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As UC Grows, Companies Should Evaluate Their Options Carefully

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As UC Grows, Companies Should Evaluate Their Options Carefully

 
October 14, 2014

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  By Tara Seals, TMCnet Contributor

The unified communications (UC) and IP communications market continues to grow, as anywhere, anytime collaboration becomes a core requirement for companies and their employees and business partners. Ubiquitous mobility, remote and virtual working and distributed workforces are all now common realities for businesses, and with the integration of real-time communication and business processes, companies can decrease costs, improve efficiency and increase productivity.


And in fact, UC is overtaking other, more traditional communications choices for many, thanks to its attractive combination of instant messaging, presence, conferencing, video, SaaS (News - Alert) integration with apps like Salesforce, calendaring and more. Hosted options have also made UC more affordable for the SMB market.

As a result, the UC market is a bright spot when it comes to enterprise spending, racking up a 27 percent worldwide revenue increase in the first quarter of the year, up from the same period a year ago, according to Infonetics (News - Alert) Research.

 “The enterprise telephony market continues to struggle as businesses hold off new PBX purchases and invest instead in unified communications applications. Purchase cycles are getting longer, and competitive activity is putting pressure on the market with pricing all over the map,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research (News - Alert).

And with so much interest (and willingness to spend money) on UC, vendors have been flooding the market with options. That means that communications decision-makers are spoiled for choice.

KelCor president and principal analyst Brent Kelly (News - Alert) had some tips for determining which solutions fit a business’ specific needs. First and foremost, companies need to define their employees' use cases.

"It's important that, before you start the process of trying to identify vendors, you identify needs within your organization," said Kelly, speaking to InformationWeek. "A bank teller might not need more than a phone or voicemail. Some employees might not need anything."

For instance, is there an outside salesforce that needs collaboration options from a handheld device? Are there distributed design teams that may require video conferencing within their daily workflows? How about presence for customer service reps? Not every stakeholder within the organization will need the same features and functionality, so businesses need to prioritize according to what functions will actually get used. 

Companies also need to consider whether a hosted or UCaaS model makes sense for them—in cases where headcount is below 500 or so employees, it’s likely that hosted approaches would save money for an organization, considering that they reduce if not outright eliminate overhead for upgrades and feature maintenance. Larger organizations on the other hand will begin to lose the advantages of a cloud-based approach after a couple of years, as integrations and changing security requirements and user permissions at scale start to add to the overhead.

For those opting for a premise-based system, Kelly warned that maintenance and support expenses can make up almost half of the cost of ownership, not to mention the ongoing licensing and upgrade costs.

He added that companies can always look to third-party maintenance options rather than relying on vendor-provided services—being willing to turn to a consultancy or integrator can save as much as two-thirds off of that line item.

And finally, he noted that sticking with options that are meant to work together—Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync and a SIP trunk that is qualified on the platform, for instance, can save a lot of headaches (and expense) down the road, when it comes to integration.

“All the vendors say they're compliant with standards, but all have extensions that allow them to do more things with their own devices,” Kelly noted.

Overall, businesses need to do their due diligence and define their goals, while carrying out cost modeling. When well thought out, UC provides flexibility, supports mobility, increases productivity and improves employee response time as well—all while reducing costs.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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