Why Embracing Cloud Services is a Winning Solution for Businesses in Emerging Markets

maaiiconnect
5 min readApr 1, 2021

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From corporations to governments, organisations across the world are accelerating their digital transformation through the adoption of cloud services. For many, the move to the cloud began even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The cloud services market is, in fact, already a decade old.

Asian companies are no stranger to this fact. Projected to become the largest continental economy in the world by the Asian Development Bank, the Asia-Pacific region has seen cloud technology widely implemented and embraced in recent years. In the region’s developed economies, such as Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, cloud services have become the norm. Meanwhile, emerging Asian markets have lagged behind, although many have seen a significant improvement in cloud services adoption in recent times, not least because of the pandemic.

Let’s look at Indonesia. A rapidly-growing emerging market that is projected to be the fifth-largest economy in the world based on GDP and PPP by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Yet Indonesia is ranked only twelfth on the Cloud Readiness Index based on research by the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) — indicating the country lags behind others significantly in cloud adoption and implementation.

To become the fifth-largest economy, cloud adoption is a must for Indonesia, as it would enable local companies to compete globally.

Why is Indonesia lagging behind in adopting cloud services?

A lack of control

Cloud facilities are operated by cloud service providers, so companies have no control over the cloud server. They’re left powerless when the servers go down or shut down for urgent maintenance, hampering business operations. On the other hand, cloud service provider lock-ins can prevent companies from moving to a new provider, with interoperability between different providers not even possible in many cases. The lock-in issue is critical for enterprises.

A lack of ICT and cloud specialists

Most enterprises have an internal IT team to maintain hardware, equipment, servers, and software troubleshooting. However, most lack knowledge of cloud computing and how to properly implement it.

Slow and unreliable internet connections

Many small cities and regional areas don’t have high-speed internet services. When they do, the services are too slow and unreliable to support people working from home.

Mindset

The persistent mindset that software purchased only once and installed on-premises is cheaper and more secure than software paid for on a subscription basis, hosted on the cloud, and owned by someone else.

Data localisation law

Finally, the Indonesian government’s data localisation law (GR 82) mandates companies to store their data locally, in order to control data theft and data breaches in the country. This makes enterprises considering cloud services to be more selective with their cloud service providers, especially whether they have data centres locally in Indonesia.

Advantages of cloud services

With more and more companies adopting cloud services, many of those challenges have been overcome by pioneering organisations. They’ve been able to enjoy a host of benefits;

  • Mobility — mobile applications and the ability to work remotely from any device.
  • Scalability — add or subtract users, lines, extensions, and features as needed.
  • Security — encryption methods, cloud security, protected file transfer, and more measures for safe connections. Safety has not been an issue for tech firms globally; the cloud’s long-term development makes it secure. Both large enterprises and SMEs are starting to adopt cloud services from different vendors.
  • Reliability — uptime and failsafe methods like disaster recovery to keep businesses connected.
  • RoI (cost) — using a cloud service is typically more cost-effective because companies don’t have to purchase and run the associated hardware.

While the pandemic persists, most enterprises and companies face communication issues with their customers and employees, many of whom are forced to work from home. Cloud services for communications have emerged to help businesses to tackle a range of issues by offering flexible and mobile remote work tools and plug-and-play. Cloud communications encompass cloud telephony systems, business messaging and collaboration, live chat customer engagement, and conference calls.

Secure, intelligent, unified cloud services with maaiiconnect

maaiiconnect is a SaaS-based Cloud Communications platform that helps enterprises globally tackle communications issues, online customer engagement, and internal collaboration. With maaiiconnect, enterprises are able to enjoy many benefits including:

  • Seamlessly unified telecom and digital communications, including PSTN, VoIP, chat and instant messaging, video conferencing, and social media channels (Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat)
  • Smart routing, which ensures every customer is connected to the right person at the right time based on language, location, and communication history.
  • Web-based communications, which allow customers to connect to you however they want, whether by audio or video calls, live chat, or QR-code scan-to-call.
  • Social media integration to manage enquiries and customer relationships across Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat on one interface.
  • A full suite of telecom capabilities, including international toll-free and local access numbers in 150+ countries, inbound and outbound calls, outbound caller ID, SMS, and more over a carrier-grade network.
  • Call analytics and reports, which allow businesses to track and manage all communications and performance data in a single interface to optimise your operations and business strategies.
  • Sales mobility to connect sales staff to customers from anywhere in the world to follow up and close deals on the go.
  • SMS Campaign Manager to launch SMS campaigns in minutes, increasing customer conversion rates in a targeted and cost-effective manner
  • Service Level Agreement (SLA) assuring an annual uptime of 99.95% with real-time service delivery, monitoring, and support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. High-performance connections and availability are achieved through a globally-distributed IP network comprising strategically positioned points of presence (PoPs) and direct interconnections with over 160 tier-1 telecom carriers and mobile operators worldwide.
  • CRM integration allows businesses to integrate their CRM system. Inbuilt contact management tools are also available to keep customers at the heart of their business.

To equip your staff with the right tools, increase your company’s efficiency in communication, and become a more competitive business, maaiiconnect is the right choice for you.

Start a chat with Eric Andrianto today to discuss how cloud services.

This article was originally published in the maaiiconnect blog, by Eric Andrianto.

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