When certain network communications providers began offering unified communications services for free or at a reduced cost this spring as a goodwill gesture to help businesses and public entities reckon with the formidable communications challenges accompanying the COVID-19 crisis, not surprisingly, many organisations pounced on the offer.
We witnessed it first-hand, with organisations like the town of Enfield, CT. Unified communications as a service enabled vital municipal operations in Enfield to continue uninterrupted, citizens to continue participating in local government, and town officials to remain accessible remotely, without having to share their personal cell phone numbers.
For many organisations, it was a matter not only of maintaining business continuity during a crisis, but also an opportunity to finally cut the cord with an aging legacy voice system. Suddenly, with the wholesale move to remote working, organisations that prior to the pandemic had been content to take an “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” approach with their legacy system decided it was time to abandon that system in favour of a cloud-based UCaaS solution.
Even if a legacy voice system isn’t failing, it could still present significant risks to an organisation’s operations. For some businesses and public entities, those risks became realities during the pandemic. The many businesses that continue to operate on-premises PBX equipment that have been manufacturer-discontinued for years (like Nortel CS1Ks or BCMs) got caught short in their effort to support the communications needs of a workforce that had largely transitioned to remote working. Meanwhile, in the public sector, education and state/local governments in particular were struggling to keep up due to their reliance on systems such as the obsolete Centrex service, a PBX-like product dating back to the early 1960s.
This reliance on outdated on-premises technology persists, even though UCaaS technology is now mature and proven in terms of the benefits it provides. A 2019 study conducted by Nemertes Research found that while UCaaS usage had nearly doubled in a year, only about 19% of the organisations it surveyed were using it for their calling needs.
By continuing to use on-premises equipment that is five, 10 or even 15 years old, organisations miss out on valuable features like call forwarding, seamless failover, mobility, and remote access, to name a few. While organisations may have been willing to forego these capabilities before the pandemic hit, now that remote working has become a critical business need, the reasons to embrace UCaaS for voice — and for the other integrated capabilities it brings, like unlimited calling, company-wide chat and mobile apps, video and audio conferencing, fax, optional call centre services, etc., all managed centrally by a communications provider — have become even more compelling.
Simply put, sticking with a legacy voice system has become too risky for organisations seeking to move at the speed of business and thrive in the “new normal.” Let’s explore those risks, and how UCaaS helps to address them.
Legacy voice systems and financial/cost risk: Staying with a legacy voice system could cost you more in the long run. For starters, owning and maintaining an on-premises system can be expensive in terms of capital cost for the hardware and software, as well as the cost of the human resources required to maintain it. Turning to a cloud-based model for consuming UC&C solutions enables organisations to shift costs from CapEX to OpEX, and to only pay for the service they need. They can rapidly and cost-efficiently scale up and down as needed, rather than paying the extra price to build an on-premises system to handle peak capacity. Moving to UCaaS also frees up internal resources to focus more on activities that build value and drive the business forward.
Legacy voice systems and competitive risk: The health crisis demonstrated how a robust, flexible voice system can help to ensure business continuity, enabling organisations to continue serving customers, partners and constituents, and to continue working productively and collaboratively, even in a remote setting. A 100% cloud-based phone, mobility and unified communications solution empowers employees to work effectively from virtually anywhere. Meanwhile, companies that continue to rely on legacy voice systems could lack the agility to provide the experience that both their customers/constituents and their employees expect.
Legacy voice systems and service risk: The capabilities to maintain multi-channel communications with customers as well as employees give organisations a critical service advantage in any business environment. And during a crisis or disaster, UCaaS makes serving customers and constituents a much more straightforward proposition.
Legacy voice systems and security/end-of-service (EoS) risk: Obsolescence is a genuine concern with legacy voice systems, and that in turn escalates security risk. Manufacturer support for aging systems and hardware is waning; many have relegated their legacy systems to EoS status, which could ultimately compromise system security. An organisation that faces a credible threat to its system may not have access to a manufacturer’s patch to address that threat. What’s more, many providers are not renewing contracts for certain obsolete voice services, subjecting customers to rate increases and eventual sunsetting of those services. With UCaaS, on the other hand, managed security typically is an integral part of the solution, with the provider regularly updating security measures, monitoring the network for threats, and ready to respond if a threat arises.
In light of those risks and the ongoing impact of the pandemic, the case for companies to shift from legacy voice systems to UCaaS has never been stronger.
Guest Blog by Austin Herrington, Vice President of Enterprise Voice Product Management & Product Development for Windstream
Austin Herrington oversees Windstream’s enterprise UCaaS and Voice product strategy and roadmap.
