There are moments in human history that define a generation. Tectonic shifts can happen in a flash. Then came COVID.
Welcome to the Pandemic Generation
Perhaps no other event in the past century had so suddenly appeared with a so sudden devastating impact. We all lived it, and it was no fun.
So, take solace in John Lennon's verse, "There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be..."
Today, remote and hybrid work is a fixture of life. And Zoom, Webex and Microsoft Teams have become household names. And the legacy of the pandemic rolls on.
When COVID came, what might have been a gradual shift to cloud-based operations became a frantic scramble. Companies that were once in-house suddenly faced the complex tasks of how to move entire on-premise systems to the cloud.
The Legacy of The Pandemic Spawned More Legacy PBX
For many companies that leapt to the cloud, there remains a complex and thorny set of technical issues called on-premise PBX systems. Voice is one of the most complex parts of a company network infrastructure.
Though it might be a small percentage of their entire infrastructure, on-premise PBX systems remain a befuddling set of problems for IT managers.
"The pandemic forced many enterprises to shift to Microsoft Teams in a big hurry," said Jared Cullop, Director of Business Development at Continuant. "In the rush to get their employees to a remote setting, they left their PBX systems as something they'd deal with down the road,” he explained.
PBX Legacy Systems: Where Do We Go from Here?
The notion of complexity is hardly new, especially in the technology industry, where complexity is an almost natural evolution.
What's complex can be a headache, something to be ignored - for a while - until it needs maintenance, repair or upgrading. And ignoring the complex doesn't magically make it disappear - or transform it into something simple.
So, when an IT manager wants to upgrade the company PBX system to the cloud, she's dealing with a legacy of complex voice systems.
"And it's not simple. It's never simple," Cullop said . "Because there are a lot of seams and streams to consider when you’re going for a seamless and streamlined enterprise UC ecosystem. For example, deploying and managing Teams Phone Direct Routing is no small feat which is why many large organizations go the "as a service" route."
