COLUMBUS Business Solutions (CBS) has unveiled its latest cloudbased services to Jamaican businesses, a key target market for the company.

The Flow associate showcased its latest portfolio of enterprise-class cloud-based systems to companies recently at the Knutsford Court hotel in Kingston. The event featured demonstrations of the firm’s Video Conferencing, Coud Voice and Cloud Security services.

In the face of current economic challenges, local businesses continue to seek solutions that enable them to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and minimise business risks. Cloud technology has emerged as a viable option that enables businesses to achieve greater efficiencies as it brings increased flexibility, scalability and cost benefits as well as applications that facilitates collaboration and real-time information exchange.

“Our new cloud solutions deliver real benefits to businesses by eliminating the need for capital expenditure to acquire hardware and reducing the total cost of ownership of IT resources,” said CBS vicepresident John Clear. “What makes ours different from all the other cloud solutions available here is that Columbus customers can be completely confident in the capacity, reliability and stability of the network that powers these services,” he said.

Cloud Voice provides the benefits of a multi-functional, feature-rich PBX system without the hardware installation, maintenance and costs that are typically associated with such systems.

Video Conferencing enables real-time, face-to-face communications thereby saving businesses time and cost associated with travel for business meetings and training. The solution can be used from anywhere securely and openly, and facilitates up to as many as 50 persons from anywhere in the world to participate on a video conference call with HD quality.

Cloud security provides businesses with a solution to manage the confidentiality and integrity of their IT network assets. Information security intrusion protection features include firewall protection, antivirus and anti-malware, URL filtering, anti-spam and email security.

One of the key drivers fostering the growth of the cloud has been the availability of broadband and the rise in the availability of internet bandwidth at increasingly lower costs. For the last six years, Columbus has been building out its fibre-optic network across the island and delivering increased bandwidth at lower costs to hundreds of businesses who are now able to take advantage of cloud and other technology applications for their business operations.

“Today, Columbus is the only company in Jamaica that operates its own end-to-end fibre network to power its cloud solutions. No other telecommunications provider in Jamaica can offer the same assurancesof the integrity of its cloud solutions as we can for our customers,” said Clear.

“With our infrastructure, and backed by our partners GlowPoint, CheckPoint, and Metaswitch, we are able to deliver the solutions that are scalable to meet the needs of all businesses regardless of size. Our solutions are robust and rich with features suitable for larger enterprises while still affordable for small and medium sized businesses,” he added.

Launched in March 2011, Columbus Business Solutions provides a comprehensive range of business class ICT solutions for SME, Enterprise and Government clients across the Caribbean and Latin America. The solutions are powered by Columbus' US$1billion regional fibre-optic network that connects 22 countries across the region, delivering the most scalable, high capacity, resilient connectivity available anywhere.