First Coffee

“With a cloud-based call center, your team can bring home a medal no matter what the competition or the weather sends your way,” wrote industry observer Meghdutt Brahmachari on the Contactual blog a while ago.

That’d be good news to the brave folks in Alabama and across the South these days, who are getting some of the worst that weather can send their way.

Maybe your conditions aren’t that extreme -- let’s hope they’re not -- but as he writes, if you manage a call center “you may have experienced changes in weather, seasonality, and the vagaries of the free market.”

In other words, stay in the cloud so you don’t have to worry about what’s in the clouds!

South Africa’s Electronic Communications and Transactions Act imposes “stringent record-keeping compliance requirements on organizations,” according to industry journal BizCommunity.com, requiring them to keep accurate records of all telephonic and other electronic interactions with consumers for at least three years.

Protecting the rights of consumers is part of the recent legislation, but as the journal says, “simply implementing a call recording system will not provide the optimum compliance with the increased legal requirements either.”

Last fall TMC had the news that Datatec acquired niche software security company Biodata IT SA, which was part of the group's strategy to grow its South African networking, convergence and security distribution business.

"The acquisition comes at a time when we are seeing growing demand among our customers for products that will enable them to meet, reach and exceed their security needs with particular reference to the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act," said Jacques Malherbe, the CEO of Westcon SA.

Matthew Balcomb, director of Majuda Software Southern Africa, an affiliate organization to Majuda Corporation International, which deals in call recording and quality management, said to fulfil the requirements as set out by the laws, “companies will need to do more than simply implement mere policies and procedures. A governance, risk and compliance strategy tightly integrated into the operations and the culture of an organization, is required."

Read more here.

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Of course one of cloud computing’s great selling points is its simplicity -- right? So why is Andre Yee blogging that “there's an issue with the adoption of cloud computing that no one is paying much attention to...

A recent article in the Baltimore Sun highlighted the growth from the perspective of Georgia-based metro Ethernet provider FiberLight, which late last year promised to unveil a network “that can connect commercial customers in downtown Baltimore and several southern suburbs to points in Washington and Northern Virginia."

It’s "a huge, growing market for us," said Judd Carothers, the company's executive vice president of network operations, engineering and construction.

At the time of the announcement last November, FiberLight officials also said they would spend $20 million to build the network, slated to run 104 miles “from downtown and western parts of Baltimore south through Columbia, Laurel and Greenbelt, where it ties into the company's existing Washington and Northern Virginia telecommunication networks.”

Last month, TMCnet reported that the company completed a new 3.5 mile, 432-count underground network through Miami's Financial District.

Read more here.

Recently, Business Solutions Editor Gennifer Biggs had the chance to sit down with Minuteman's Bill Allen to discuss the VAR opportunity “tied to uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and extended run time if your customers have low-tolerance about network security, physical security, and disaster recovery.”

Minuteman UPS/Para Systems, a leader in power protection technologies, offers UPSs for computers, servers, peripherals, voice and data communication systems, security systems and other mission-critical equipment.

During the interview, Biggs asked Allen about growth opportunities in the power protection industry.

“For the reseller community, there have always been opportunities in the IT sector for extended run time,” Allen said.

We know: You want to compare the cloud-based versions of call center software with the on-premise model to see how the different models stack up in terms of cost, implementation, usage and success of the Workforce Management tool in your organization.

We -- and Monet Software -- are here to help:

Consider setup and implementation. The cloud gives fast set up, as the vendor creates the new account and you simply access the product through a web browser.