Cox Businesses has streamlined cloud services for small businesses with the national launch of a new service.
The service, which is called Essential Cloud, features tailor-made cloud offerings for businesses in four primary verticals; real estate, restaurant, professional services and personal services. Each vertical has its own menu of cloud-based offerings that are specific to that industry.
“Businesses are continuing to embrace the cloud to improve performance, while allowing them to remain customer-focused and revenue driven,” said Asheesh Saksena, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Cox Communications. “With this as a backdrop, we developed Essential Cloud to include the very best applications to enable customers to run their small and medium businesses as efficiently as a large enterprise.”
Essential Cloud pools the specific business offerings that can be purchased and then manages them through a single portal, which is similar to how music files are managed by consumers.
Essential Cloud also features PayLeap as one of its anchor partners. PayLeap is a cloud-based service that allows small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) an all-in-one suite of payment processing capabilities.
Cox Business customers can also design their own websites or pay to have it done through the Essential Connections section of Essential Cloud. The third leg of Essential Cloud is Cox Businesses’ voice and data products and services.
“Essential Cloud is another example of our commitment to provide technology solutions that small business need to grow,” said Steve Rowley, senior vice president of Cox Business, who took over as the head of Cox Business last year after Phil Meeks departed for Time Warner Cable.
Other benefits of Cloud Essentials include accessing apps from anywhere at anytime along with continual backup. Essential Cloud also features personalized service and live consultation via a concierge team to aid users in selecting the best apps for their business needs.
Cox Business is the commercial services division of Cox Communications, representing $1.4 billion in revenue. Cox Business expects to reach $2 billion in revenue by 2016. Cox Business provides voice, data and video services for more than 300,000 small and regional businesses, including verticals such as healthcare providers, K-12 and higher education, financial institutions and federal, state and local government organizations.
