Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption

Transcription

1 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption February 2012 Prepared by: Zeus Kerravala Presented by:

2 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption by Zeus Kerravala February 2012 º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º Section I: Unified Communications and Collaboration Defined Organizations have opened corporate borders and are moving toward a vision of a connected enterprise. This global company is networked together and serves a variety of constituents. Employees, partners, suppliers and customers are all important components of the connected enterprise for virtually anytime, virtually anywhere access to people and information, and need the ability to communicate faster and more collaboratively over a variety of devices or mediums. Over time, organizations have deployed a myriad of communications tools to help people communicate better. These include telephony systems, conferencing, collaboration tools, and other devices and tools. Although these devices address the need for faster communications, few are linked together. This creates a manageability headache for the worker and prohibits the organization from reaching its full potential. Companies large and small have turned to unified communications (UC) to meet this challenge. UC brings all communications and collaborative tools together. It improves the manageability and effectiveness of the ecosystem and makes employees more responsive and agile, which enables competitive advantage. ZK Research A Division of Kerravala Consulting zeus@zkresearch.com Cell: Office: UC is the convergence of all forms of audio, video, Web and desktop communications built on an IP network. It breaks down distance, time and media barriers. This enables people to communicate virtually anywhere, anytime, over any device. UC consists of the following communications tools: IP telephony/voip: VoIP enables use of the corporate data network for phone calls rather than a dedicated network just for telephone service. VoIP is considered the foundation of UC. Any telephony solution should include features such as soft phones and auto attendant capabilities. Presence: This allows users to see another s availability over a variety of devices. This is common for instant messaging, but it will quickly be used to see user status on phones, wireless devices, videoconferencing and other collaborative tools. Presence can be extended to objects such as alarm systems, medical devices and documents. Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC): FMC enables a worker to seamlessly move calls between the desktop and mobile phone for call continuity. As the mobile workforce continues to grow, the ability to provide mobile integration will become a key decision point for organizations evaluating UC solutions. Integrated multimedia conferencing: Conferencing applications have existed for years, and are integrated into UC solutions. Within the ZK Research taxonomy, conferencing services include: Videoconferencing: Long a nice-to-have, video is a main application driving UC deployment. Quality and ease-of-use have improved dramatically, allowing more users to take advantage of it. Influence and insight through social media

3 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 3 Web conferencing: This has become popular within the last five to seven years, due to ease-of-use and accessibility. Audio and Web conferencing are the most widely adopted forms of converged conferencing. Audio conferencing: The most mature form of conferencing, audio conferencing through bridge lines is still the most widely adopted form. Integrated into UC, it can expand use of the service with minimal cost. Unified messaging: This is the ability to deliver voic , faxes and to a single inbox. The ability to streamline messaging can streamline processes dependent on information exchange. Centralized, Web-based control: The ability to centralize control of UC is a primary advantage of an IP-based solution. A robust Web interface can streamline many highly repetitive administrative tasks, greatly reducing the chance of outages due to human error. IP network: An IP network is required to deliver information and communications to users. IP is the only protocol scalable and simple enough to make the vision of UC a reality; it will be the common network for deployment. Section II: UCC Shifts to the Cloud UC and collaboration (UCC) has been a market in the making for almost a decade. UCC is a powerful, transformative technology with a multifaceted value proposition. UCC empowers workers to streamline communications and collaborative processes, which will raise corporate productivity to new heights, and enable individuals to communicate, in real time, with coworkers, partners, customers and suppliers across the globe. It can significantly reduce the overall cost of corporate communications. Because of the potentially strong ROI, deploying a UCC solution should be at or near the top of every CIO s priorities. Organizations are tasked with making decisions faster than ever before to gain competitive advantage. The decision-making process has changed as well, as corporations need to tap into individuals from around the world on and off the corporate network. The strong value proposition drove many early UC deployments. A recent ZK Research shows that 51 percent of organizations have basic UC deployed, but only 18 percent have advanced UC deployed and 4 percent have full deployment (see Exhibit 1, below). Exhibit 1: UC is Well-Adopted What is the current status of UC within your organization? (n= 1152) 7% 8% Basic deployment 12% 4% 51% Advanced deployment Full UC deployment Starting within 12 months No plans 18% Unsure Source: ZK Research, 2012 This indicates UCC deployment is limited to early adopters. There are numerous reasons, including: Upfront investment: Deploying a customer premise-based UCC solution requires significant upfront investment. While payback is relatively fast, many organizations are hesitant to make a significant capital investment in any technology, given the unstable macro environment. Long deployment time: Deploying a collaboration solution can mean lengthy deployment due to the amount of infrastructure to be deployed, tested and optimized.

4 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 4 Operational and management skill set: Managing communications used to be simple. The systems were self-contained, but offered no flexibility, service integration or relationship to new applications. Today s systems offer significantly more power, flexibility, integration and potential, but require a new operational and knowledge skill set in the IT organization. ZK Research believes the benefits of collaboration are strong enough that companies should not wait any longer to deploy. To address these issues, IT leaders should consider a hosted UCC solution, as it can provide all of the benefits of a premise-based solution without the risk or upfront cost. As UCC comes out of the early-adopter phase, it is poised to accelerate into the mainstream as service providers transform the capabilities into scalable and efficient hosted, cost-effective service models. Whether an organization chooses to fully deploy a hosted solution or a partial deployment, they can get more UC services to more people, faster, cheaper and with more future potential than ever before. Section III: Hosted UCC has Numerous Advantages As powerful as UCC can be in transforming an organization, a hosted solution can take the value to the next level. Some of the best reasons to consider a hosted solution are listed below. Fast path to initiating UCC While it s common to deploy VoIP as a first step in UCC deployment, it s not mandatory. Organizations that want to continue to leverage their investment in legacy voice infrastructure can continue to do so and then add UCC features, such as Web or audio conferencing, mobility services or IM through a hosted service. Then, when the company is ready to do so, it can migrate to a hosted VoIP service. Enhanced business continuity, disaster recovery In times of disaster it s critical to maintain business quality communications capabilities. This is difficult and expensive to do with a traditional, premisebased IP PBX. A hosted solution can be available from anywhere, so workers have the same functionality in the main headquarters, home office or DR facility. For many small organizations, this is the only cost effective method of deploying a DR plan for communications. Flexibility of deployment Historically, voice communications infrastructure has been deployed on a node-by-node basis. This means each branch office or location would have its own PBX, voic and set of features. As organizations migrate to IP-based communications, they often replicate the deployment model; however, this does limit the flexibility of deployment. A traditional voice premise system, whether it is a TDM or IP-based solution, typically makes it difficult to distribute collaboration applications to a group of users outside of a specific location, so migrating to the application must be done location-by-location. This can be problematic if department personnel are located in different offices, parts of the country or regions of the globe. Considering organizations are trending toward more geographic diversity, this becomes even more of a problem. When you take into account integration with messaging platforms such as , or other business applications, these isolated and voice-centric solutions become inhibitors to collaborative services. For example, an organization may have a highly distributed sales force that requires a collaborative application, such as Web conferencing. With a premise-based solution, the long rollout process would mean some of the sales force would be using the new tool and some would not, creating an inconsistent tool kit for any particular sales person. A hosted solution provides the ultimate deployment flexibility. The solution can reach any worker, in any location, on any device over all networks. This means the deployment strategy will not need to be structured around technology limitations. Instead the company can deploy whichever applications will benefit the business most to whatever group of users they choose, when they desire. Centralize management functions and administrative tasks One of the more difficult challenges in managing any kind of premise-based application is scaling management functions and administrative tasks. These are tasks such as setting up new users, making changes to user profiles, updating features, application software patches and many other tasks. Exhibit 2 shows the lifecycle of UCC management. A premise-based solution may require many tasks be repeated a number of times depending on the architecture. For example, applying a patch to the system in 10 locations could mean doing that specific task 10 times. This significantly increases

5 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 5 the chance of human error or misconfiguration; let alone time and resources. ZK Research shows human error accounts for 37 percent of network downtime, the largest component. Much of this is from repeating a task very quickly on deadline. Another difficulty is managing client software. If the user s application is local to the endpoint, each end point may need to be upgraded to enable a new feature. This is why some organizations spend months going through software upgrades and often pass on minor upgrades. The administrative burden outweighs the productivity benefits. With a hosted solution, administrative and management tasks are centralized, so the administrator can perform a task once and have confidence the result will be complete companywide. In addition, because hosted solutions often use a Web browser for the user interface, the need to upgrade the user device is minimized. Centralization of management and administrative tasks can save companies hundreds of hours of time over the traditional distributed model. Exhibit 2: The UCC Management Lifecycle Source: ZK Research, 2012 Faster deployment and quicker time-to-market The legacy, distributed deployment model means organizations could spend months rolling out new applications or feature upgrades to its user base. IT would need to load the new feature set to each location, and then test on an individual basis. With a hosted solution, the new feature or app can be made available to the company as soon as the service provider makes it available, allowing the organization to deploy it on their own schedule. Ultimately the organization can be as aggressive as it wants to be, responding to competitive pressures and customer demand almost overnight. Extended the solution to the extended enterprise To say today s workforce is highly distributed is a huge understatement. ZK Research estimates that over 75 percent of workers today reside outside of the corporate headquarters. More and more, workers are collaborating with an extended enterprise that includes not only branch workers but mobile workers, home-based employees, business partners, customers and anyone else in the company s supply or demand chain.

6 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 6 This means communications and collaboration services must reach individuals whether at home, in an airport, branch office or at another company. Legacy communications tools require remote access clients, VPN software, specialty tools and an administrator to manage all of this. A hosted solution can reach any individual no matter where they are and give that person a quality, consistent experience. This means companies that choose a hosted application can deploy collaborative applications to any user immediately, no matter where they are, even if the individuals are outside traditional corporate walls. Better meet the demands of consumerization and device evolution The world of mobile and consumer devices has absolutely exploded. Five years ago a technically savvy user carried a company-issued laptop, typically running Windows and a corporate mobile phone. IT had tight control over these devices and was able to manage the user experience because of the limited variety of end points. User experience could be managed because all users had a standardized set of devices and operating systems. Today the business world is entirely different. It s possible that a user today could have a laptop, two smart phones and a tablet, and augment with other devices such as a netbook. ZK Research shows tablets have reached 12 percent penetration of all corporate workers, which is staggering considering the first tablet came to market in A significant challenge for IT is to enable the same set of applications across devices with different operating systems IT does not control. Adding to the challenge is that consumer devices have a replacement cycle of 18 to 24 months vs. corporate devices with 30 to 36 months. Even if IT could solve this problem today, it would face a migration challenge to a new set of devices in 18 months. The only way to solve this challenge is to push applications into the cloud using a hosted service. The hosted service can deliver any application to any device and let the user switch devices at their leisure. A hosted solution is by far the most scalable, cost-effective way of meeting the challenges of consumerization. Better use of corporate budgets A hosted UCC solution provides many cost advantages over premise-based solutions. Organizations that use a hosted solution will realize the following monetary benefits: Lower budget barrier to entry: There is no upfront capital outlay for a hosted solution. An organization can get started with deployment immediately instead of having to find a large budget to purchase new call servers, application software, client software and infrastructure. Budget planning: A hosted solution allows the company to budget more accurately than a CPE-based solution, since the subscription model provides spend that is predictable and easy to calculate. This has many ongoing advantages, since the monthly spend is much more consistent compared to CPE solutions Lower overall TCO than traditional deployments: A hosted solution is less costly to run without the upfront capital investment. The migration of a business application to an SaaS solution is typically 30 percent to 40 percent lower over a five-year period. Risk free deployment; no rip and replace Migrating from a legacy communications infrastructure to a robust collaboration solution can be an expensive, risky process. Organizations are faced with the daunting challenge of having to rip out the old technology and replace it quickly with new infrastructure to minimize user downtime. This is often followed by long troubleshooting periods, as IT must understand what functionality isn t working and how to quickly fix the issue. Juxtapose this with a hosted solution, where IT can enable new functionality immediately and run solutions in a parallel, hybrid environment if they choose, with a very low upfront investment. The company can gather best practices and see the productivity and cost benefits of the hybrid mode before rolling the solution out to the entire organization. The hosted solution permits a risk-free migration path at a pace the organization is comfortable with. IT agility True business agility can only be achieved when the IT solutions are also agile. CIOs and IT executives must be able to respond to line-of-business leaders faster and with projects completed on time for organizations to meet broader business goals. ZK Research shows 90 percent of IT projects are delivered late or cancelled altogether, which can have a tremendously negative ripple effect.

7 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 7 Nowhere is the need for agility addressed better than with UC. A robust UCC solution allows companies to streamline business process and create new ones that provide information to more workers and customers faster and more accurately. A hosted solution provides a stable, rock-solid UCC foundation for CIOs to respond to corporate leaders immediately and deliver projects on time. Instead of having to say no or not yet, a hosted solution allows the CIO to say yes, and the company can have the solution when required. Faster technology upgrades Legacy communications technology had long periods between upgrades. This is because most changes were done on hardware and required board changes and other hardware maintenance. UCC uses an almost purely software-based model, where the rate of change is much faster that with hardwaredriven solutions. Enhancements often come several times per year vs. once every several years. Upgrading the feature set and ensuring all users have the latest and greatest enhancements can be time consuming with CPE-based solutions, since every location may need to be visited to make these changes. If the change is significant enough, the underlying hardware may also need to be changed (more processor, memory, etc.). A hosted UCC solution can deliver new features as soon as they are made available. This ensures the business is never at a competitive disadvantage. A solution delivered via a hosted model allows the enterprise to start enjoying the benefits immediately without putting the business at risk. These reasons to migrate to a hosted solution can bring all of the promise of UCC while addressing the many of the current barriers to deployment (see Exhibit 3). Exhibit 3: Barriers to Deploying UCC Within an Organization Question: What are the top barriers to UC in your organization? n=1098 Lack of UC expertise 45% Vendor interoperability Unclear ROI 38% 41% Higher operating costs 25% Budget constraints 19% Lack of user demand 12% Source: ZK Research, 2012 Bridge the operation skills gap UCC applications such as videoconferencing, instant messenger and mobility may be new to many IT organizations. This is one reason the no. 1 barrier to deployment of UCC is lack of UC expertise (see Exhibit 3). A hosted model is the best way for companies to start enjoying the benefits of UCC today without having to put the IT department through extensive training. The operational skills gap can be bridged through a hosted model, as much of the complexity is pushed into the cloud. Section IV: Finding the Right Solution Provider Over the next few years, the number of hosted UCC solutions will explode and enterprise decisionmakers will have many choices to make. However, not all solutions are equal, and evaluators must understand the key decision criteria. The following should be used as a guide to help those tasked with choosing a solution provider for their company s UCC needs.

8 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 8 Built on a nationwide IP network The quality and reliability of UCC services is highly dependent on the underlying network. An end-to-end IP network means the communication session will maintain state, can be dynamically moved if need be and can have optimization features such as QoS applied as needed. A robust, underlying IP network will deliver UCC services that are more reliable and higher quality than services deployed on a legacy, circuit-switched network. The underlying network is one of the most important components of UCC and IT decisionmakers should use a network that was built for the era of IP communications instead of a legacy network. Breadth of solutions UCC is a very broad market category. Many solution providers use the term, but offer only a very small portion of what an organization needs to build a collaboration strategy. At a minimum the solution should provide basic UC functions such as voice and Web conferencing and chat, but also areas like videoconferencing, telepresence and other emerging collaborative applications. Additionally, the service provider should have a robust SIP trunking footprint to extend the IP capabilities to the cloud. With the cloud quickly maturing as a service, IT can also benefit from the experience of a service provider that already integrates UCC within its cloud to other hosted services such as and workflow collaboration platforms. Flexible in migration and deployment There is no single right path to deploy UCC. Each company should feel free to migrate to UCC at their own pace using whatever strategy meets the goals of the business best. The service provider needs to support whatever migratory approach is best for the customer instead of dictating how the deployment should be done. Geographic coverage Every organization, no matter how large or small, has plans to grow. A service provider that meets your needs today may not work in the future as the company expands. Additionally, it s common today to work with an extended enterprise located all across the country. The solution provider needs the ability to deliver service nationwide, which will allow the service to scale as the business does. Highly secure solution Pushing any application into the network can give IT and business leaders cause for concern due to the risk of a security breach. Choose a UCC solution provider with a level of security comparable to your own firm. This may require an audit of security practices at the solution provider, but this should alleviate any concerns. Additionally, choosing a provider that owns its own network will give an extra level of security since traffic will not traverse any public networks. It s incumbent on the service provider to be able to offer the highest level of security any customer may request rather than requiring the organization to compromise its needs. Robust management interface When evaluating the functionality of services, look past the UCC applications and into the administrator interface. Does the solution allow IT to self-manage the environment by doing moves, ads and changes? How easily can new service be provisioned? Can you manage by user or by group? Ensure all of the management tasks needed to manage the day-today operations are available. Referenceable customer base When it comes to UCC, experience matters. Choose a solution provider with a robust list of referenceable customers across various company sizes and verticals. Before you make any decision, take the time to discuss with some of these customers the experience they had and how the ongoing service has performed. History and experience is the best indicator of how smooth and pain-free the deployment at your company will be. Quality customer service UCC service does not stop once the solution is deployed. Once the solution is rolled out into a production environment, issues will arise as workers learn to use the tools, and unforeseen circumstances may impact the quality of service. Choose a solution provider with the highest levels of customer care. Understand how the organization measures customer service and ask to see the results. Quality post-sales support will ensure minimal interruption and fast problem resolution.

9 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 9 Section V: Conclusion and Recommendations UCC has the power to change the way work is done today, streamline business processes and raise corporate productivity to new levels all at a dramatically lower cost than traditional communications methods. However, there are many significant barriers that prevent companies from being more aggressive with their collaboration deployments, meaning the company isn t realizing the full potential of UCC as fast as they could be. A hosted UCC service can help companies deploy UCC to more workers in more places faster and cheaper than with traditional premise-based solutions. To help IT executives get started, ZK Research recommends the following: Consider a hosted UCC solution to at least augment your current deployment: The hosted solutions available today are significantly different than the solutions of a few years ago, or even the single premise-based non-uc services like legacy IP Centrex. Today s hosted solutions are at feature parity with premisebased solutions and should be considered a viable option. Evaluate at least three hosted UCC solutions: The market is still developing and evaluators should not make a decision based purely on incumbency. Evaluate three service providers, which include checking with reference clients to validate the solution provider s claims. Remember the network when making the decision: The quality of the underlying network will be one of the most important components of the quality of the service the workers will experience. Use a service tied to a network designed for this era of communications. IP communications will be the norm and a legacy layer-2 network will not meet long-term communication challenges. Start the deployment with a small, controlled pilot group: Learn best practices, calculate the productivity benefits and cost savings with this group and use these metrics to justify a larger deployment. The barrier to entry is low, so there s no reason to not get started immediately. : A Division of Kerravala Consulting All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the express prior permission of ZK Research is expressly prohibited. For questions, comments or further information, zeus@zkresearch.com.

10 Hosted Unified Communications and Collaboration will Accelerate Adoption 10 About EarthLink EarthLink, Inc. (NASDAQ: ELNK) is a leading IT services, network and communications provider to more than 150,000 businesses and over one million consumers nationwide. EarthLink empowers customers with managed IT services including cloud computing, data centers, virtualization, security, applications and support services, in addition to nationwide data and voice IP services. The company operates an extensive network including 28,000 route fiber miles, 90 metro fiber rings and 4 secure data centers providing ubiquitous IP coverage across more than 90 percent of the country. Founded in 1994, the company's award-winning reputation for both outstanding service and product innovation is supported by an experienced team of professionals focused on best-in-class customer care. For more information, visit EarthLink's website : A Division of Kerravala Consulting All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the express prior permission of ZK Research is expressly prohibited. For questions, comments or further information, zeus@zkresearch.com.