Systems Integration Asia – April-May 2018

How New Approaches can Bring 'Smooth Talking' to

Enterprise Communications Without Breaking the Budget

by Moussa Zaghdoud

Enterprise communicaons are struggling to meet the needs of
modern workplaces which are becoming more flexible, collaborave
and mobile than ever before. When you then add more connected
devices, the rise of bots, advanced analycs, focus on regulatory
security and privacy concerns, you have a communicaons landscape
that is rapidly growing in complexity. Moussa Zaghdoud, Senior
Director and Head of Cloud Business Unit at Alcatel-Lucent
Enterprises looks at a new Enterprise Unified Communicaon and
Collaboraon (UC&C) Survey from Wainhouse Research, to explore
the trends and preferences in business communicaons and the
technology that is available to enable organizaons to deal with the
growing complexity.

The transion to a new era of communicaon technology is not
always plain sailing, and most organizaons currently find themselves
trapped somewhere between the legacy world of on-premises and
some cloud-based services – siloed and not truly connected.

A rise in environmental complexity
New Wainhouse research shows the majority of businesses use
mulple vendors for telephony -with some 75 per cent using two or
more vendors, and 21 per cent with three or more. Alongside this, 33
per cent have two or more Unified Communicaons (UC) vendors,
with some using as many as five to deliver addional services. With
so many moving parts it’s no wonder that it’s difficult to deliver a
consistent and unified enterprise-wide communicaon experience to
the end user.

With flexible working and teams operang remotely, a fixed point of
collaboraon isn’t enough to sasfy the communicaon needs of
businesses. We need mobile enabled collaboraon tools. So, the
challenge today... is to unify on-premises PBX telephony with the
benefits of providing universally accessible Unified Communicaon
and Collaboraon (UC&C).

Enter hybrid soluons
The answer lies in hybrid communicaon soluons that have been
developed to give IT departments the opon to integrate cloud-based
UC&C – offering key services such as presence, messaging, web
conference, video, files and applicaon sharing – with the exisng
PBX hardware. This allows businesses to protect and opmize
previous investments. This also allows for a gradual approach to cloud
adopon, so as business requirements shi, more services can be
moved to the cloud.

The deskphone – it just won’t go away
This integraon is important, because for the me-being, the
deskphone is here to stay. According to the Wainhouse Research
survey, it remains the most common communicaon device used
today with almost 85 per cent using one for business
communicaons. But – and it’s a big but – most users do not use just
a single device. The research showed upwards of 70 per cent of end
users leverage a combinaon of a deskphone, PC and mobile device,
and with new end user technologies such as VR, wearables and

personal assistants coming to market, the number of us leveraging

mulple devices is only likely to increase.

Managing a mul-device mash-up – it’s hybrid again

Business technology procurement needs to recognize this, but

business operaons tend to evolve gradually and don’t just jump

from one technology to the next. A plaorm that provides equal

support to “tradional” and next-generaon communicaons is the

ideal soluon. If a business was to jump and solely use the latest

technology, it risks alienang users and disrupng business in

addion to losing value from its exisng investments. Here again it is

hybrid cloud deployments which are removing these risks by

augmenng the exisng with the new. It also has the benefits of

being easier to deploy, support and maintain – removing the burden

of complex soware or hardware management.

“Good enough” not good enough – vendors need to open up

End users no longer accept “good enough” quality from

collaboraon soluons. Wainhouse Research found quality to be the

top end user requirement with 90 per cent rang it as highly

important. However, a true quality plaorm should also encompass

the other four top requirements idenfied in the survey – workflow

integraon (70 per cent), borderless communicaons (63 per cent),

mobility (54 per cent) and global access (39 per cent).

Open architecture plaorms make it easier to integrate

collaboraon tools into business processes and systems. A

connected communicaons plaorm can do this, bringing together

HD voice, video and workflow integraon delivered across devices

via the cloud, allowing users to work together and collaborate

seamlessly – regardless of locaon or device. To get the quality users

want, unsupported tools are out and enterprise-grade is in.

Businesses without borders – Bridging vs. Peer-to-Peer Calling

Teams in businesses aren’t just operang within the business

borders. Not only are they oen located across mulple countries,

but can encompass internal employees, external team members,

partners and contractors, or customers. The idea of the borderless

enterprise is gaining momentum within the business world, but the

tools and services need to be in place to support this. Locaon,

device type or domain can’t get in the way.

Rethinking the PBX

The research found that on average, 40 per cent of enterprise voice

traffic ends up in a group conference call, and this percentage

increases for larger organizaons. Conferencing and group

collaboraon is becoming the de facto way work gets done for many,

and this requires a rethink on how a business views its PBX.

Communicaons plaorms that provide mulple funcons such as

voice, video and document sharing can become an extension of the

PBX to support peer-to-peer and group collaboraon. This then

equally blends both individual and group collaboraon features

seamlessly, without the need to immediately replace exisng

hardware.

VOICEBOX