All over the world, companies are rapidly transitioning to more flexible solutions for communications and collaboration. As the traditional PBX becomes increasingly unsuitable for a landscape of omnichannel, anywhere communications, “Unified Communications” solutions are gaining steam.
The market for Unified Communications is set to reach a value of around $385.21 billion by 2030, thanks to unprecedented growth. Unfortunately, transitioning into the ideal UC environment isn’t without its challenges.
Today, countless companies are transitioning into the Microsoft Teams landscape to enhance their communication stack. Though these companies already have the ideal UC solution in mind, they still need to manage the migration process from their existing communication ecosystem.
Whether companies are shifting into the UC environment for the first time or moving their services to a new vendor, there are various migratory issues to overcome. The process of discovery and migration involved in a UC strategy can be time-consuming, stressful, and even expensive in some cases. Fortunately, there are ways to make the transition smoother.
Bill Dellara, VP of Product at VOSS Solutions, said: “Managing a UC migration process can be complex and costly. Large parts of the migration are often manual and run over a long period, which consume technical resources.
“There is a risk of human error and data slippage, and a tricky period, mid-migration, where the UC data needs to be maintained in two places at once. Companies are increasingly looking to UC migration solutions that provide a single view across all systems – old and new – during the transition. And. there is a growing need to automate the transfer of UC services to the new platform in a predictable and streamlined way.
“This is where VOSS can help. We have been automating large UC migration projects for companies around the world for many years. As a result, our customers can harness a more efficient process, while achieving faster time to benefits and a better user experience.”
The Challenges of UC Discovery and Migration
The first step in developing an effective strategy for UC Discovery and Migration is understanding the challenges you might face. While the migratory process can vary for each company, depending on their existing communication platforms and change management structure, some of the key issues businesses need to overcome include deciding how to:
- Audit and analyse existing setups, configurations, and usage data
- Collect and manage the data inventory for each user, server, and device
- Extract, review, and map the migration process including highlighting any feature gaps
- Automate repetitive and complex tasks in the migration strategy
- Manage complex issues like multi-vendor migrations and on-premises to cloud transitions
- Apply transformational changes during a migration
- Make mass MACD changes to existing data (e.g., site moves, dial plan updates etc.)
Here are some critical steps companies can take to simplify and accelerate migration.
Step 1: Explore Your Existing Environment
The first step in any effective migration process is discovery. Once businesses know which UC environment they want to move to, such as Microsoft Teams, they need to assess their existing PBX configuration to determine how exactly they will transition.
Assessing the existing environment carefully is the first step in understanding what features need to be migrated, what may need to be changed, and what kind of challenges may be faced along the way. Users will need to know the following:
What the existing PBX environment includes
How many users, services, devices, and numbers need to be migrated
Whether there are any gaps between the current configuration and the new system
Some innovators in the UC space already offer solutions to assist with this process. For instance, the VOSS Migrate service provides companies access to a sophisticated three-stage migration strategy, starting with the discovery process.
The “Discover” section of the solution provides a comprehensive insight into the existing communication setup and how it can be migrated into leading tools like Microsoft Teams. The Discover “Plus” plan even comes with a planning workshop to get users started.
Step 2: Collect Crucial Data
Following an evaluation of the existing communication environment, companies need to start collecting the relevant data necessary to make the transition to their new UC environment as seamless as possible. Traditionally, this can be challenging for some organisations because many legacy tools and solutions can make it difficult to access essential information.
In the past, businesses have been forced to access and interrogate various command lines, codes and computerised scripts using time-consuming and labour-intensive processes. Collecting crucial information can be a much more direct experience using VOSS Discover.
The solution cleverly and intuitively automates the extraction of critical data from existing PBX systems and places it within a convenient internal database. The solution also produces easy-to-understand and highly visual dashboards with information about connectivity scale, capability, endpoint numbers, call traffic volumes, licensing conditions, and peak usage times.
The solution can even identify and remove redundant and outdated data, making the process of “validation” in the migration process far more straightforward.
Step 3: Create a Plan for Transformation
With access to the right data from all relevant PBX and communication systems, companies can begin to build a comprehensive transformation plan. They can use data systems and dashboards to determine what services need to be migrated, what licences are required, and whether any specific capability or feature gaps need to be addressed.
Organisations can use tools like VOSS Migrate to get a snapshot of what’s going on in the existing PBX system and the problem areas that might need extra attention during the migration process. This information can then be presented to a senior leadership team visually, making it easier for less-technical users to understand.
A comprehensive migration plan should include insights into the potential complexities and costs of the migration process so that companies can assign resources effectively. It should also highlight the same UC instance required to maintain feature parity.
Step 4: Engage a Migration Solution
Finally, once a map for transformation is in place, companies can engage with a migration service to streamline the process of moving into their new UC environment. For instance, the VOSS “Give Teams a Voice” package for migration provides companies with a fast, efficient process which doesn’t compromise on excellent customer experiences.
The package targets multi-site, complex, and large corporations with a high number of knowledge workers and a demand for rapid adoption. Following the discovery process, the VOSS Migration system uses advanced business logic, transformation rules, filters, and batch loading to streamline and automate various parts of the migration process.
The fast and error-free approach makes moving to a live service with minimal workplace disruptions quick and straightforward. Information and extracted data can be resynced rapidly while the demand on internal resources is kept to an absolute minimum.
Step 5: Review and Optimise
Finally, business leaders can review their migration, following a rapid cloud delivery process, using the migration services they’ve leveraged. VOSS offers a quick and secure process with auditing and roll-back capabilities, combined with ongoing review options for the configuration settings on Microsoft Teams. This allows businesses to optimise their new UC environment rapidly.
Using the complete kit of migration tools provided, business leaders can rapidly access day-to-day service management tools via a built-in portal, work alongside Microsoft Teams experts, and embed new solutions for automation, innovation, and transformation going forward.
