Unified Communications & Collaboration

Prefer to read? Check out the webinar summary post on our blog. We've also edited the transcript of this webinar into the topics below. Click to read more about the topics that interest you:

• What Is Unified Communications? 
• Architecture & Design
• Compliance & Security 
• Employee & Customer Experience 
• Innovative Technology & Automatic Updates 
• Disaster Recovery 
• Cost of Unified Communications

What Is Unified Communications? 

Unified Communications (UC) is more than simply a business phone system. To truly unify your communications strategy, your phone system has to do more than just phone calls. 

Unified Communications includes transcribed voicemails, instant messaging, collaboration, meetings and presence. It means you have unlimited long distance calling and unlimited local calling to anywhere in the United States. And I rarely go through a presentation or a demo with a customer that doesn't have some faxing in their solution today. Analytics and call reporting are built in right out of the box. In a communications platform that is truly unified, all those elements are built in. 

The mobile applications are fantastic on Unified Communications solutions. Whether you're working from an iOS phone or Android phone or tablet, your desktop or laptop computer, you can literally work wherever, whenever and however you want to from nearly any device. 

My coworkers are probably tired of hearing me saying it, but I say it all the time: UC is like Prego. Everything's in the sauce. You don't have to ever buy extra stuff to get feature functionality. That's what I mean when I say truly unified communications. 

With cloud-based Unified Communications, also called UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), you don’t need VPN, you don’t need old-school MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) networks. There are organizations out there that have global MPLS networks with the sole purpose of running their voice applications. All that complexity and all of those extra costs can be eliminated with UCaaS, because in the cloud, your user is basically going to authenticate to the closest data center. That's going to provide them with the best possible service without the complexity of the VPN and extra networking. It's literally plug and play. We're doing it all in one application, one desktop app. 

Unified Communications brings it all together, so you have a single tool set to be able to communicate the way you need, from internal communications to a contact center, all within the same application. Unified Communications features include:

• Voice Services 
  • Unlimited Calling 
  • Unlimited Long Distance to United States and Canada 
  • Voicemail with Transcription 
• Instant Messaging 
• Team Collaboration 
• Meetings & Presence 
• SMS/MMS (Texting) Services 
• Audio/Web/Video Conferencing Solutions 
• Easy-to-Use Mobile Applications 
• Faxing (yes, it’s still a thing) 
• Reporting & Analytics 
• Call Recording 
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response) 
• We go deeper into Unified Communications features on this page

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Architecture & Design 

I’m an old networking phone geek, so I get excited about phone system architecture and design. What does on-site, also called on-premise, phone system architecture look like?  

An overview of on-site phone system architecture 

In a large organization, you’d have call control and a server for instant messaging and presence features. You may have a collaboration server or you might be using an add-on meeting product, such as Zoom or WebEx or GoToMeeting. Then you have a UC application server. Many different parts. In a small or medium business (SMB) many of these things may be in a virtual machine. You may have a primary server, then add different boxes for the amount of capacity that you need for the dial tone. If you have multiple sites with on-site architecture, you probably have an MPLS to support that. You’ve got older technology that comes usually at a higher cost per meg for bandwidth than you would get if you went with redundant internet pipes and SD-WAN. Then, you need that box to terminate to your PRI or analog lines. 

The point is you have all these different boxes that are on-site that you have to maintain and manage and support. Even though they’re paid for, you’re going to have hardware refreshes and end-of life operating systems to migrate. When you do, you’ll need to call someone to sit up all night or all weekend to complete the project. 

In another example of an on-site architecture, they have virtualized everything to keep it in one box. In this example, you’d have one server for voicemail, UC applications, etc. It’s still on-site, still behind the firewall, still in the virtual machine. If you want to have redundancy, you’re going to have to buy two of these servers and replicate that on one site, which isn’t a great disaster recovery strategy. Or you could put these on multiple sites and then you're going to have to provide the connectivity to make sure those sites are always up so that those servers can replicate and keep you in business. Keeping in mind as we move ahead, all this gear is in your rack. It's in your building. It's for you to maintain support and upgrade.  

One of the things that we like to talk about with that is operating systems with onsite servers, you have the potential where you have to turn off automatic updates on those servers, because the manufacturer may not have blessed that latest Microsoft patch for their server operating system to work with the phone system software. What happens then if Microsoft pushes out a critical security patch that your phone system company or vendor hasn't blessed yet? You've kind of got a conundrum. You want to upgrade the server and patch it but that might break something on your phone system. Those are all the types of things that we remove when we move to the cloud. 

Simplify everything with cloud architecture in UCaaS 

All of the complications I listed go on in the cloud behind the scenes, so your organization doesn't have to worry about them. The cloud has geographically-redundant data centers around the country and around the world. Everything has multiple carriers, multiple tunnels, multiple paths to get everything. UCaaS, because it’s cloud-based, offers complexity, redundancy and it does literally everything you need your phone system to do. But here's the difference between UCaaS and on-premise: the cloud has much less for you to maintain. All you need to maintain in cloud architecture is the phone itself. You have all this awesome stuff going on in the background. You have even more reliability and redundancy than you have in this scenario because you do have multiple carrier session border controllers, multiple call controllers, multiple data storage options; everything's replicated over and over and over again, but on your premise, all you have is a phone. With the cloud, you're not worrying about any of that equipment anymore. Instead, your only focus is a phone and you have a simple monthly operating expense that's predictable. You know how much the system is going to cost over time and you get a phone.  

You could use a soft phone on your laptop or you could use your mobile phone. You could use a desk phone. You can switch between devices, even having a headset that’s connected to two devices. Or just use the app on mobile. The mobile apps are absolutely fantastic. So you can work from the laptop, work from the phone. You can work wherever, whenever, however you want from literally whatever device you have. This actually plays well into the disaster recovery conversation that we're going to have a little bit as well.

The great thing about this is that you can make calls from that mobile device and it's coming from your work phone number. You can do text messaging; you can send SMS text messages to people. It's all coming from that work phone number. You never have to give out your private or personal information, even if you're using your private personal cell phone. It’s truly BYOD — bring your own device — when you move into the cloud.  

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Compliance & Security 

Onto the hot topics of compliance and security. Loffler, as a security company, is hearing about a lot of hacking and breaches going on, especially now. The companies that get attacked don't make the news, but it's happening a lot. Yesterday I was in a meeting, they said 80% of all the hacking and bad deeds going on are in that SMB space. Why? Because they're not usually as defended as well as larger organizations, and they just don't make the news. 

UCaaS solutions are HIPAA compliant, Gramm–Leach–Bliley, Sarbanes–Oxley, GDPR, PCI and many more. Everything is locked down, certified and compliant with UCaaS. This means you know your data is encrypted, whether it’s in transit or at rest. Enhanced security in the cloud includes: 

• Secure WebRTC 
• TLS Signaling 
• Multiple layers of encryption to protect data in transit 
• AES-256 at rest 
• Account level encryption keys 
• Server and client use a combination of 2048-bit asymmetric encryption (RSA) for communication and 256-bit symmetric encryption (AES) for sensitive data 
• All communication is over HTTPS secured by TLS, and is locked down to a specific session 
• Passwords are stored server-side, hashed and salted, using an adaptive function with multiple rekeying rounds. 
• Multi-factor authentication 

No matter where you are when you log into that endpoint, no matter where you’re working from, that’s going to create that secure tunnel back to the data center before it starts to talk. You know that all of your data is secure and you don't have to be the one to worry about that anymore. You don't have to worry about setting up your VPN tunnels for all those remote workers to be able to dial back into headquarters.  

If you currently handle all the security on that data, what happens if you get hacked or something happens in your environment? Is there sensitive data in there that could be let out? With cloud Unified Communications, all that is taken off your plate. All of that is put into these data centers and these cloud providers’ lap.  

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Customer & Employee Experience 

Alright so next up, the improved customer and employee experience you’ll see with UC and the cloud. We could sit here and list benefits of not only cloud-based UC, but UC in general, for hours. I’m going to go over 12 key benefits to the end user experience that people are usually wanting. Some of these may apply to your internal customer – your employees – while others may apply to your external customers – clients, users, members, etc. The most important thing to remember is that these benefits are all available together, integrated in one application: 

1. All communications in a single, easy-to-use application 
2. Work from anywhere on any device
3. Less email and more real-time interaction 
4. Instant video calling to collaborate 
5. Team collaborative messaging 
6. Always up-to-date company directory
7. Automate customers to the right person, faster
8. Improve call transferring by seeing who's available now
9. Remove geographical borders
10. Function as one by routing calls to multiple lines

Read more about user experience benefits in this post.

In the on-premise phone system, all these things are possible. You can absolutely make them happen. But it typically takes more hardware and more licensing. Maybe more bandwidth and more dial tone, all of which has to be thought of when you're doing that expansion. In the cloud, everything is built into one easy-to-use application. 

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Innovative Technology & Automatic Updates 

One of the things that clients like about UCaaS is that the software is always up to date. You always have the latest and greatest tech, and you don't have to work overnight to get a system upgraded. Updates are a click away. No more overnights, no more weekends. You don’t risk issues where maybe the port doesn't go through, so you're waiting on the phone with AT&T all night long. Or you spend an entire weekend updating the system or spending literally months to plan a migration from software A to software B, which can be a huge process for larger organizations.  

In the cloud, because you don't have to worry about the servers in the background or any of the hardware or any of the capacities, you don't have to worry about putting any kind of capacity in your VMware farms. Your upgrade process and the cloud is as simple as getting a notification that asks if you want to update the software. You confirm the update, and it does it silently in the background. When it's done, you get another pop-up that asks whether you want to restart your software. You’re not on the phone, so you confirm the restart, and it’s literally back up in less than 20 seconds. And what's really nice is it'll actually give you a pop up on the screen that lists all the stuff that we've improved in this software update. The new tools, the new toys, what’s been fixed; it’s like an instant training. It teaches you how to do the new stuff as well, right there in real-time. 

And by the way, you don't need to have admin rights to make these updates happen in most of the providers. You click it, it upgrades. You're good to go. And you don't have to give up admin rights for that PC or Mac.

I love the fact that I am always on the latest, greatest software. So when you’re talking again about total cost of ownership, you're not worried about hardware refreshes every five years. You're not worried about software going on end of life. All of that burden is off your shoulders. It's one click, and you've got the latest and greatest software. 

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Disaster Recovery  

This is a pretty hot topic in the world that we're in right now. What happens when everybody has to go home? Or what happens if you have a catastrophic event at a building? It's on fire or something happens, a gas leak, for example, and you've got to get people out of the building, but you still need to be productive, you still need to work. 

With the cloud, you just add internet. Because this your mobile device is always online, if somebody calls my direct dial number, it's going to ring that app. Even if your building is completely unavailable, all calls still route to mobile phones, and you still have instant messaging, team collaborative messaging, audio web video meetings. Everything is in the palm of your hand. Just add internet. With the mobile tools that you have, you can work from a laptop. Often, I just use the hotspot on my phone for my laptop and I'm in business, whether I'm at an airport or out to dinner or at home. I have full access to do my entire job right there from the palm of my hand, as long as I've got an internet connection.  

If you're in your building and the power goes out. It's down. A lot of folks are working on laptops. There's a battery on that. Get some Wi-Fi from the next building over from your phone, and you're still working. You're still taking and making calls, collaborating, video conferencing; you're doing everything you needed to do again, because all those tools are in the palm of your hand. You can even take your desk phone, unplug it, go home, plug it into a network cable at home, and now you can even have your desk phone at home. It’s plug and play with no additional configuration or work required like you would have on an on-site system to VPN back yet.

There are so many ways in the cloud for you to avoid any sort of disaster scenario because you can work from anywhere with any device. So, heck, the building goes away. You can go work on the beach in Florida.  

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Cost of Unified Communications

Cost is always a hot topic, because we all want to minimize capital expense.  

Many organizations with an on-premise phone system believe that because they own their system, and the cost has already been depreciated, that their phone system is free. Why, then, would they move to a cloud-based phone system where they’re paying every month? 

Many don’t realize all the ancillary costs that go along with that on-premise phone system once it is “paid for” can really add up. Even though a phone system is paid for, you still have costs associated with maintaining it, including: 

• Digital and Analog Phone Lines  
• Maintenance Contracts 
• Software Assurance Contracts 
• Online Meeting Software 
• Hardware Replacement Costs 
• Upgrades 
• Power, Cooling and Rack Space 
• Break/Fix Labor 
• eFax or other Analog Fax Lines 
• Server Licensing and Virtualization
• Redundancy and Disaster Recovery 
• Cost and Complexity of Adding Additional Features 

There’s a tremendous amount of complexity that's going into on-premise phone systems. That is no longer needed with UCaaS in the cloud, because everything's unlimited. Unlimited calling, unlimited long distance, you have huge conference bridges that will support 100 people on audio, web and video. That can grow bigger if you needed to, but again, it's all just in there for you. We have a post where we dive into real-world UC cost examples for both on-premise and UCaaS phone systems that helps to illustrate pricing for both types of UC systems. 

Let’s assume you're going with a new on-premise phone system with 100 users. That's probably going to be a $70,000 bill. That can go away with the cloud, and then your monthly expenses are probably going to be very similar. We can almost always make a financial case to move a phone system to the cloud. The upfront cost is going to involve implementation, training and project management to get your system going. The cost of entry for a cloud-based phone system can be extremely low depending on your situation. The monthly expense may be very similar to what you'd see in an on-premise system (again, take a look at our post about UC costs). And that is why I want to have this conversation with people because a lot of people that have that mentality that their phone system is paid for and the cloud is going to cost 10 times more over the next 10 years. Well, not when you look at all the other things that go along with your on-premise system. 

In the cloud, you have a predictable, repeatable operating cost. You know what a seat costs with taxes and fees. You know the total monthly cost to add an employee from a communications perspective. So if you're looking at just collaboration and communications as part of that cost of hiring that new person you know exactly what that is. You don't have to call to get a quote for another seat. You don't have to worry about whether there are ports available on your phone system or whether there's capacity. We can scale one phone system from one seat to 100,000 seats with minimal effort. 

Interested to learn more about Unified Communications, UCaaS and how these solutions can be applied in your organization? Learn more and contact an expert at Loffler today:

Unified Communications & Cloud Solutions

Read More: Unified Communications: All Your Communications Tools in One Fully-Unified Platform