1. Avaya Bankruptcy – The 800lb gorilla fell.
2. Hardware vendors are moving to UC to avoid Avaya’s fate
3. Decommissioning of copper infrastructure and a move to SIP only
4. Shear growth – By 2024 UCaaS will surpass traditional PBXs in terms of market share
5. E911 and Net Neutrality seem to lend towards VoIP and a converged network
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It’s no secret that Unified Communications as a Service or UCaaS is on the rise. Avaya, a key PBX manufacturer who acquired Nortel Networks in recent years instead of developing a Hosted VoIP strategy, has filed for bankruptcy. The smarter hardware manufacturers like ShoreTel and MiTel have a strong cloud push. By 2020, UCaaS will account for over 40% of the market share and if you’d like to know more follow us on Twitter
Besides it being a common ground for both IT and Accounting departments to agree upon, here are five reasons why UCaaS is being so widely adopted:
1. The functionality – The functionality of these UCaaS systems is hard to compare to anything in the
market. Their use of APIs to tie in external applications is phenomenal. Their ease of use for compliance like HIPAA could not be easier. In fact, they assume the liability. Conferencing, messaging, faxing is all bundled in so well that some tech pundits say that email as we know it soon cease to exist… Much like POTS lines and PRIs. FYI – It’s all SIP in the core. See how RingCentral manages your HIPAA compliance
2. Reliability – If your premise based PBX fails for any reason – could be a power outage, lightning strike,
product defect, or any other number of reasons – you are out of communication with your customers and co-workers. You have a single point of failure with a PBX. Replicating the type of redundancy that leading cloud based phone systems are already equipped with would cost you big time! It simply just works. Learn more about RingCentral’s architecture
3. Scalability – Companies in growth mode don’t usually check their phone system to see if it can handle their growth. Whether you need more SIP trunks, POTS lines, a T1 card or more handsets. These problems are from the past. With today’s UCaaS you can immediately set up a new user or even a group with an auto-attendant and toll free in minutes. The handsets can come pre-configured so that they’re plug and play. See how ShoreTel was able to help this growing non-profit
4. Distributed work force – Connecting multiple sites or distributed is workforces are easier than ever.
Connectivity can securely go over the internet since the most reputable UCaaS providers use encryption. QoS is not an issue since today’s office is bandwidth rich and so is the user, virtually walking around with a back-up connection in their pocket by way of smart phone. Mitel World Cloud helps empower distributed workforces
5. CapEx vs OpEx is a lie! The old argument that the purchase of a PBX is a less expensive model is no
longer true because bandwidth is readily available on the cheap. Furthermore, how you get your phone lines or dial tone has changed completely. Combine that with the fact that cloud based phone companies have made drastic improvements their infrastructure to support this change and the shift to mobile, old hardware vendors have a hard time competing. There are no more maintenance agreements, vendors for moves adds & changes, or fluctuating monthly bills due to usage…. It’s all built in. Click here to see how to calculate the TCO for your phones
These 5 factors make UCaaS a no brainer for anyone who has to administer or pay for their company’s communications. It is easy to use and easy to account for on a monthly and/or per user basis. Follow us on LinkedIn to keep up on the latest in UCaaS.
Choosing a UCaaS provider or Unified Communications as a Service is more difficult with today’s competitive landscape. There are so many choices of provider and various ways to implement your solution.
Most PBXs pre-date mobile’s rise and therefore many companies are not able to take advantage of the robust feature set. Below are five areas most companies are missing out on by not using their virtual PBX to its fullest capabilities.
These systems are less expensive to set up and maintain, as well as, more user friendly. Implementation is key. You’ll want the right service provider and the right implementation team to manage your migration.
Businessmen packing cardboard boxes in office
IT teams need help when moving or opening new offices. An office move or cloud migration can be quite complex. It’s not like moving your home or apartment. Although that is difficult, moving an office is a concerted effort that makes a personal move pale in comparison. Leveraging your support is imperative. IT teams are the greatest resource companies have today in order to support the office move because moving furniture is easy… Moving tech services is a whole new ball game.
Some of the items to consider are your ISP and phone provider. Using a cloud based UCaaS system makes life easier than a traditional PBX regardless if that’s using SIP, PRI, or even POTS to get to the PSTN for dial tone. PRIs, SIP, and POTS are similar to the problem many customers face with their ISP during a move… They still need to get the wire into your office.
ISPs are not available everywhere. Each has its own unique footprint even down to the floor in the building. Recently, we had two carriers with a site on their LIT building lists that wasn’t actually LIT. Many times providers are only lit to a floor in what we call a homerun shot, leaving them unable to provide service to customers on other floors or offices without a completely new build. What makes this most frustrating for a company during a move is that many times you won’t know this ahead of time. Unfortunately, carriers don’t always keep good records of where their facilities are located. Hence the need for physical site surveys.
There have been countless situations where a company orders from an ISP only to find out weeks later that their order is ‘on hold’. Not every ISP will take an order they can’t fulfil but most will, leaving IT departments with no answer for their C-Level folks when it comes time to explain why their move date won’t be met. When working at ISPs I’ve seen countless situations where sales people struggling to make quota will take an order and have it sit in the system until they can find other companies to sell to in order to get facilities built out. I’ve never met a customer that was happy to be in this situation.
In today’s environment, ISPs are crucial to a business… especially when moving offices. Without internet access employees are stuck twiddling their thumbs and there is little to no productivity. Access to cloud based applications like Salesforce.com or other CRMs, VoIP, and VDI are unavailable without bandwidth. That said, leveraging expertise to ensure a timely and successful move project can be the difference between meeting your date and being in the precarious position of asking a former landlord to extend a lease to an office that, 9 times out of 20, has already been rented to another tenant.
Our value add is a project management system that ties in directly with our carrier’s processes. Whether that’s order entry, credit, IP approval, etc. we know when these items need to be checked off and start moving to the next milestone. Their system’s don’t always follow logic and that which could take place simultaneously only happens sequentially. As savvy as your IT team is, and as much as you may move your office, you don’t do it as often as a company like CloudOgre whose specialty it is to take the heavy lifting out of the IT piece of your move. We will coordinate your ISP, Voice, and Data Center move to allow your IT team to focus on your core business applications and managing users.