout feature allows you set the time frame in which these calls are made, which of your agents will make them, as well as how many times the system should try the number before giving up. Once the dialout is completed, a report will let you know if any of the calls didn’t complete so you can be sure to retry those customers later.

This is not one of the dreaded auto-dialer systems that send recorded messages to innocent phone owners. The Scheduled Dialout system takes your list of contacts and initiates outbound calls though an agent. If there are no live agents available, no calls are made.

Every six months I’m thankful and sorry that my dentist’s office calls me up to remind me of an upcoming appointment. It’s hard enough to remember what appointments I have next week let alone in a few months, especially an appointment I do not look forward to. Our Scheduled Dialout service ensures that no customer is left out of the loop when important information needs to be conveyed, even if that information involves scaling.

1) Is cloud computing secure? To start, everything is as secure as you make it, and that includes data storage in the cloud. A small to mid-sized company might store sensitive data, but if they’re not locking that data down, is it secure? There needs to be a firewall, user security, and maybe even encryption and security on laptops for the data to be truly secure. Do employees take data home on their laptops? And if so, what happens if they lose that laptop? If one area is lax, the data isn’t secure. A company that sells air conditioners probably has some sensitive customer data, but they sell air conditioners not data security. That’s not to say they don’t have staff that can ensure their network is secure, but that’s not what they do. They sell air conditioners. Making data secure is what cloud storage services do. It’s not an after-though, as it may very well be for a company that isn’t in the data security business. With cloud data storage, even laptop users are secure. If they lose their laptop, there’s no data on it for someone to stumble across and use.

2) Is cloud computing reliable? Companies dealing with the cloud have two primary goals, make data and communication secure, and make it reliable. The data security is the tougher of the two since technology has taken us to a point where reliability is easy to achieve. For one thing processing power has increased tremendously over the past decade. Remember the days when we used to joke that your brand new computer was outdated before you even took it out of the box? That’s not the case anymore. Today’s servers have massive processing power, and cloud services aren’t going to max that power out in an average operation. Bandwidth is also extensive and much cheaper than it once was. Simply put, it’s pretty easy to put together a reliable cloud service.

3) How much does it cost? With bandwidth being cheap these days it makes the overall cost of cloud computing cheaper too. There are still some expensive cloud services, but those costs are dropping, and the more people that jump on board, the cheaper it will become. Microsoft claimed that they saved Convergent Computing $1.2 million dollars a month when they switched to Microsoft’s private cloud. That doesn’t sound like an expensive option to me.

It’s good that these things are questioned. It’s just bad business to expect the best without asking questions, but in regards to cloud computing, these questions have been answered.

1) AMD reported that 70% of business are either currently using a cloud computing solution, or they’re investigating one, meaning that they’re at least interested in the cloud if not future advocates of it.

2) In 2011, Microsoft spent 90% of their research and development budget on cloud computing strategy and products. Microsoft may not be perfect, but they’re not going to waste 90% of their R&D budget on something that’s not going to last or be secure.

3) When the US government said they were investing in cloud computing, they meant it. U.S. federal agencies adopted a ‘cloud-first’ policy and since then 48% of U.S. government agencies moved a workflow to the cloud. Microsoft and the U.S. government are big, big players and if they’re investing in cloud computing, I think companies of any size are wise to do the same.

4) Providers of cloud services saw a massive jump in personnel from 2007 to 2010. Cloud jobs went from zero to over 550,000. That’s a lot of job creation, and it also means there are quite a few people working on making cloud services secure and reliable.

Remember these aren’t predictions. These things have already happened. And because I don’t want to ignore the arguments against cloud computing, I’ll discuss them next time. Till then…

A little while ago, a contact center turned to us here at Telax and asked us to provide them with live monitoring of their incoming calls. They knew they were getting quite a few inbound calls, but weren’t sure exactly how many or which of their many queues were getting the most traffic. Our monitoring system gave them the insight they needed, and the results were shocking.

Before I tell you about just what this contact center saw when they began monitoring their inbound calls, I’d like to tell you about a conversation I overheard the other day.  Sitting next to me in a coffee shop were two students discussing their future plans. One of them was upset that in order to obtain the degree she wanted, she needed to put in an additional and unexpected year of schooling, but that wasn’t the main thing she was complaining about. She was more upset that she was on hold for 35 minutes before reaching a representative of the university. It struck me that although she had received some bad news, it was the long wait time she was complaining about to her friend.

When the contact center that began using our system saw the average wait time was over twenty minutes, they were aghast. Not every caller is going to complain about long waits, and nor should a company rely on customer complaints to solve problems. Managers that see high call volumes as they happen can staff their contact center appropriately. Without the proper information, how can any contact center be sure that they don’t have too few or too many agents logged in at a certain time? And more importantly, how can they be sure they’re giving their customers the service level required to keep them as customers?

It  is a little scary to think that a company can use information I’ve submitted to the a website to come up what would probably be an accurate profile, but is that something I really need to worry about? According to Google, the new policy is going to improve its search functionality and make it easier to coordinate information across multiple Google products. All to improve the user’s experience.

One of the examples Google uses to explain the new policy is a search for the word: Jaguar. The idea is that if you’re surfing automotive forms all the time and going to look at Mustangs on ford.com every Sunday afternoon, Google will assume you’re looking for the car and not the big cat when you search for the word Jaguar. I think searching for “Jaguar cat” would be sufficient, but who knows? Maybe the new search functionality will be one of those things we’ll one day wonder how we ever lived without.

While I don’t think Google is looking to monitor us in the hopes of creating a totalitarian state, I am sure that they’re looking to increase profits by presenting us with Google ads tailored to things we’re more likely to be interested in. But there’s nothing unlawful about that.

The rules surrounding the internet are still being defined and may never stop being defined, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks and months, but ultimately, the only information Google has access to is the information users intentionally submit to the World Wide Web. And if you don’t want Google to collect that information, log out of your Google account. It’s hard for me to find fault in what they’re doing, although if I start seeing banner ads that say “Google is watching you”, I might change my mind.

How do you know when to turn on the bulletin that tells your customers you’re experiencing high call volumes? After people have been waiting in queue and begun complaining? Or after one person has waited longer than what you feel is an acceptable amount of time? With Queue Alerts, you’re notified after just one long waiting time.

Queue Alerts aren’t restricted to just callers that have been waiting a long time. If your company is using skill based routing, it’s possible that all the agents capable of taking one particular type of call could be unavailable at the same time, whether they’re on break, or doing something else as defined in your personalized Busy Reasons. With Queue Alerts, you can be notified when and if a queue becomes unattended.

Long wait times and few available agents are controllable aspects of the contact center industry, but spikes are not. Even if you’ve got plenty of agents and none of your callers are waiting for long periods of time, you still might want to know that a spike is happening. With Queue Alerts, you can receive a notification when queue volumes increase over a number you define.

You pick the reasons for the alerts and who they go to. You can even write your own message. It’s a great way to keep tabs on your queues without constantly having to watch the live monitor.

Most of us netfile our taxes these days, which is far better than printing out novel sized tax returns, cramming them into envelopes and waiting in line at the post office. But even more interesting than taxes, if there is such a thing, is a proposal in Vancouver to create an app for city services.

We’ve all had to stand in line at one government office or another to get a form, fill out the form, then get back in line to submit the form. It’s time consuming and often aggravating, but that could all be coming to a foreseeable end. Councillor Andrea Reimer will be motioning at Vancouver City Hall to create a new mobile phone app that will give citizens access to city services and information.

Vancouver’s Mayor, Gregor Robertson, is fully behind the motion, which tells me that the next long line up I stand in will be at an amusement park. Vancouver isn’t breaking new ground here. The U. S. Federal Government has jumped into cloud adoption with two feet and many North American governmental organizations are using the Telax hosted contact center solution. Some universities are even offering Master’s in cloud computing these days. The bandwagon is filling up.

Allowing people to obtain permits through a smartphone helps on both sides of the counter, and ideas that help everybody are the best kind.