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Moving into cloud territory isn’t about getting a rapid return on investment (ROI), but about giving your company a competitive edge (i.e. speeding up your time to market). Those who are obsessed with ROI are missing the point of cloud apps, and cloud computing in general.

CTOs and CIOs today are savvier than ever, no longer fixated on the ROI for cloud investments – though it’s still a pressing issue for many. According to Brett Gillett of Softchoice, a Toronto-based software reseller, two years ago business leaders would make one-to-one comparisons to see if the cloud version of a certain service fared better. Today, executives are on much better terms with cloud services (SaaS, Paas, IaaS, UCaaS). And here’s why.

See the benefits first, then the bottom line

In an interview with TechTarget, Gillett explains that the new mindset is, “Well, here’s our budget, this is what we’re spending and we think we can do it for that or less, but if it’s a little more than what we’re currently spending and it allows us to get to market a lot faster, we’re still OK with that.”

And he’s right. Probably the best example of this is upgrading a company’s phone system to IP PBX. Legacy phone systems are not just expensive to maintain, they are detrimental to operations because they lack versatility and, in some cases, security. In today’s competitive landscape, few businesses can afford to keep their hands clean of technology. Moving communication and collaboration channels to the cloud poses benefits that are easier to quantify through gains (like market-share and customer satisfaction), rather than ROI.

One cloud-app-fits-all

Another noteworthy benefit is cloud apps. Instead of installing and patching software all the time, why not offload that task to a cloud service provider who is more qualified to do that, ensuring not just reliability of service, but security as well? This way, a business can focus on the actual data and forget about infrastructure costs. There’s another no-brainer ROI.

We have an all-in-one app called Hubgets that sits in the browser and does voice, video, instant messaging and team collaboration like it’s nobody’s business. The data generated by the users gets sucked into the cloud for indexing and processing. It makes file cabinets irrelevant like cell phones rendered the rotary dial obsolete. And we are (secretly) working on a stat counter for calls to assess user performance, which will help determine some of the costs and the gains.

Unlike other vendors who supply a separate app for each type of task, we supply one app that does it all, and it doesn’t even require manual installation on individual machines. No maintenance, no infrastructure, no nitty gritty. You just load it up in your browser and boom! you’re good to go. When a simple web app can guarantee smooth operations, scalability and security, assessing the ROI before deployment becomes something of a best-practice – advisable, but not mandatory.