Business Considerations in Adopting Unified Communications as a Service
Now that we’re moving forward from the last couple of years, companies are moving into a new phase of optimism about growing revenue and technological advancement. Many companies, in line with the trend of their workers favoring the remote office, are interested in unified communications, especially the cloud-supported Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Read on to learn more about the benefits of UCaaS as well as what to consider in adoption and in choosing a provider.
Advantages of Unified Communications
With the surge in remote work of the last two years, integrating separate modes of communication (IP telephony, video and web conferencing and applications like CRM and file sharing) has become even more popular. Unified Communications, an internet-based way of provisioning computing resources, can bring together the various ways that workers communicate, allowing them to move back and forth between phone, email, and more. Your company can give its customers even more value by answering their questions quickly, and your employees can work even more flexibly. If a disaster occurs and your office is closed, phone and email traffic can be redirected so your company can still respond to customers. With Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), the provider handles the infrastructure and saves your business the cost of managing on-premise hardware and servers.
Questions to Ask a UCaaS Provider
With all the benefits that Unified Communications provides, adoption is a significant undertaking. Consider first the health of your computer network, if it has enough broadband and can support Unified Communications. Along with strength, your network should be secure, with the latest antivirus and anti-malware definitions and operating systems patches. Having software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) can help keep traffic moving quickly. Another concern is security of data; does your provider encrypt data both in transit and at rest? How secure are their data centers, and what features do the data centers have for maintenance of their systems? All of these are matters to consider when your company is considering Unified Communications.
Unified Communications, and Unified Communications as a Service, is an efficient, cost-effective way to keep your company connected to customers and vendors, and for your workers to communicate and collaborate. For more assistance in considering UC, contact your trusted Focalized Networks advisor today.