While plenty of technology professionals are pretty excited about the cloud, many traditional business executives may be reluctant to be sold a cloud-based solution especially if it is security or surveillance. The transition to cloud-based technologies is growing exponentially. We at Comm-Core are committed to helping agents like yourself to be able to sell customers. We understand for customers to buy in, they need understand what cloud hosted surveillance is and the value it brings for their organization.

What Is Cloud Hosted Surveillance?

Cloud Hosted Surveillance is using the Internet to deliver hardware and software services instead of keeping physical hardware and software at your office. Comm-Core delivers hardware and software services over the Internet. This allows the customer to always have the latest features & security enhancements, ability of to do more with less, cost flexibility (paying only for what you need), improved mobility, always-on availability and flexible capacity and scale.

Advantages of Cloud Hosted Surveillance

The list of Cloud Hosted Surveillance benefits can be exhaustive. However, there are several features that most organizations using cloud surveillance can benefit from, including:

• Business Agility: If your clients are interested in spending more of their time focused on their business strategy instead of their technology, you may find it extremely relevant to discuss the virtues of turning their technology headaches into your job as part of a managed service.
• Reduced Capital Expenditures: Minimizing capital and operational expenses is essential for small to medium-sized businesses. When you offer cloud services to your clients, be sure to explain that they’ll be moving from large, upfront capital expenditures to small monthly payments.
• Scalability: Customers want the flexibility to be able to grow when needed and not have to constantly upgrade the whole network.
• Anywhere Access: One of the major benefits of the cloud is having access to your surveillance, regardless of where you are. If your clients have access to the Internet, they’ll be able to access their cloud services.

Small and medium-sized business have their own unique sets of needs that cloud services can address. One of the key cloud surveillance benefits for SMB is giving business agility. These improvements in business agility are accomplished via implementing managed IT services that free up valuable time and lead to employee productivity. Reducing capital expenses is another key benefit for small businesses because upfront IT expenditures can be reallocated for the generating of activities such as marketing and sales.

• Managed IT Services: SMBs may not have the resources to retain an in-house IT team or dedicated IT staff member. Cloud computing allows small businesses to outsource their IT needs while maintaining remote off-site monitoring and top-notch maintenance. They won’t need to pay internal staff to monitor hardware or software as the managed service provider offers that value as part of a migration to the cloud. As an added benefit, the cost of outsourcing is generally less expensive than it is to hire a single in-house IT professional.
• Company Productivity: With cloud computing, small-business employees have more time to focus on revenue-generating projects that contribute to long-term growth, instead of handling ad-hoc IT issues. Dealing with ongoing IT issues can be so distracting that many companies have migrated to the cloud for the sole purpose of avoiding the lengthy process of troubleshooting technology.
• Reduced Capital Expenditures: Most SMBs can’t afford large, upfront IT investments. If they can shoulder an upfront capital expense, it’s generally followed by cuts in revenue-generating activities, like sales and marketing. While not entirely cost prohibitive for some SMBs as it is with virtually every start-up, communicating the benefits of redistributing budgets to revenue-generating activities is invaluable.

Larger businesses and enterprises are often in very different financial situations when compared to SMBs, so their individual cloud computing benefits are quite different. In view of their steady cash flows and established budgets, pitching cost-savings to an enterprise may not be as effective as showcasing benefits such as forecasting and security improvements. To complicate matters, enterprise decision makers may be more sensitive to the fallout from data-security issues than to the reduction of their IT budgets.

• Budget Forecasting: Enterprises, especially publicly owned enterprises, are concerned with accurately forecasting future expenses for quarterly projections. The cloud enables even the largest organization to more accurately forecast their expenses and manage the collective expectations of their shareholders with metered services. If you’re courting a publicly traded company and you have the good fortune of meeting with members of the finance team, we encourage you to make forecasting part of your pitch. Winning the support of a finance professional is a rare opportunity.
• Enterprise-Level Security: Enterprises require the highest levels of business continuity and data security. Don’t be surprised if an enterprise is hesitant to migrate to the cloud due to perceived security issues. Fortunately, cloud computing is more secure than on-site IT solutions; however, your audience is likely to be skeptical. Be prepared to mention that the largest healthcare providers and government agencies rely on the cloud with full compliance on federal regulations such as HIPAA and PHI.

We find that when agents take the time to educate on what a Cloud Hosted Surveillance is and emphasis the advantages that a Cloud solution provides, most customers then understand the value and position of a cloud solution.