They say that history gets written by the winners, and in every situation there are winners and losers. As the world still reels from the global health crisis and its long-term economic impact, it’s clear that those enterprises who were already cloud-based were far more resilient to the forced changes that have so far defined 2020. And that going forward, we’ll see many permanent changes to the way we collaborate and do business.
As Patrick Joggerst, CMO & EVP Business Development at Ribbon Communications, reflected, “We’ve always talked to our customers about the benefits of cloud communication. You don’t want to be tied to communications gear sitting in a room someplace, it’s static, it’s not flexible. We know that many things can happen, like floods, earthquakes, fires, etc, so having the flexibility to get up and running immediately from a different location matters.”
“Now we see that on steroids, with COVID-19 — it’s hard to see things ever going back to being the way they were”
We’re still working from home, for now — or forever
Reflecting on a recent NY Times article about Barclays, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley having over 20,000 employees in Manhattan and all three saying publicly they can only see a fraction of those returning, it’s clear that the UC needs of enterprises will now be front and centre — and this is reflecting in demand for Ribbon Communications Kandy UCaaS and CPaaS, across a diverse range of areas and channels.
“One of our newest customers is Etisalat, the principal operator in the UAE,” Joggerst continued, “and they operate in 15 different countries in the Middle East and Africa. They launched what they’re calling Cloud Talk, which is based on our technology. It’s a private instance of Kandy UCaaS and CPaaS in the Emirates, and a couple of examples we’ve seen it in use for include virtual cabinet meetings — with Sheikh Mohammed, the Prime Minister of Dubai, the Prime Minister of the UAE. A solid example of communications technology being deployed at the highest level.
“And as the world adapts to a new normal, we’ll increasingly prioritise resilient network capacity, when thinking about where to locate our home-base. Reliable 5g may be a lot more valuable than proximity to an airport, for example.”
Building blocks of the WFH future
“From a telecoms industry standpoint, there are going to be a lot of lessons learned in terms of networking to the edge of the network and making sure that you’ve got an appropriately engineered fibre infrastructure to be able to handle bursts of bandwidth. There has to be enough capacity there” he added.
If the basics of connectivity are the first priority, then securing that compliantly is right behind it — and partnering with the right managed service provider is the simplest way to ensure that within any organisation.
But collaboration is not just internal, and next there’s a need to ensure robust collaboration capacity across networks, for long term business effectiveness. “One thing Ribbon has done, in response to the pandemic, is offer free licences for our session border controller SWe Lite, and our Smart Office collaboration rooms until the end of June”, Joggerst concluded.
Supporting home-based working for the long term does require a different approach to the immediate considerations of disaster recovery, but with the right UCaaS tools in place the necessary shifts will help all kinds of organisations thrive in the ‘new normal’ — and even if we’re still a long way from business as usual, business can still get done.
Smart organisations are using this transitional time to put in place strategies and applications which are location-independent, flexible, and resilient, to embrace whatever the future holds.
