Who Ya Gonna Call?

The UCStrategies experts have often pointed out that the move from traditional voice to unified communications (UC) is rarely easy. Even an IT department with several hundred professionals will be hard-pressed to find truly experienced subject matter experts. Even the most seasoned professional may not understand the underlying technologies, the impacts on existing networks and endpoints, the planning needed for a successful implementation, and the compliance, management, and KPIs necessary to operate and control UC. Then there is the migration planning and execution on top of all that.

In the world of the large multinational enterprises, the telecommunication giants are there to provide the complex and nuanced global services that these companies require. And in the local markets the likes of SIPCOM, RingCentral, and Fonality are there to help the small business with their fairly uncomplicated requirements to make the move to UC.

But in the mid- to large-enterprise space, the requirements are typically too complex for the niche UC players. Firms with sales offices all over the world will probably be using services out of multiple data centers, often with mixed platforms. They may also have developers and engineers working in multiple countries, with outsourcers or service providers in a number of other countries, and vendor and customer relationships all over the globe. Developing a unified communications solution for these firms makes a lot of sense. But how do they do this with the biggest bang for the least buck in the most reliable and secure way? In other words, who do they call?

The truth is that UC is complex, particularly at scale. You can throw a team at it, but they are probably not experienced with UC. And even if you hire experience for the team, you are only solving part of the puzzle. When Malaysia's Special Branch shows up with a mandate for eDiscovery, or when you are trying to reduce 50 milliseconds in the communications loop between Miami and Sao Paolo - who can help you with this? Who can figure out if your plans for workplace transformation leveraging UC really will drive the benefits and outcomes you are counting on? Who understands contact centers, the mechanics of non-repudiation for telemedicine and how it plays in UC, and what it takes to effectively and efficiently reach every kind of UC endpoint?

The telcos have incredibly valuable engineering, regulatory, security, and consulting expertise in the UC domain that they have used to hunt the large multinational accounts. But that same expertise is important to the mid- to large-tier enterprises that really want UC, too.

As an example, consider AT&T. The company can create a mobile office environment for nearly anyone, with cloud services designed for high security and a network that is on-demand. This traditional telco giant has all of the integrated product offers you would expect - SIP Trunking, MPLS, voice and video conferencing, global presence. But they have developed their UC expertise from hundreds of UC deployments and established competitively priced programs and products for the enterprise. What I think is even more important, AT&T has deep relationships with all the UC vendors, regulators, systems integrators, and data center operators to help reduce the complexity, reduce the learning curve, and ensure the right outcomes. On-premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid configurations, do you really want to wait on an architecture until you can design, build, test, and stage each environment? Or do you want to work with a service provider that has already done this dozens of times with leading vendors.

Telcos like AT&T have also gotten sophisticated in how they approach UC initiatives. They can provide their own experienced consultants, work with the consultants you bring, or work directly with your IT team. You want to have experience at the table when you work with business units like risk management, HR, customer support, and operations when gathering requirements, assessing capabilities, and defining performance indicators. If your team has never done this before (or maybe just once or twice) for UC - AT&T consulting has the experience developed from numerous successful implementations.

Now, I'm not being biased towards the telcos. But if I were the CIO for a company with 2,000 or 20,000 potential UC seats, I would certainly require my team to take a very hard look at what a global telco partner like AT&T would bring. AT&T has been recently recognized by IDC analysts as a leading global telecom provider with an MPLS IP network that offers mobility connectivity, security, and a network on demand. I may want 3^rd party consultants as well, and I would want to know that everyone is going to work well together. I would want to make sure the overall team has deep engineering, regulatory, and security expertise, understands contact centers, and has a vision for how this whole Internet of Things is going to impact my business and my UC experience. And I would want the team to be able to build something that scales and offers a long-term solution that adapts to my business needs. Once you get beyond 250 seats, it is difficult to see how the niche players fit. So who do you call? Maybe the company that invented the call.

This paper is sponsored by AT&T. To find out more about how UC can make the people and business processes in your organization more efficient, contact your AT&T representative or visit http://www.att.com/uc-services.