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Turning the page in the story of cloud migration
Technology, and especially communications technology, has surely become normalised in new and interesting ways. Take the amusing and gimmicky, where a fridge can text you when your water is cold, to the more usual everyday - where you can seamlessly contact and be contacted by your local authority or social housing agency. Such a service quickly and easily allows you to complete modern life’s admin, such as paying rent, and reporting problems to landlords.
Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offerings are the technological brain behind these actual processes, and can be deployed in a variety of different settings, to bolster and support a whole range of customer support and software offerings. They are only really limited in the amount of imagination used to apply them.
At the end of the day, it is still a wonder that this all happens under the surface. At the data transfer level, beneath the whirring of the fans in a server room, and the clicking of the myriad LEDs, data zips about at the speed of light, like an orchestra being conducted - greater than the sum of its parts. What’s more, the infrastructure needed to support it is deeply rooted and stable, and the service is self-regulating in that it is highly resilient, often with multiple layers of redundancy.
One of the most exciting, growing markets that Software as a Service (SaaS) Providers are building for is the social housing or housing infrastructure market. Affordable housing is high on the political agenda, and as we move through the biggest geo-political event in recent history, new technologies are being deployed to - quoting somehow both Biden and Johnson - “Build Back Better”.
Taking a much wider view, in the grand scheme of things, we are also moving from “The Internet of Things”, to “The Internet of Everything” - a world in which most processes are mediated through data transfer, where human interaction has a permeable data flow attached to it, and algorithms are deployed to manage the seamlessness of this superstructure.
It’s early days for Conversational AI integrated into everyday life, (“hello fridge, how cold is my water?”) but it’s certainly headed that way. What’s interesting is that this process can be historically tied to the migration of telecoms systems to the Cloud - which is surely a great turning point in the story of telecoms history. From buildings that house literal switchboard operators, to VOIP in data centres, data flows and the interconnections are growing ever more complex, pushing tech to become, seemingly paradoxically, both highly adaptable and specialised. On the world stage for technological systems, no more “one-size-fits-all”, no more “jack-of-all-trades”, more like the term used in the theatre world - a “triple threat”: one who can sing, dance, and act.
So, where are we now? CPaaS systems are one of the main characters in this story. And the next step for CPaaS systems - which will set some CPaaS apart from the rest - is a move from the general to the specific: whether or not they are tailored to satisfy the particular and specific needs of some markets, and by proxy, bolster the offerings that SaaS providers have to those markets. It’s like with any piece of equipment: the difference is noted in whether the tool has been designed by people who have experience using it in a variety of settings, and therefore has both the weight of experience, and the nuance of expertise behind it.
Using a reliable and intuitive CPaaS system such as Aculab Cloud means that the engine behind the telecoms is highly attuned to the market itself. And, whichever market it is that needs it, it’s important that it bolsters the supply chain process as a whole by being tailored towards the end result. In this way, the whole system works in joint orchestration. There’s no need to wrench in a piece of technology to somehow fit the process, because the tool being used is already adapted with the end-market in mind, through being inherently adaptable, moldable and plastic, having been developed by engineers who know their stuff. This is how that paradox unknots itself, and what makes for a seriously good CPaaS. So that’s the theory - but how does it work in practice?
Aculab Cloud has a whole load of features that make it highly functional and adaptable, let alone the fact that our engineers can work with you to adapt Aculab Cloud into your system architecture.
Some features are with the end-user (the tenant) in mind, some are for corporate entities such as housing organisations or landlords, and some are with SaaS providers in mind - the important thing to note is that whatever the position in the chain, the functionality of Aculab Cloud is passed along, creating a win-win for everyone. These features have been included because, at the end of the day, the social housing market needs technology that can build a sense of community, and of local governance, and this is one of the best things that a Communications Platform can do. Not reflective of some big overarching bureaucratic machine, a sense of something more devolved and at-hand. And, after all, this is people’s homes we are talking about, the technology is speaking directly to the end user’s private life. So with that, here are some features within Aculab Cloud that we think are all highly attuned towards the Social Housing market supply chain:
- Local Presentation: Numbers that end-users can see are customisable, allowing for national, local, mobile, geographically specific, and toll free Caller ID. Giving landlords the ability to have a localised/professional impression.
- Dedicated Local phone numbers: Can be set up per tenant to streamline message flow and keep messages for multiple tenants secure, whilst using a common architecture.
- Local Cloud: Because our servers are operated regionally, SaaS providers have full transparency over where their data is stored and how it is used. This is perfect for easy management of data protection (e.g. GDPR) requirements, especially when handling sensitive legal and personal information within tenancy information. Aculab is an ISO9001 and ISO27001 company, meaning we are subscribed to the highest international standards of both customer service and security within our company policy.
- Operates on “Loose-Association” channels: Phone calls and SMSs, as a medium, provide customers a way to reach out to people with whom they have only a loose association, such as housing authorities and councils. So, the end users don't need to install apps, follow Facebook pages - all the information needed to make contact is there, at hand. When you think about it, SMS and Voice operate with a high level of trust and authority, creating a positive, dynamic relationship between speaker and listener that other channels simply do not have. This allows for Voice and SMS messages to carry with them an expected level of sincerity and authority - one of the central benefits of using a CPaaS for SMS and Voice!
- Security and Privacy: Aculab Cloud is a service managed and maintained by our dedicated and experienced staff 24x7 offering a personable experience for our customers. We manage service uptime, power outages and telco carrier issues so you don’t have to.
