COVID-19 has rendered Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solutions critical to organizations of all sizes enabling businesses to lean into digital to drive business continuityOpens a new window and create a productive work environment. Long pegged as a nice-to-have platform, UCC has evolved into the most interesting problem-solving technology amid the pandemic. Team collaboration and video conferencing have become part of everyday conversations.
For Unified Communications as a Service Opens a new window (UCaaS) vendors, the crisis has served as an opportunity to springboard user growth and bundle products to edge out point solutions CiscoOpens a new window , MicrosoftOpens a new window tout end-to-end collaboration solutions with new integrations, UCaaS enhancements, and feature-rich solutions combined with APIs. To expand market presence, UCaaS vendors are augmenting product portfolios with M&As Opens a new window and spurring product developmentOpens a new window and internal growth efforts.
Case in point Verizon added video conferencing player BlueJeans to enter the Video conferencing-as-a-Service (VaaS) market while Zoom recently snagged Keybase to boost technology know-how and deliver on the promise of end-to-end encryption. In February, 8×8 nabbed technology partner and webRTC quality monitoring and analytics technology company Callstats.io to own end-to-end analytics. Transparency Market research estimatesOpens a new window the underpenetrated UCaaS and IP telephony market is expected to hit $235 billion over the next seven years.
Current Drivers of UCaaS in the Pandemic Economy:
1. SMBs leverage cloud communications solutions to close the digital divide, driving demand for outsourcing UCC solutions
2. Platforms will beat point solutions as organizations plan to implement long-term or permanent remote work strategies.
3. Companies leaving Zoom over security and privacy issues demonstrate increased demand for features that balance security and user-friendliness.
4. Peak demand in sectors such as healthcare and education has driven diversification of product portfoliosOpens a new window with UCaaS vendors rolling out solutions for specific verticals.
Digital Workplace Trends
Before we dive into UCaaS vendor evaluation insights, here are key enterprise business communication trends via a recent Sangoma Keynote Opens a new window Product Stack presentation that every technology buyer should know.
- By 2022, 42% of the workforce will be mobile remote work will be mainstreamed.
- Unified Communications systems significantly increase workforce productivity by 52% and efficiency by 45%.
- Shift from the data center to cloud will gain traction with cloud accounting for 40% of the cloud calling (also known as Cloud Telephony) segment by 2023, Gartner predictsOpens a new window .
- AI tools for transcription, voice recognition and speech assistants will drive a new paradigm shift in collaboration.
- By 2022, theres a 70% probability of team collaboration and web meetings markets converging, Aragon CEO & Lead Analyst Jim Lundy posits.
Understanding Multi-tenant vs. Multi-instance Architecture
Everyone is talking about UC these days. So, lets get the definitions straight. At its most basic level, Unified Communications combines email, voicemail, calendar, instant messaging (IM)/chat, video and audio conferencing (with screen-share), workstream collaboration and document sharing. UCaaS vendors also provide adjunct features on the go such as analytics tools, and dashboards for understanding user adoption trends. At its core, UCaaS offers the same solutions as premises-based unified communications (UC), GartnerOpens a new window emphasizes. At the end of the day, to qualify as a UC solution, the platform should support the above features to deliver a unified communications experience.
In terms of on-premise vs. cloud, UCC solutions deployed in the enterprise data center fall in the on-prem category, while solutions deployed in the service providers datacenter (backed up by vendor supports) is the cloud delivery model.
Cloud UC deployment is further divided into two segments multi-instance and multi-tenant platform. For example, if youre migrating from an on-premise system to the cloud, your UCaaS vendor will lean into the multi-instance approach. It is easier for a traditional PBX vendor to replicate on-premise features in the cloud. On the other hand, a multi-tenant approach is delivered in a shared environment, hosted and maintained by the vendor. There are no VM boundaries to separate customers and updates made at a service level are delivered uniformly to all customers. Of note: successful SaaS companies like Zoho and Salesforce run on multi-tenant architecture.
Best Practices for Evaluating UCaaS Vendors
COVID-19 is the Black Swan event that has ushered megatrends in the UC market. The marketplace has become highly dynamic with exponential growth in user demographics and technology requirements. But UCaaS is not entirely a plug-and-play solution. Some enterprises and mid-sized firms may demand features that balance security and privacy while others weigh in Quality of Service (Qos). With cloud-based UC taking off, there are enough use cases to demonstrate QoC is resolved. In addition, various subscription-based pricing models, coupled with per-user-per-month pricing (PUPM), and the ease to scale up or down users allows enterprises to cut back costs. Other core baseline advantages of UCaaS include a shared infrastructure model such as racks, data centers, and network management tools. With the infrastructure already being in place, UcaaS delivers SMBs and mid-sized firms the flexibility to add devices, users, feature sets, nodes with a single bill that consolidates all services.
Here are the top 6 UCaaS vendor evaluation considerations:
Ready to buy UCaaS solution or offload UC from on-prem to cloud, check out top 6 evaluation pointers to track in the pandemic economy.
1. Single vs. multi-vendor approach
Traditionally, LOB managers and technology buyers have veered towards best-of-breed solutions that deliver a rich user experience. While best-of-breed solutions (such as pure-play vendors like Slack for unified messaging and team collaboration and Zoom for meetings) trump bundled solutions, they provide a fragmented user experience. According to an ITDM survey sponsored by Cisco, app fragmentation increases the risk of data leakage. Technology buyers have to tap multiple vendors for enterprise communications solutions such as messaging, meetings, enterprise productivity apps and team collaboration, thereby delivering fragmented user experience.
Things have changed in the current scenario with vendors doubling down on unifying the platform and driving enhanced user experience. Monolithic tech giants like Microsoft and Cisco argue choose an end-to-end solution over piecemeal solutions. Microsoft and Cisco have made considerable progress in this area, reshaping and remodeling their offerings with a clear messaging under a single platform with Microsoft Teams and Cisco Collaboration Solutions. Additionally, shifts in business behavior hint enterprises look for a single client that can deliver meetings/messaging/calling/file-sharing from a single platform.
Tip: Bundled solutions can help avoid overlapping feature-set and save costs. Standardizing on a single platform will also drive unified experience and deliver more security benefits.
2. Hybrid Cloud vs. Public Cloud
So you decided on the path to cloud that allows you to save costs on PBX infrastructure, servers and storage arrays. Besides reducing data center footprint, cloud enablement delivers significant cost savings and greater scalability. In highly-regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, hybrid Unified Communications (UC) cloud deployments allow businesses to extend greater control over security, allowing technology buyers to add additional security features. Michael Brandenburg, Frost & Sullivan analyst explains that given the UC stack is very often a discrete set of loosely integrated communications applications, it creates an opportunity for hybrid communications architectures. In a hybrid approach, businesses can continue to deploy mission-critical call control on-premises, while moving less critical applications, such as voice mail services, to a centralized cloud solution, he noted, in the blogOpens a new window .
Public cloud is recommended for cost-conscious companies that need to weigh cost-reduction and manage daily applications and workloads like CRM, email, communication, and collaboration tools.
Tip: If you are looking for flexibility and data privacy, hybrid cloud deployments can help businesses maintain granular controls and ensure data privacy and security. Work closely with the security team to evaluate and qualify the solution.
Learn More: Top 10 Unified Communication as-a-Service Companies and Providers in 2020Opens a new window
3. Security
Size, shape, maturity may vary across vendors but security remains a key parameter for UCC buyers that put a premium on securely managed networks – including features like end-to-end encryption, personal encryption keys, security certifications and data center security. Security has been a sticky wicket for most UCC vendors, though service providers have significantly hardened security environments by doubling down on end-to-end encryption and leveraging AI/ML to up enterprise-grade offerings. Major tech vendors like MicrosoftOpens a new window , Google, Cisco tout security as their sweet spot that goes beyond digital workspace tools to meetings solutions. Other leading players like RingCentral are leaning into security as a differentiated offering to win a large customer base.
Good advice will be to assess data center and support center locations in the SLA. Heres why: during peak service, Zoom was routing calls of non-Chinese users through Chinese data centers, though the VaaS player now allows users to opt in and out of data center regions of their choice.
Tip: Security has become pervasive throughout every aspect of UCC solution. The key is to go beyond whats stated and work with internal IT teams to understand how to protect IP across enterprise workflows.
4. Uptime
According to Intermedias Kirsten Barta, Senior Marketing Communications Manager, one of the key features to be tracked in cloud UCaaS model is uptime, that improves reliability. UCaaS is not just an affordable way to scale as your business grows but is a proven, reliable solution that can reroute calls in case there is an outage. Most UCaaS systems have high uptime and can also reroute calls if there is an outage, she writesOpens a new window . Intermedia has long touted five-nines as a key differentiator — Intermedia Unite is backed by a 99.999% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA). Downtime in UCC solutions can cost companies millions of dollars and hamstring productivity in digital communication work hubs. Intermedia has set a benchmark with five-nines uptime SLA. Meanwhile, competitors like Fuze also offer 99.999% uptime with a geographically-load balanced, multi-data center architecture design, Fuze explains.Opens a new window
Tip: Uptime depends on the UCaaS service providers infrastructure. Ensure you have a clear SLAs on the services and support rendered from the provider in case of downtime.
5. Cognitive Collaboration, AI & Analytics
If youre wondering whats different this time, well, theres none. Cognitive and AI have been buzzwords in the UCaaS industry for long and we see AI/MLOpens a new window behind the scenes at Microsoft Teams with intuitive algorithmic improvements such as noise suppression, great audio quality over poor Wi-Fi or cellular, background blur for iOS, tags, and more. Amid the AI/ML rage, another buzzword – Cognitive Collaboration, touted by Cisco has been added to the list of must-have features. For Cisco, this is their sweet spot that allows the tech giant to mine structured and unstructured data and derive insights that will, in turn, allow companies to serve customers better. A frontrunner in this space, Cisco rolled out facial recognitionOpens a new window on Webex, that puts a name tag for the user and natural language processing (NLP) to deliver high-quality transcripts of Webex Meeting recording. Recently, Zoom rolled out an AI transcriptionOpens a new window service that saves time and ensures participants stay more productive.
There are a slew of use cases that AI can solve in collaboration, such as video motion detection, echo canceling, face detection, mining people insights and more. Conversational AI will play a huge role in increasing the breadth and depth of the solution. In addition, real-time meeting analytics will improve end-user experience.
Tip: Choose a UCaaS vendor that has industry-leading experience, and AI know-how to build cognitive services that can help achieve business outcomes faster.
6. Future releases, product roadmap, and financial stability
Besides security, QoS, service uptime, and ease of implementation, a consistent theme for technology buyers evaluating UCaaS vendors is greater visibility into the product roadmaps and financial stability of the company. As organizations adjust to new environments to meet the demands of the workforce, service providers will have to ramp up product portfolios to deliver more value to customers through differentiated capabilities such as AI/automation, financial stability, security, and trust. In the current scenario, UCaaS service providers are doubling down to deliver the widest-services portfolio. For example, LogMeIn added a new contact centerOpens a new window offering with GoToConnect Support CenteOpens a new window r while Sangoma rolled out Video conferencing platform Sangoma Meet.
Tip: UCaaS vendors are viewed as enabling partners who play a larger role in digital transformation. Financial stability, coupled with a global footprint can help meet the evolving needs of clients but vendors should also be dynamic to shift gears under the new ways and fast-track additional business requirements.
Learn More: 10 Exciting New UCaaS Launches and Upgrades in 2020Opens a new window
Wrapping Up
Buying UCC solutions has a strategic decision amid the pandemic which has rendered cloud-based UCC platforms essentially for digital businesses. IT decision makers look to UCaaS providers for reliable, consistent delivery and faster outcomes. The current shifts in the market indicate buyers are no longer looking at loosely coupled solutions, but full UCaaS offerings that combine voice, messaging, and meeting solutions. As businesses expand geographic footprint, global reliability and scalability will become a key consideration factor for large enterprises that look for seamless support in the event of a data center outage. At the end of the day, technology buyers and ITDMs should weigh their core business requirements in UCC and narrow down key capabilities that will help in deciding the best fit solution. Buyers should look beyond size, market share and product stack maturity to newer features that will be informed considering the current pandemic.
Do you think UCaaS vendors need to offer differentiated features for the post COVID-19 world. Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . Wed love to hear from you!