It seems like every few years new buzzwords take over the tech scene. A few years ago everyone begin talking about the cloud, but as IT departments began evaluating transitioning to the cloud, it became apparent it wasn’t a wise decision for each organization to jump into a cloud migration. Which brings us to “hybrid,” or more specifically when speaking about contact centers, “hybrid cloud approach” “hybrid deployments,” “hybrid cloud unified communications” or perhaps a combination of the terms. But what does that really mean and why is it a smart bandwagon for contact centers to jump on? Let’s evaluate.

What is a Hybrid Approach or Hybrid Deployment?

A few years ago, it seemed like organizations only had two approaches: cloud or on-premise. Now, the story has changed a little bit: contact centers can decide to integrate their solutions using a hybrid approach if they aren’t ready to make one big transition. This allows organizations to have a mix of services from different contact center vendors giving customers the ability to mix-and-match solutions that solve different problems for them.

This also allows contact centers to fully utilize the life of software they are still using to run their business, while simultaneously being able integrate with more cutting-edge products.

Examples why organizations are turning to hybrid approaches:

1. The have already invested money in their existing premise solution
2. There is not a current out-of-the-box solution that satisfies all of their business requirements
3. It is easy to manage and add different solutions if they change products in the future
4. Testing cloud deployments can be done before moving everything to the cloud
5. They aren’t ready to move to the cloud due to disruption in services, the need for time for training, security, or other practical reasons

Most large companies are utilizing a variety of solutions to run their businesses with various expiration dates due to expiring technology or contracts, making it impossible to quickly and easily transfer everything from on-premise to the cloud. A hybrid environment allows IT professionals to create a migration path with different phases to adapt from expiring solutions to new cloud ones. This also takes some of the fear out of a quick on-premise to cloud transition because IT departments realize they have full control over their migration path and can make planned, incremental changes.

Another benefit of the hybrid approach includes utilizing API’s to increase an organization’s customer experience. Organizations can now integrate to 3^rd party API’s to effortlessly deploy technology across all communication channels.

Key benefits of a hybrid approach:

1. Leverage existing solutions and plan an incremental cloud migration
2. Enhance collaboration and productivity
3. Integrate 3^rd party API’s

Are you considering making the switch to a hybrid ecosystem? Check out DaVinci, the industry’s first and only cloud-based Contact Center platform. Get the details here.