As Teams continues to mature, and features and updates are announced on an almost weekly basis, the Microsoft suite for UC and collaboration, arguably has a solution for every business.
From 1st September 2019, any new online customers have been onboarded with Teams rather than Skype for Business Online. SfB Online will eventually be retired on 31st July 2021.
In the meantime, the on-premises versions, Skype for Business Server 2015 and 2019 will be supported until October 2020 and January 2024 respectively (with extended support until October 2025 for both platforms). And, of course, Lync Server 2010 and 2013 continue to be supported (albeit under extended support only) until April 2021.
While for the online customers it looks like their migration path is planned for them, for all those still running Server 2015 or 2019, or even Lync Server (anybody?), discussions and decisions are very much on-going. Wherever companies are on their respective journeys, the primary consideration remains for most, if not all organisations; that is, how to drive greater client satisfaction whilst reducing/maintaining operational costs.
It is estimated that 75% of companies currently already have or are formulating their digital transformation strategy, and it is widely agreed that what is crucial to any successful digital initiative is a world class UC&C platform augmented by industry leading analytics.
Organisations can dramatically reduce the implementation and operational costs of UC&C by engaging a partner which takes time to understand their client’s business and, moreover, has the tools within their portfolio to deliver solutions which will challenge their own perspectives of what is possible.
UC&C enables – in fact, it actively encourages – businesses to collaborate and make faster, better informed decisions. Consequently, the technology itself is transformative in encouraging higher standards and greater interaction.
However, any technology is only as good as those who are using it. Microsoft delivers the dream of an enhanced user and customer experience through providing options for interaction, via voice, video, screen sharing, chat and instant messaging, but how do we know if users are embracing this wealth of opportunity (ironically, one of the great benefits of advancements in communication is greater workforce productivity, yet less transparency of how productive they are) and are problems such as repeat outages or poor voice quality erase the benefits of the UC&C experience?
It is those challenges that Code Software strives to deliver against on behalf of their customers and partners, and that is why we continue to push against the expected norms of communication management. Our latest solution called Clobba was launched in September 2019, and manages to live up to its name by hammering businesses’ communications issues.
Deploying Clobba in a customer environment will:
- Deliver transparency of user adoption of their UC platform
- Understand resource usage
- Simplify the management of DIDs/DDIs
- Deliver clarity of performance against SLAs and KPIs
- Effectively manage communication costs
- Indicate and help diagnose call quality degradation
- Deliver greater organisational efficiencies and customer management
If you or your clients are on the UC&C journey, is it time to challenge your investment in UC&C?
