When your business depends on data and collaboration – and whose doesn't anymore? – it's understandable if you emphasize caution in how you change the way your people work with that data. That includes where it's kept, how you access it, and how you protect it.

So it's no surprise that a recent Forrester Wave white paper about cloud strategies found that even with online collaboration becoming much more appealing as business dynamics evolve, there is a certain amount of business customer uncertainty when it comes to committing to these collaboration solutions.

For example, Forrester points to the advantages of online collaboration, such as the tools available to make a business more agile and responsive. Or tools that make it much easier to support a largely mobile and/or remote workforce as well as external partners. And of course, the fact that in the cloud, technology features and functions are typically updated sooner and kept fresher than in the traditional premises-based model.

Despite those advantages, though, businesses are proceeding cautiously. They want to be sure that the cloud services are truly enterprise-ready. Are they scalable and manageable enough for a large organization's needs? They also want to be absolutely sure cloud services are sufficiently secure, since there will be vital data "out there" and beyond the customary trusted security controls that enterprises are accustomed to.

They also want to be sure the cloud services will integrate into their particular environment. Also, that the provider of these services has a history of  reliable service, an investment in improving the product to enterprise grade, and the financial strength to be there for the long term.

As Forrester points out, "The questions IT leaders are asking reflect lingering doubts in IT departments about the feasibility of moving collaboration workloads to the cloud. These doubts aren’t limited to small vendors or to vendors addressing specific collaboration scenarios — like file sharing — but cut across the entire online collaboration services market."

Microsoft Office 365 offered by Sprint is the perfect collaboration solution, with built-in reliability and security. Paired with  Sprint’s outstanding network and unique carefree cloud services for onboarding, Microsoft 365 offers the long-term viability that enterprises demand.

We would, of course, add one point, and that concerns access to the cloud, the network that an enterprise uses. That is an integral part of the concern over security, because the network has to be just as secure and reliable and robust as the cloud provider's service in order to achieve the level of success that an enterprise seeks when it decides to make its move to the cloud.