How to address systems sprawl and take your UC to the next level.
It’s common to find that unified communications (UC) within an organization is often anything but unified. Multi-vendor, multi-system unified communications and collaboration architectures are very much in play right now. This could be explained by the rapid implementation of new communication and collaboration tools during the pandemic, or the gradual migration of legacy on-premises comms environments into the cloud, or a mixture of the two. The results, in many cases, are hybrid on-prem/cloud UC ecosystems that are complex and costly to manage.
In a fluid labor market, this tangled web of platforms, applications, and integrated systems needs constant attention to add new end users, remove ex-employees, and make changes when people move roles. This creates an additional operational burden when IT admins have to manage all of this through multiple different UC platforms of Webex, Teams, Zoom, Avaya and others. And it comes at a cost.
In a recent survey commissioned by Kurmi Software, 72% of UC practitioners and managers indicated they spent as much as half their work week on end-user MACDs (moves, adds, changes and deletes), and 90% estimated the value of time spent to be between $100,000 and $500,000 every year.
Gaining back control
Getting control of a complex UCC ecosystem can be daunting - especially with the prospect of manually executing it with limited resources. After all, UC applications are a part of organizations’ day-to-day operations, used for more than basic communication and collaboration. But consolidating management under the IT team is essential for security as well as operational efficiency. Employees need to be able to communicate seamlessly with colleagues, while access to certain collaboration applications and data needs to be closely governed.
Running a holistic assessment is the best place to start. An assessment needs to identify all applications, note their purpose as well as the features, and the groups - regions, departments, teams, dial groups - that use them. The assessment also needs to map in any integrated applications. These can include connected HR and finance software, IT service management - like ServiceNow - and call center application.
One thing’s for certain, UC ecosystems are always evolving. It’s continually changing for any number of reasons. A primary driver is user demand for new tools and technology. This is compounded by large UC vendors competing and adding innovative features and new solutions to meet customer needs.
Tools do the heavy lifting
The process of migrating from on-premises systems to UC as a Service (UCaaS) in the cloud can be arduous and costly, spanning months or even years. It has the potential to disrupt regular business operations and pose considerable challenges. It’s best to be fully prepared, decide on the best strategy and engage the right tools and people to help.
Organizations with upwards of 1,000 UC seats benefit both operationally and from a cost-savings perspective when they implement a UC provisioning and management tool that can identify existing user profiles and regional rules across multiple applications. And the larger the organization, the greater return on investment the organization can see from using these tools.
Tools that contain multiple connectors that integrate with leading UC vendors like Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom and others, simplify management and migration. It makes administration across multiple systems possible from a within single pane-of-glass. This greatly reduces friction for admins who have to switch between platform portals, removes the skillset barrier required to manage multiple UC platforms, decreases the risk of errors.
What’s more, these tools can help prevent UC sprawl in the future by providing a holistic view of your entire UC systems, as well as the applications that integrate with them. For example, a migration tool that includes built-in connectors allows an organization to import and export information and configurations from many leading collaboration environments. These built-in multi-connectors enable migration tools to connect to your Cisco, Alcatel, Avaya or Microsoft servers to conduct attribute mapping, discover your fleet and make an inventory of all numbers, telephones, and groups. Once your resource import is done, your migration team will only have to select the target profile to migrate users to the new environment.
Fit for the future
Unified communications ecosystems will remain complex as technology evolves and organizations adopt tools from multiple vendors. But complexity invites simplification. A UC management platform can future-proof UC investments by enabling scalability and freeing IT teams from mundane tasks associated with daily administration. With a management platform, organizations can migrate between applications smoothly and at their own pace - allowing them to implement new tools as needed. Rather than getting mired in complex systems, a management platform simplifies workflows so IT can focus on strategic initiatives. Even as the UC landscape evolves, a management platform provides stability and support.
