While You Were Away: UC Migrations Continue While Offices are Closed

Strategic supply chain re-evaluation with Support to Win

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Published: April 17, 2020

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

Migrations are always a complicated process in any business. There are numerous points to consider, from how businesses can reduce downtime, to what steps need to be taken to improve adoption among teams. Support to Win, one of the UK market leaders in strategic training and migration solutions, believes that now could be the ideal time for companies to take the leap.

Although migrations can indeed cause disruption in any environment, we’re currently dealing with a marketplace that’s already heavily disrupted. With COVID-19 causing countless organisations to send their employees home to work, Support to Win can assist businesses in getting critical connections switched over while the offices are bare.

I spoke to Tamsin Deutrom-Yue, Managing Director of Support to Win.

Why Is This Such a Crucial Time for Business Growth?

Tamsin Deutrom-Yue
Tamsin Deutrom-Yue

Tamsin Deutrom-Yue is the Managing Director of Support to Win, and the leader of the company’s migration services projects. She told me that Support to Win has seen a rapid increase in companies undergoing supply chain re-evaluation from a strategic perspective, as a result of COVID-19. UC market players today are taking advantage of an opportunity to evolve and grow in a landscape that has been turned on its head by an unprecedented event.

“We’re hearing from a lot of channel partners who see now as a good time to get to grips with their UC platform choice. That’s partly down to most of the major UC platform providers – RingCentral, NFON, Gamma, Microsoft, to name just a few – reaching out with generous offers to help businesses cope with the upheaval of shifting to homeworking and use their services in the process. Channel partners are simply trying to anticipate the resulting shifts in demand. And as well as bringing in net new business to adopt UC for the first time, some churn will be inevitable; hence the spike in migrations. The bottom line is that most of these partners already know they need to migrate. They have teams in the back end saying that they need to consolidate their existing solutions or access new technology. However, it’s usually difficult to find the right time to disrupt the team.”

Now that the workplace is already disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, people are beginning to examine their back-end environments because they have more time and opportunity. “People are thinking that now they’re quiet, it’s the ideal time to make a change. The circumstances that we’re in today are providing a catalyst for migration services.”

Taking Advantage of Migration Opportunities

While a UK-wide lockdown might seem like a bad time to put a huge migration strategy into place, the opposite is actually true, according to Tamsin. While offices are quiet, companies like Support to Win can step in and get everything set up, with minimum disruption to the team.

“While any migration can be difficult, particularly if you’re moving from one environment to another, a time when there isn’t anyone in the office could be the perfect opportunity to migrate.”

“We can go in now and get the work done, so that when people come back into the office, they can hit the ground running”

Because people aren’t in the office right now, the disruption is kept to a minimum. This is particularly true in the connectivity space. While everyone is at home and using their own connectivity, it’s a perfect time to go in and get the issues with connectivity solved.

The Motivations Pushing Migration

Migration strategies start with a lot of different motivating factors, according to Tamsin. Companies want to increase their profitability and reduce the level of risk that they’re taking with existing suppliers. These motivating factors aren’t always related to the COVID-19 issue. There will still be demands for migration in place when this problem ends. While there’s an inevitable degree of disruption in the marketplace, it’s better to take the plunge now.

“At the same time, as interest in UC grows in the wake of mass-homeworking, suppliers are steering as much demand as possible to themselves, making these migrations more appealing too. There are plenty of opportunities to cut costs and get things moving smoothly by migrating right now.”

Some of the offers in the marketplace are triggered by the COVID-19 concern. There are a lot of incentives designed to remove expenses for team members and keep the business running in times of crisis. “There are fewer offers available from connectivity companies, but the benefit there is that there’s virtually no disruption if you upgrade now rather than later as most of the workforce are working from home on their own broadband connections.”

On-prem to Cloud migrations continue

According to Tamsin and Support to Win, the biggest trends right now are around housekeeping and business management. There’s a lot of on-premise to cloud migration going on, as well as companies moving from one cloud environment to another. “Companies are looking for the solutions that will help them to consolidate their technology and improve their market share with suppliers. At the same time, we’re all searching for ways to help end-users work from home as successfully as possible.”

Everywhere we look, companies are looking for the ideal time to consolidate different customer groups into a single platform and retire obsolete services and technology. Now is the perfect time to double-down on progress.

Currently, many Merger and Acquisition deals have been slowed or put on hold due to the scares in the COVID-19 marketplace. However, Tamsin told me that this unlikely to continue. “The plans aren’t dead in the water, far from it. Instead, everyone’s just focused on regrouping and riding out the turbulence. Nothing has been shut down, investors know the UC market is a great medium to long-term opportunity – their plans are just on hold.”

While many different factors might be preventing deals from progressing today, this won’t be the case forever. Eventually, all businesses will need to move forward. When this happens, Support to Win will be there to help with handling the switchover.

Time to Adapt

Ultimately, as Tamsin told me, while this COVID-19 issue is a major concern for many companies, life will continue, and we all need to find a way to adapt. “We need to embrace the new surroundings and make the most of the situation we’re in. We need to carry on with a new perspective.”

Right now, Support to Win is bringing more configuration strategies forward in the migration landscape, so that when installation is available again, companies can be fast out of the blocks.

“It’s about making things happen for your company in the most convenient way”

 

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