Cox Business announced Thursday the national availability of Essential Cloud, a suite of cloud-based business applications that provides small businesses with the solutions they need to increase operational efficiency and improve customer relationships. A Cox Business solution, Essential Cloud is designed to meet the needs of businesses in specific industry verticals.

"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 carefully curates business solutions that can be purchased and managed through one portal, similarly to how music files are managed by consumers. It recommends three "Basic Essentials," which are solutions every business needs, and then tailors solutions by four primary verticals: real estate, restaurant, professional services, and personal services. For instance, Essential Cloud directs those in the professional services industry to a menu of options which includes email marketing, online appointment booking, proposal creation, and secure file sharing – solutions that almost any professional services company would need to run and grow. 

"Essential Cloud is another example of our commitment to provide technology solutions that small business need to grow," added Steve Rowley, senior vice president of Cox Business.