"illume has gone to Convergence Summit South since it's inception and was pleased to see the number of exhibitors has grown again since last year. Much of the focus this year was on Cloud and Ian Hunter of Comms Business Magazine had some interesting stats from a report on Cloud adoption rates.
78% of companies are now using at least one Cloud service with many more using more then one. The issue that arose from the discussions is that many business do not have enough technical knowledge of Cloud services and although they expect to see savings through using cloud based applications and services, they require a partner to help them through the process of switching. Once businesses have moved to the Cloud, many are happy with their service with an 89% satisfaction rate across Cloud services. Growth rates for Cloud services are 20% per annum which shows the strong growth and potential for this market in the future.
One issue that keeps arising is the security of Cloud and what it can mean for businesses. 72.2% of businesses see security as the biggest concern when choosing a Cloud solution and this also ties over to providers who are only offering voice.
ITSPA hosted a workshop on the Wednesday regarding security and fraud which saw a good turnout from members and a few new faces. The workshop focused on the benefits of using preventative measures in place to stop fraud instead of fixing a problem once fraud has occurred and highlighted some cases where the Christmas period saw massive increases in the instances of fraud. Fraudsters are getting smarter with their attacks and are systematically targeting lines when they will be unlikely to be noticed."
illume will be publishing our European Hosted VoIP report in the next week, details to follow"