Building a contact center has traditionally been a complex task. After all, it involves the integration of voice and data networks, application servers to handle emails, faxes, white mail and a customer portal, software to ensure interactions reach the right customer service agent, applications to manage the agent workforce, and business applications and analytics software to make it all perform well. In recent years this model has become even more complex as companies add into the mix employees in back-office functions and branch offices and agents working at home. Vendors have responded to this challenge by moving contact center systems into the cloud, enabling companies to create and operate a virtual contact center. Richard Snow, VP and Global Research Director of the Customer Management research practice at business research and advisory services firm Ventana Research, explains how the cloud changes everything, eliminating many of the constraints that have made contact center deployment and management challenging, and also offers some cautions about important best practices to embrace and pitfalls to avoid.