Cloud solutions have been achieving new milestones due to their highly flexible, reliable, scalable, and robust software application setup. There are several ways of hosting a software app like a call center software on the cloud. The one that is most popular these days among big players and enterprises is the cloud with cluster setup. We will be exploring more about this model in this blog post in regard to setting up a cloud based call center solution.
Topics covered in this blog post are as below:
- What is a cloud call center solution?
- What is a cluster?
- What is a cloud cluster setup?
- What are the major types of cloud cluster setups?
- What are the major advantages of cloud call center software with cluster setup?
- How does iCallify help or benefit?
- Concluding notes
All these questions are answered in this blog post to give you a more detailed insight into this trending topic that can benefit your business or career, too.
What is a cloud call center solution?
This call center software uses cloud computing to host this software for call centers. It will have all the major features of one of the best cloud contact center solutions such as ACD, auto dialers, dynamic IVR, etc. It can also support omnichannel communication by integrating communication channels like voice, video, chat, SMS, email, fax, WhatsApp, social media, digital engagement solutions, sales dialer solutions, etc.
The major differentiator for this type of call center solution is that it gets hosted on a cloud. It can be hosted on a single server or multiple servers. There are different types of setup models available to host this solution on cloud hosting platforms like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Server, Digital Ocean, etc. Depending on your business model or your infrastructure requirements, this software gets hosted on the cloud.
What is a cluster?
A cluster can be of computers, networks, nodes, applications, databases, etc. When you set up two nodes to run a single application or put the same servers or infrastructure power to run a system in parallel with replicated resources, you are creating a cluster. Two is just an example. You can create three types of the cluster setup.
- One-to-one
- One-to-many and
- Many-to-many
A cluster can be created on your premises as well with physical servers. However, a more popular approach nowadays to set up a whole clustered network is using cloud computing due to several advantages associated due to cloud infrastructure.
What is a cloud cluster setup?
When we talk about cloud call center solutions with cluster setup, we are referring to setting up a cluster of a cloud based call center solution on your preferred cloud computing provider. Let’s refer to the cluster of an entity which can be your software for call centers, databases, or any other component as a node. In this case, there will be multiple nodes, which will operate in parallel to create a clustered network. There are several advantages of this type of setup, which makes cloud with cluster so popular among businesses.
In general, any one of the nodes will be designated as a master node. It will be the entry point of the clustered network of nodes. All other nodes will be connected to the master node to create an interconnected network of nodes to work on shared responsibilities. There can be more than one master node in a cluster setup and this depends on the system and setup architecture designed by your provider or technical team. Each node may use shared or dedicated resources to keep a software application such as a cloud based call center solution running and leverage the advantages of cluster based setup on a cloud host. The master node might also distribute the workload and if it fails, there will be logic to use another master node or designate a predefined internal node as a master node to keep the system up and running to achieve the highest possible uptime service level agreement, which is one of the major advantages of this setup model.
You can set up any application or software using cloud computing and cluster setup to achieve and enjoy associated advantages.
What are the major types of cloud cluster setups?
There are three major types of setups, which are categorized based on the major advantages related to them or the purposes that we want to achieve.
- High performance computing
- High availability and
- Load balancing
Let’s compare all three of these.
| High performance computing | High availability | Load balancing |
| It is also referred to as an HPC cluster. All nodes in this cluster setup get connected to a fast interconnect. Each node will have similar types of components like memory, processing power, etc. | It is also referred to as an HA cluster. It will have an interconnected network of nodes with the same amount of shared storage. It can have multiple nodes with the same capacity. Each node in the cluster will act like a single system to provide constant and high uptime. | This architecture is defined to distribute load among multiple nodes connected in a cluster. Depending on the configuration, the traffic, processing, and other forms of load get distributed among different nodes to balance the load. |
| It makes sure that the system never runs out of resources and processing goes on without any interruption to deliver exceptional performance. | It maintains a redundant network to ensure if, for any reason one node fails to meet the request or crashes down, another node can handle the job with a swift switch or delegation. | It helps in protecting any single node handling too high processing time or resource intensive jobs and constantly distributes load among each or designated node in the network. |
| It aims to ensure that performance is put at the focal point and for that it distributes the performance jobs among different nodes. | It focuses on achieving the highest possible fault tolerance to keep the system highly available for its users. | This setup typically ensures that load is distributed across nodes instead of just one or two to ensure more efficient load balancing. |
Depending on the application or business requirements, any of these cluster setups can be implemented and set up. Usually, you need an experienced system architecture designer or consultant to help you decide and define the right architecture for your business. The best cloud based call center solutions can be installed on the cloud with any of these setup models or even can be set up with a hybrid model by an expert.
What are the major advantages of cloud call center software with cluster setup?
There are several advantages of cluster setup for a call center solution. Let’s explore the major advantages of this setup.
Technically:-
- High resilience: Resilience in a system in businesses like customer care or sales is necessary because if a system cannot quickly and gracefully resume working with minimum recovery time, then it can negatively impact several other factors. The cluster setup for cloud contact center solutions helps in achieving this.
- High reliability: Businesses using call center software rely on this application to meet their business needs. Hundreds of calls get handled by businesses using this software. This makes it necessary to have a system, which is available for agents to use to deliver exceptional customer service or sales support. On the other hand, customers and prospective clients should be able to reach out to the business team as and when needed and this software is the entry point. Often, it handles high processing demand or too big call volume due to the holiday season or peak hours, and this requires high performing systems that can balance the load, provide quicker responses, and stay up and running. The cluster setup contributes to assuring the reliability of the system, its performance, efficiency in handling load, etc.
- High availability: Nobody likes system downtime and your customers would definitely hate it. Even a few minutes of unexpected downtime can cause severe brand damage. This makes it necessary for a business to rethink its strategy and reinvest in brand marketing and positioning. However, cluster setup for a cloud based call center solution helps businesses achieve uptime SLA from 95.99% to 99.99%.
- Excellent fault tolerance: Software, hardware, and any other element of your infrastructure may fail and there is no way to stop fault in the system completely. Your hardware may fail or your database may stop responding to your queries for uncertain reasons. The cluster setup helps in keeping everything on track, so the system can be better tolerant of faults and failures. In the event of failure or fault, the cluster will quickly replace the master node with another node to ensure there is minimum or negligible downtime affecting your system or how it works.
From business aspects:-
- Excellent customer experience: A majority of businesses use major systems like digital engagement solutions, sales dialer solutions, etc. to deliver exceptional customer experience to their clients. The cluster setup gives excellent performance and uptime even if the call volume is way too high to handle. Agents can quickly retrieve the required information and deliver satisfactory services. Moreover, agents and customers will find the system to interact with each other at any given time with minimum or no downtime of the system. This can help in excellent customer experience and elevating customer satisfaction rates.
- Maximize productivity: A high availability and high performance system reduces agent idle time, which is quite important in the call center industry or businesses that handle client calls in a massive volume. The cluster setup helps in delivering both of these necessary elements so agents can handle incoming, outgoing, and blended calls without any miss.
- Increase ROI: Excellent customer experience can help in boosting revenue with repeat business and praiseworthy brand positioning. On the other hand, agent performance improvement along with high system availability and performance helps in achieving better and higher results with the same resources. This reduces expenses and increases returns on investment.
How does iCallify help or benefit?
iCallify is one of the popular cloud call center solutions. It is a highly flexible and compatible solution. It can be installed on shared or dedicated servers or cloud setup with any type of setup model, including, but not limited to cluster. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that want to use this software with a cluster model.
iCallify also has a team of experienced developers, engineers, and system architecture designers. Thus, we can help you design system architecture to set up your cluster cloud system that can maximize your returns over investment.
Concluding notes
You can make sure that the system does not face unexpected downtime to keep every customer puzzled and agents idle to waste resourceful and productive hours. Moreover, it also helps in handling peak hours and holiday time more gracefully and professionally to maximize benefits. A company that gets a reputation for listening to its clients as and when needed often achieves a better brand reputation that can help it surpass other success milestones. All this can be achieved with cloud and cluster.
In a nutshell, the cloud is a popular, scalable, and reliable platform to host applications like contact center solutions. Different types of cluster setups on cloud platforms help in enlarging the effectiveness of this software and boost performance metrics and other KPIs. The perfect blend of cloud and cluster amalgamates the advantages of both of these technological revolutions.
We, iCallify, have been offering the best cloud based call center solutions to global businesses. We also provide cloud with cluster setup to our customers depending on their business requirements. We further provide consultation with our years of expertise in this industry as a technology leader and call center software provider. We can meet all your technology needs from software to setup. We can also guide you in this whole process or take a lead and make everything set up for you. All you need to do is, initiate this conversation and for that, all you need to do is,
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