Integrate cloud Unified Communication Applications of branches

Cloud is everywhere, or IT public opinion tries to create such a concept. To be fair, IT directors are increasingly concerned with the development of unified cloud communication (UC) and collaborative strategies. Although they want to reduce spending, improve flexibility, and implement new services through the cloud UC application, they are also worried about the maturity of cloud services, enterprise support and security issues, especially in the branch environment.

As the number of branches increases, some people classify their home offices as branches. They are facing more and more challenges to deliver the best communication services for employees in different regions. By switching to the cloud environment, the IT administrator wants to reduce or remove staff dedicated to remote locations and accelerate application deployment, including integration of IP voice, video conferencing, and mobile devices.

As the number of branches grows, they need the same level of collaboration with large offices. According to the Nemertes Research Survey, IT directors reported that 86% of companies have expanded their telephone platforms to their branches, and 77% have deployed instant messaging technology, in contrast, 73% of companies use video conferencing technology. In addition, 89% of companies provide Branch staff with Web conferencing technology, sharing applications and documents.

Cloud UC application strategy requires local integration technology

For companies that are evaluating cloud products, especially large organizations, no one thinks that using cloud services can solve all problems. For various reasons, they all need to maintain some local services, including protecting original assets, existing local applications, security and information protection issues.

Some companies adopt Google or Microsoft cloud services to implement their own collaborative architecture. However, these products do not have UC functions, such as telephones or interoperability with conference room video conferencing systems. Therefore, a successful strategy is not simply to migrate all applications to the infrastructure of the service provider. On the contrary, this means that you need to combine cloud services with local platforms to achieve more features, such as State Integration of cloud applications and local applications.

Fortunately, many UC vendors are developing products to address this demand. Esnatech and NextPlane have developed gateway products that support State Federation between local applications and cloud services. With these gateways, you can deploy Google Chat or Office 365 clients and change the status when you use the Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, or ShoreTel local telephone system to initiate a call. Other suppliers such as Siemens directly add the cloud service gateway function to UC products.

All of these examples can be used by IT architects to learn from application cloud services, and they can continue to use the local platform as needed.

Integrate the UC platform: ensure the necessary tools are obtained

It takes a certain amount of work to successfully integrate the local UC platform and cloud services. Communicate with suppliers, including cloud providers and local application providers) to learn about their functions and support for future plans for integrating cloud and local applications. Ensure that your monitoring and support tools can fix problems and avoid disputes. It should be realized that cloud suppliers and local suppliers may upgrade their applications at different speeds, and there may be problems in the future.