Organizations today have many options when it comes to their UC services, and the devices they use to consume those UC services. No longer are businesses limited by the technologies located within their premise – they can now have their services hosted in the cloud.
Unified Communications is quickly moving to a “per-seat, per-month” consumptive cloud and hybrid model, where barriers to entry and adoption are low—and the perceived value of “pay-for-use” is high. This shift to a UC-as-a-Service (UCaaS) consumptive model has broad implications for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) competing in this growing sweet spot.
As more and more organizations transition to next generation communication networks, they are quickly finding out that today’s networks are becoming more and more complex. Today’s UC networks are built off of a multi-vendor architecture and enables multimodal communications that can be accessed from anywhere, corporate LAN, home network, mobile network or even public WiFi.
The shift from traditional telephony platforms to Unified Communications (UC) has put organizations in more of a consumption model, which is causing a shift in how UC is supported. The concept of a call server or PBX is really going away, as all the functions of a UC environment – voice, video and collaboration – are more and more distributed. This trend causes server monitoring and availability to be de-emphasized.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Providers offer a lifeline for their clients, delivering unified communications and network management that ensures organizations can function and conduct business. So, what is the most challenging aspect of ensuring communications service levels across clients’ ecosystems? Many MSPs and UCaaS providers tell us they are continuously seeking better ways to perform Capacity Planning to ensure their clients have sufficient resources, quality, and the service levels necessary to support critical communications during fluctuations and peaks in business activity.
Xerox Business Services, LLC (Xerox) provides IT Outsourcing (ITO) managed services for everything from data centers to desktops to networks to voice to midrange mainframes for Fortune 500 companies. As clients increasingly turned to Xerox Services for help in implementing and managing VoIP, UC, and converged voice networks, John Truetken, Director of Network Architecture for Xerox ITO knew significant changes in their manual support model would be needed if they were to successfully expand their voice management services to meet their clients’ changing technology environments. John identified the ReliaTel VoIP and UC Management solution from Tone Software as a technology that would move the Xerox Services voice services business forward.
As the effects of natural disasters are felt all over the world, I can’t help but reflect on the importance of Communications especially during times of disaster. Business Continuity requires visibility, availability, reliability and redundancy to ensure the entire organization is kept well informed during emergencies. Are remote locations healthy and available or are services potentially degrading to prevent remote employees from being productive? When the business must reprioritize functions between different geographic territories, are the communications networks successful in handling the increased workload for service quality and throughput?
Do we need yet another communications platform in the seemingly crowded Enterprise Communications space? Microsoft has not only answered this question with a resounding YES but they have rapidly become a leader in the Enterprise Unified Communications (UC) space according to Gartner. Analysts cite Microsoft as a leader in the Unified Communications space, along with Cisco and Avaya. Among the key strengths identified by Gartner’s study are adoption rates for enterprises ranging from small to large organizations, integration with Skype, and integration with enterprise business processes and applications.
We recently announced key ReliaTel features and introduced a new Dashboard interface that benefits both management and operations.
As begin a new year, I can’t help but reflect on the contrasting differences. The proliferation of Unified Communications, Videoconference, Telepresence, Cloud and Managed Services within the enterprise domain sets up continuous growth through quantifiable ROIs and expansion towards the SMB space.
