Choosing the Right Deployment Model for Your Small Business UC

How to deploy Unified Communications in your company

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ChooseDeploymentUC
Unified Communications

Published: March 6, 2018

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Not so long ago, companies didn’t have a lot of options available to them when it came to deploying their communication systems. The traditional PBX deployment model required significant upfront investment – a process which placed all the risk of a new communication system on the buyer. After all, if you bought and installed a new PBX that didn’t work out, you risked:

  • Harming your reputation
  • Reducing your options for scalability
  • Minimising your agility and future business growth

The good news is, that cloud communications takes a much less terrifying approach to deployment. Purchasing and installing a new cloud-based UC model is far cheaper because there’s much less hardware involved. What’s more, if you decide you want to switch providers, you simply cancel your subscription and move elsewhere.

The Cloud UC Deployment Models

The Unified Communications as a Service (/unified-communications/ucaas) model is an agile, efficient, and cost-effective solution for small businesses who want to evolve fast and access the latest technology instantly. However, since every small business is different, there are multiple paths to cloud communications. For instance:

1.     Public Cloud Deployment

UC deployment on the public cloud is the most popular, and easy-to-implement model for many small to mid-sized businesses. You can choose your public cloud service on a per-month, per-user basis, and combine your strategy with private connections to ensure the security of your brand.

Many public cloud solutions for UC include various contact centre features, along with the opportunity to integrate with popular business applications. Additionally, you can add private networking features to the mix if you’re concerned about data protection.

2.     Private Cloud Deployment

The private cloud deployment model is rarely the preferred option for smaller companies because a private cloud is much more expensive to own. With a private cloud, you don’t share your resources with anyone, which means that you have complete freedom over your UC network. However, most small companies simply don’t need this amount of computing space.

Although private cloud deployments can seem like the best option for those concerned about security, there are plenty of tools and resources out there that can keep you safe in the public cloud too.

3.     Hybrid Cloud

Finally, the hybrid cloud may be the ideal option for any business, large or small that has existing on-premises communication hardware to work with. If you’ve already invested in legacy PBX solutions for your organisation, then the chances are that you don’t have the money to waste on completely replacing that investment.

A hybrid cloud solution allows you to access all the scalability, and agility benefits of the cloud, without completely replacing your legacy systems. Many modern organisations are using the hybrid strategy to make the transition from on-premises to the cloud in a simple, more natural way – choosing a time and pace that suits them.

Importantly, a hybrid cloud strategy doesn’t have to be a transition strategy to take a company from on-premise into the cloud. There are still some small businesses out there who have no plans of changing their mix of on-premises and cloud communication services. A hybrid service can deliver resiliency, convenience, and innovation for the long-term.

 

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