Analysts like Frost & Sullivan have forecast 50 million fully integrated UC users by 2015 compared with today’s two million users (source: Frost & Sullivan March 2010).
Migrating to UC presents challenges and managed service providers (MSPs) are exploring how they could help their clients and add value to how UC is deployed and managed. But some commentators have questioned whether MSPs will be brave enough to take responsibility for ensuring dial tone services.
Certainly there are challenges but we believe MSPs are well placed to assist in migration to UC if they take the right steps. Indeed several are already providing solutions as they find businesses do not want to manage IP telephony themselves.
UC models
There are two MSP UC models. In the first, UC equipment is installed in the customer’s premises and remotely managed by the MSP. The other involves the MSP hosting the entire UC solution. The former has been more common but the latter has the potential to deliver the greatest benefits to both the client and the MSP.
From the client’s perspective, more of the risk and technical burden is assumed by the MSP, while the MSP benefits from the economies of scale of managing UC services centrally. Many MSPs are acting as system integrators on UC projects and getting the slimmest of margins on kit sales. So any opportunity to turn a client relationship into a longer term service contract has a strong appeal.
In many ways hosted UC is a return to an old concept called Centrex that was popular elsewhere in Europe though less so in the UK. Now it seems UK businesses could be happier about their phone system being hosted entirely off-site.
Key to MSPs offering hosted UC solutions will be availability of multi-tenanted UC equipment that can scale to support many different customers. And vendors like Microsoft and Cisco are beginning to respond with products that look fit for purpose.
Automating processes is critical because this significantly cuts the cost of managing the infrastructure. Some of these savings can be passed onto clients while also supporting a wider margin for the MSP.
Close management of a UC infrastructure for a client will be what makes or breaks a service. Any loss of dial tone can have a fatal effect on a contract. Having in place systems that monitor and resolve issues 24/7 is essential especially when a UC implementation goes live.
Automation
The experience of voice system managers is that they can get flooded with support calls that are time consuming to resolve. One characteristic problem with UC implementations is how an issue can be extremely transient; it appears and disappears in almost the blink of an eye, making it difficult to get to the root cause and apply an effective remedy before it gets out of control.
Automated processes to both monitoring and managing the system are attractive because they can absorb these support pressures and reduce workloads considerably. For an MSP this also makes it easier to support more hosted UC clients within a multi-tenanted hosted solution.
Unified Communications can be part of the MSP service mix. MSPs will discover that there is a real demand from end users to pass over responsibility for managing part or all of the system. The challenge will be having the right infrastructure in place to meet clients’ high expectations on support levels. Automation of application management therefore has a major role to play in how MSPs assume greater and wider responsibility for helping businesses embrace the opportunities presented by UC.
