As a business moves its files to the cloud, the task of transitioning huge amounts of departmental data can become overwhelming for in-house IT personnel. "The challenge of managing multiple cloud providers and getting a diverse set of solutions such as CRM, B2B … and more to work together and share data can be daunting," writes Robert Fox in an article at SandHill.com.

"Expanding the use of cloud services for both back-office systems and B2B processes requires a high level of coordination and integration," he adds.

If your team is in danger of getting lost in the cloud, perhaps it's time to hire a cloud service broker (CSB). As your universal middleman, a CSB can provide:

A single point of entry into multiple clouds. CSBs "exist to eliminate the complexity of managing the data integration requirements of interconnected systems and multiple connections," Fox explains, "by interfacing to the other clouds on behalf of their customers."

A singular facade service so your people just see one set of coherent, uniform services. Say one department generates a ship notice to the façade. Job done. The CSB "knows how to make a call out to do a look-up on ship rates in the cloud to insert the shipping cost in real time," he says.

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