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Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

Enterprise Level, Best-in-Class Communications and Collaboration

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)Finding an enterprise solution for all employees these days might seem daunting, but many companies are finding a Best-in-class solution using Microsoft Teams!  This includes Chat, Messaging and even Phone Systems with Teams Telephony!

A major part of business communications is still phone service.  Microsoft Teams, through Direct Routing allows you to use Microsoft Teams as your provider, meaning you can finally detach yourself from the “Bell” PSTN relationship, and more towards a much more progressive and feature rich service.  Imagine having Microsoft Teams everywhere you go, as it can be used from anywhere and on any device, without compromising security.

Teams business phone systems are fun and easy, they will help you  transform communication and collaboration, giving all your employees the same tools and apps. Check out this page on Teams Telephony using Direct Routing.

Teams Benefits of Unified Communications

Proven, Scalable SaaS Model

The scale, reliability and performance of the SaaS model have reached the point where it can host communications platforms, such as UC, or even real-time data flows such as voice communications.

Improved Flexibility and Agility

Agility has become extremely important, successful businesses must be more responsive and flexible. For employees to make the business more agile, business processes must flow smoothly, and communication needs to be seamless.

Employee Productivity

UC brings speed and ease of deployment. Not only does Unified Communications make life easier for IT staff, but the business becomes more agile as employees now have the tools to work more productively.

 

Teams Telephony is much more than a business phone system:

Let’s take a quick look at some of the features and benefits of a cloud-based phone system with Microsoft Teams.

 
cloud-microsoft-technology-unified-communication

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS with a Single Pane of Glass Interface!

The One-Stop Shop for All Things Communications and Collaboration

Never has it been so easy to communicate and collaborate.  You probably do have a Microsoft Exchange Mail Server.  You probably already have Office 365 licensed.  Teams installed? If you’re smart you do, otherwise you’re using Skype which has reached end of life or Zoom, which literally integrates with nothing.  As you know, almost everyone has Microsoft products and software, bringing that familiar Miocrosoft interface into Communications and Collaboration.  

So… guess what?

That is Unified Communications

Microsoft Products and a Business Phone System More Than You Could Possibly Imagine!

You probably had no idea how close you already were, or that most of it was already licensed and just sitting there, waiting for someone to come put it all together?  What if I told you that it could also free up resources, cost less and provide much more in the way advanced technology.  

What you probably did not know is that Microsoft Teams, using Direct Routing, can now provide top-notch high-definition VoIP calling and get you away from those antiquated phone companies charging and arm and a leg to allow someone to transfer audio.  Now this probably was complicated and expensive back in the 1960’s – 1970’s, but it’s NOT NOW.

Starting to see the big deal is all about?  The same industry leading and familiar software interface that everyone has already been using for years?  Where everyone gets the same set of tools, which also allows any number of users to access and collaborate on the same Word document in real time?  Or Excel?  Or Access, Lens, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Sway, Visio, Word or so, so many others.

Intune security, Unified Communication Service (UCaaS) user typing, internet access, cybersecurity

Using Microsoft Teams for Communications and Collaboration

Teams Telephony

Replace your whole phone system with Microsoft Teams! Making and receiving calls to and from landlines and mobile phones on the public switch telephone network (PSTN) in Teams is available with an add-on like Microsoft Teams Phone with Calling Plan or in Microsoft 365 E5.

Teams Collaboration

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration app that helps your staff stay organized and have conversations, from any device. You can use Microsoft Teams to collaborate Office 365 programs with multiple members of your staff or guests outside your organization.

Teams Communication

Microsoft Teams is the messaging app for your organization—a workspace for meetings, real-time collaboration and communication, and file and app sharing. Teams has advanced security features built in so you can relax knowing your info is backed by enterprise-grade security.

Your Cloud Partner for Communication and Collaboration

IT Staff Augmentation and Unified Communications Service for Professional project consulting, integration and adoption services in Boston, New Hampshire and Las Vegas.

Communications and Collaborations are a growing trend for many companies putting back the pieces of their distributed workforces. Unified Communications as a Service also referred to as UCaaS, is a cloud delivery model that offers a variety of communication and collaboration applications and services. Features include enterprise messaging, presence technology, online meetings, team collaboration, telephony, and video conferencing to name a few.

Delivered as a service (monthly, fixed cost) customers share a single software platform which is more cost-effective, with more support and redundancy. The software instance is hosted in the UCaaS provider’s data center, and the provider pushes out software upgrades. As with other Cloud services, this too is very flexible, so enterprises can also adopt a hybrid approach, keeping a portion of their unified communications (UC) on premises and other applications in the cloud. Some enterprises may take a hybrid approach to UCaaS to keep certain applications on premises for security or management reasons. Enterprises may also opt for hybrid deployments to allow their PBX or other on-premises systems to reach end-of-life before making a migration to the cloud.

Why Use Business Phone Systems like Microsoft Teams?

Unified communications eBook Table of Contents, free eBook, Unified Communications and Cloud Telephony.Many companies, primarily small to medium businesses use UCaaS to stop the capital and operational expenses associated with deploying a UC service on their own. Initially, small businesses were the early adopters of Unified Communications Service (UCaaS) technologies, as they often lacked the staff and resources to maintain and support it on-site. Large enterprises have been deploying UCaaS to streamline these services and support multiple or global locations. While the cost savings may not be such a big deal to large companies, the lessened need for resources, maintenance and staff is a blessing to the bottom line.

UCaaS offers greater scalability and flexibility for organizations that need to quickly add and remove users, such as seasonal employees, without major infrastructure changes. Cloud-based enterprise communications also offer a more consistent user experience for remote and mobile workers, as access to UCaaS features is consistent regardless of location. Organizations can also deploy UCaaS technologies for disaster recovery. Cloud-based systems, for instance, have built-in business continuity, as customers don’t need to buy and maintain multiple PBX and UC platforms in a separate location.

Three Main Benefits for Microsoft Communications and Collaboration

  • It’s an Extremely Proven SaaS model: Strangely, most businesses are already using cloud-based software applications more than they think! Which really speaks to how transparent and easy to use they are. Common examples being Salesforce for customer relationship management (CRM) or even hosted email. The scale, reliability and performance of the SaaS model have reached the point where it can host communications platforms, such as UC, or even real-time data flows such as voice communications. This trend will continue as costs increasingly decline and public cloud adoption increases.
  • Greatly Improved Flexibility and Agility: Full-scale Unified Communications Service (UCaaS) is far more complex than just VoIP, and the do-more-with-less mantra that most IT departments face is only going to continue. Not only does IT have to juggle shifting priorities and unknown skill sets, but securing budgets is much harder post 2020 for several reasons. Despite all this, agility has become extremely important, successful businesses must be more responsive and flexible. For employees to make the business more agile, business processes must flow smoothly, and communication needs to be seamless. Unified Communications Service (UCaaS) fills both requirements, but its complexity poses a challenge to IT departments, also being the main barrier to adoption. This is a key reason why UCaaS appeals to IT staff — since the complexity operates in the cloud, IT managers can focus resources in other areas where their expertise can still add value.
  • Employee Productivity: The third key benefit cloud-based Unified Communications Service (UCaaS) will provide is speed and ease of deployment. Not only does Unified Communications make life easier for IT staff, but the business becomes more agile as employees now have the tools to work more productively. This matters because consumer-based innovation has long outpaced the business world, and now customers have expectations that businesses can’t match. The rationale for buying cloud-based unified communications can showcase the inherent cost benefits of the cloud, as IT and management are always looking for cost savings and certainty to better support longer-term business. Without Unified Communications Service (UCaaS), communications applications operate in a standalone fashion, meaning separate budgets and different features for voice, video, conferencing, and chat. Many departments have their own budgets for these applications, making the total cost of communicating difficult to manage. With UC, IT teams can integrate and manage everything in a single platform, providing overall savings to the company and what’s been come to be known as Technical Equality. Technical Equality is providing all employees with the same tools and resources that can be used and accessed from anywhere in the world.
 

Case Study in Unified Communications - Medical

Published September 21, 2021 – Boston, MA – In the Cloud Technologies, LLC

A leading Massachusetts manufacturer of medical and health technology for artificial implants was facing the end of lifecycle for Skype (2015 On-Premise) for Business.  While some locations were also using Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) and/or Skype Online, the decision to migrate all 1,500 employees to a Microsoft Teams  platform and Telephony was initiated. This project faced many challenges beyond an extremely tight timeline and even included a really big Microsoft surprise on day one of integration.
 

Unified Communications Project Highlights Include:

  • Migration of 1,000 U.S. users and 500+ EMEA users to Microsoft Teams
  • Integration of multiple locations across several countries and languages
  • Direct Routing Integration/Customization of Audiocodes SBCs for enterprise Cloud Telephony
  • Integration and testing of messaging, chat, e911, 365 collaboration for all users.
  • Migration of Exchange Unified Messaging over to Microsoft Teams