Mobility and IT technology gaps spawn Cloud Unified communications

User mobility drives the enterprise's focus on cloud Unified Communications (UC). As a result, UC suppliers and service providers are beginning to introduce unified communications as service (UCaaS) products to their customers.

"Now, cloud services occupy an important place in the UC market," said Brian Riggs, director of communications research at current analysis enterprise. We find that suppliers such as Siemens and Mitel are starting to launch their own cloud services, while companies such as ShoreTel are entering cloud services by acquiring other companies, even At&t and http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/ 2055.html ">sprint and other operators are also starting to launch such services. ”

Cloud Unified Communications and UCAAS support mobile UC

The workplace is becoming more and more dispersed, resulting in more and more terminals appearing. According to the Siemens 2012 Corporate Communications Survey, four-fifths of the terminals are not at the corporate headquarters. The survey was conducted in 1,120 companies with more than 500 people in the United States, Britain, Germany, China, India, Russia and Sweden. The results found that employees ' mobile phones accounted for 33% of the enterprise's terminals.

Rick Puskar, senior vice president of global product management at Siemens, said the focus on mobile UC increased the need for unified communications for the cloud. While only 16% of the companies currently deploy cloud Unified communications, 45% of companies say they plan to start deployment in 2012. The survey found that mobile demand drives the enterprise's cloud UC applications. "We have found that companies are under a lot of pressure in the face of ever-increasing mobile devices," said Irwin Lazar, vice president and service Director at Nemertes. However, by using cloud provider products, companies can theoretically leverage the inherent capabilities of their suppliers to achieve access and security control over a wide range of mobile devices without having to develop in-house functionality. ”

Riggs points out that the Cloud Unified Communications project will include both private and public deployments. "We will no longer focus on hosting UC services provided by suppliers or carriers," he said. We will use UC software, companies to buy technology, in the Enterprise data center to deploy their own cloud environment. ”

The survey points out that the main applications of cloud Unified communication are web collaboration and video conferencing. Lazar points out that some UC applications are developing slowly. "We found that some companies use Google's instant messaging and email," he said. So it will be a while before the voice service is transferred to the cloud platform. ”

Cloud Unified Communications brings new IT challenges

As enterprises move some or all of the UC technology components to a public or private cloud, they will face the lack of it technology. Siemens Research has found that 78% of companies face "people-related challenges" in applying new UC tools.

Riggs points out that IT staff has been trained to manage existing traditional telephony technologies. But now, if the enterprise deploys UC to a private cloud, or if a managed service deploys one or more of the UC components to form a hybrid environment, the technician needs to be trained more.

To ease the technical problems of the staff, Siemens's survey recommended the introduction of a Managed services organization (MSO) to explore opportunities for scalability and cost savings. Companies can also choose to outsource some or all of them to UCaaS providers. But even then, some consolidation is needed.

Lazar points out that the issue of personnel training has prompted companies to turn to managed services. "Many companies are using managed services more and more and they are turning to managed services with the most services being voice and UC," he said. If a lot of companies go to UC, they will soon find that they don't have management skills, people or experience. ”

With the integration of cloud platforms such as iphones, Androids and Salesforce, this trend will become more apparent, Lazar said. "These companies are looking for hosting services. ”

Mobile UC is not easy for end users

Mobile UC is entering a period of personal devices, such as the ipad and Android devices, and while users like these gadgets, it's not easy to move UC.

"There are social platforms, instant messaging and videoconferencing that may support Android, but not the iphone," says Riggs. Unless the user is a technology addict, there are many problems and more training is required. ”

Despite the complexity, mobile UC remains the industry's main concern, Lazar said. "Business users ready to enter UC are currently trying to turn their Android and iphone into corporate communications devices," he said. ”

At the time of this survey, Siemens also released a new version of the OpenScape UC Kit. This upgrade allows users to send instant messages to Google users or other scalable messaging and Status Protocol (XMPP) solutions, including UC, instant messaging, social media, and collaborative applications on PCs, tablets or smartphones. In addition, the kit offers Apple iOS and Android mobile clients that can be downloaded from the App Store.

(Editor: Lu Guang)