Cloud.  I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately, and I mean a lot!  Cloud telephony, service cloud, sales cloud, cloud computing, SaaS cloud, telephony in the cloud… the list goes on.  But what does that really mean?  I’ve been putting the Angel.com logo in a cloud icon in PowerPoint presentations for years (hence the image)… does that mean we were the original cloud telephony provider, or the revolutionaries in the cloud space? 

The first big place I really ran face first into the “cloud” world was at Dreamforce 2008.  Salesforce.com used “cloud” in all their banners, and even hired people to walk around San Francisco with giant inflated cloud balloons tethered to their backs.  And since that time, salesforce has rolled the cloud theme into everything they do, including the main headings on their website. 

Lately, there has been an explosion of the use of “cloud” in our space — that being telephony (IVR, call center, etc.) – with the likes of Twilio, Tropo and Cloudvox most directly, and Voxeo, IfByPhone, etc. in subtext.  The notion that cloud represents is, to boil it down as I see it, the ability to access any solution you want, from any where you want, at any time you want — not being tied to hardware or installed software somewhere — and the ability to easily intermingle different types of solutions so everything works in conjunction.  I’m sure there are better definitions out there, and I may just be plain wrong in mine, so feel free to add your definition in the comment section. 

Dave Michels gives some interesting commentary on all of this on his Pin Drop Soup blog… “powerful cloud based tools for voice enabling web applications.”  Let’s see… does Angel.com fit the cloud mold:

• Hosted service that can be accessed/managed from any web browser any where — CHECK
• API to connect voice to any web service — CHECK (had web service stuff for years)
• Fully integrated with other cloud services such as CRM, workforce management, payment gateways, etc. — CHECK (again, had this for years)
• Internal/external database integration — CHECK (years again)
• Cool customer integrations that make use of mobile apps and other ‘hot topic’ things — CHECK

What else do we need to be “cloud certified”?  All this and you don’t need a programming degree to do it (we have a nifty GUI that does all the code for you.) 

But, with all that, I have to ask… Is “cloud” here to stay, or is it the “maverick” of 2009?  Seems like “Voice 2.0″ was replaced by “cloud telephony” within a year, so what will next years buzz word be!?  “Angel” and “cloud” go hand in hand, so I guess I’ll throw our hat into the cloud ring too.

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