Migrating to Unified Communications – Best Practices Revealed!

Rohit Partha, Industry AnalystICT

Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific25 May 2012

2

Today’s Presenter

• Rohit’s expertise is in the financial and operational due diligence, market strategy, new product development and cost analysis.

• He has over 7 years of consulting and industry experience in technology and outsourcing with large MNCs across US and Europe.

• Currently he’s involved in research and consulting projects in this space at Frost & Sullivan.

Rohit Partha,

Industry Analyst

Frost & Sullivan

3

Agenda

1

Factors Inhibiting Adoption of UC

Benefits of UC

2

3 Challenges in Deployment

4 Best Practices in the Migration Process

5 Case Study of a Successful Deployment

4

Key Elements of Unified Communications

Presence

Presence

Pre

sen

ceP

resence

Enterprise Telephony

Email

Contact CenterUnified Client

Conferencing & Collaboration

Withinthe

Enterprise

Outside the

Enterprise

Unified Communications

Mobility

Unified Messaging

Unified Communications (UC) is the integration of the various tools and applications used within an enterprise and with external partners for business communications.

5

Well Known Benefits of UC

Operational efficiencies

Business enhancement

User productivity

• TCO benefits from a single network infrastructure• Hosted UC services -

•Reduce upfront investment•Mitigate technology risk•Reduce time required for deployment •Allow for easy scalability

• Employees able to reach one another and share information through IM, conferencing etc.

• Acceleration in decision-making, more efficient and streamlined workflows

• Increased worker satisfaction, employees able to easily and quickly select most effective and efficient means of communication

• Ability for UC enabled workgroups to interact and collaborate more effectively leading to quicker time to market

6

Factors Inhibiting Adoption of UC

Lack of IT budget

Unclear understanding of the benefits

Complexity of solutions

High upfront and ongoing costs

• Business case based on soft ROI like productivity

• IT managers do not have clear strategy to demonstrate this

• Low economic sentiment has resulted in same or less IT spending

• Enterprises moving away from looking at IT as strategic tool

• Enterprises have large investments in communications• Complex nature of UC deters

enterprises not keen to introduce more complexity

• High initial investment and maintenance costs with respect to on–

premise solutions• Difficult expense to justify in weak

economic times

Inhibitors

7

Common Challenges Faced in UC Deployment

• Existing security mechanisms

may sufficient to handle threats and attacks specific to UC

• Perform risk assessment before

implementation. Assess where additional support is needed to protect the organization from attack • Look at technologies on open standards • SIP protocol acts as single communications protocol layer for all UC elements

• Use the ROI process to capture

costs before and after implementing UC

• Lack of interoperability has remained a challenge • Enterprises need to turn to system integrators each time a new solution is deployed

• Gains as a result of UC are mostly intangible such as productivity and efficiency• Challenging to put a number

to these gains

Challenges Mitigation

Security

Interoperability

Measuring ROI

8

UC Implementation Options

UC Implementation

Options

Blend and

extend

Gradual

adoption

Phased

implementation of

Individual UC

components

Complete

replacement of

existing

communications

infrastructure in one

swoop

Expand functionality and extend

life

of existing infrastructure

Incremental, cost-effective

method

for increasing operational efficiency

Ease the adoption process

Rip and replace

Key

ben

efits

Clearly understand communications objective and how different

business processes interrelate.

Completely revamp and eliminate

constraints of the older system

Operational savings through

efficient

management, security and better

control

Objective

9

Best Practices in the Migration Process

Path to successful deployment and implementation should include best practices learnt from those

organizations that have already been through this process

Enterprises that are realizing value from their UC programs are succeeding because they’ve

followed

some basic, common-sense practices. Four of these best practices are:

Align IT investment with

business strategy

Assess current state of

organization’s IT infrastructure

Evaluate right technologies for

business

Manage organizational

changes

10

Best Practices in the Migration ProcessAligning IT investment with business strategy

Work environments for information workers keep changing to

include

any combination of locations

A business assessment that evaluates communications patterns

of

the employee base is critical

Business processes should be evaluated to identify where

latencies

exist due to human interaction and communication

1 2 3 4

Business assessment

Up-front planning

A clear roadmap for UC implementation can help businesses

manage

expectations and be sure that time frames are realized

Up front plan should also consider whether some commodity

services

might need to be outsourced, so corporate knowledge resources can

focus on strategic UC applications

11

Best Practices in the Migration ProcessAssessing current state of IT infrastructure

Road to migrating to UC begins with a

review

of existing telecom and data infrastructures,

devices used, and servers supported

Depending on the type of UC applications to

be deployed, the data network will need to be

assessed for voice and video performance

IT and telecom management systems also

need to be carefully reviewed so that they can

properly manage the integrated UC

environment

1 2 3 4

Review

Devices

IT manage-ment systems

Network

Servers

12

Best Practices in the Migration ProcessEvaluating the right technologies

Solutions should ideally be interoperable that lets the enterprise

leverage existing IT infrastructure and communications technology

As the mobile workforce of an organization grows and more

enterprises grapple with BYOD trend, UC solutions must deliver a

seamless communications experience across applications, devices

and locations

Solutions must meet the needs of all users each having very different

communications needs. A UC solution must also scale easily to

provide the highest level of service

To ensure low TCO, maximum security and reliability, the solutions

must include simplified management and provisioning with the full

range of tools to configure and control all aspects of the solutions

centrally

1 2 3 4

Leverage existing IT infra

Mobility support

Flexibility & scalability

Manageability

13

Best Practices in the Migration ProcessManaging organizational changes

Selective implementation of functionality for specific projects, job tasks

or

lines of business is a good way to start the roll out

A staged UC deployment can be more budget friendly, help mitigate

risk, and allow organizations to adjust their strategies and priorities along

the migration path

1 2 3 4

Enterprises must be prepared to address changes in the organization as part of this migration. There

needs to be enterprise buy-in from the business units that will be affected by the UC deployment.

Pursue a selective

implementation

Establish cross-functional teams

Cross-functional teams can help in communicating the benefits across

the

organization as well as to customers, partners and suppliers

Find the right champion

Finding the right champion in IT or business units who is seeking to

establish UC capabilities to support a business initiative will ease adoption

14

Case Study: Successful UC Deployment in a Leading Malaysian Shipping Line

Shipping player wanted to tap the benefits of UC to enhance and integrate its

communications systems for its 8000 employees across the world

Move to unified communications motivated by corporate strategy of

Managing costs

Reduce carbon footprint of the group

Improve productivity and collaboration

Situation

Pilot project was implemented to test out the extensive features of UC product

Integrated UC applications with existing video conferencing solutions

An avenue to collaborate and communicate with fellow colleagues and business partners

Aligning IT with business strategy

Leverage existing infrastructure

Scalability and flexibility

Pursuing a selective implementation

15

Obstacles to Successful UC Migration

Lack of alignment between business goals andwhat the technology can deliver

Dis

rup

tive

fac

tors

Management

End User

IT

Unclear communication on the implicationsand benefits to end users

Absence of cross functional team to get user buy in

Wholesale rollout of comprehensive UC solutions as opposed to selective implementation

Upfront planning to ensure that migration does not disrupt business

16

Key Take-aways

UC increases efficiency of distributed teams, reduces travel time and expenses,

and

also eliminates some communication barriers

Pre-implementation, the key is to understand how communication objectives of the

organization and how business processes interrelate

Blend and extend approach: Enterprises should take into account which areas of

communication would benefit most from the improvement

Rip and replace approach: Despite the immediate pains, enterprises should be

confident that it will lead to the ultimate goal: competitive advantage

Managing organizational change is key to seeing benefits. Ultimately up to users to

reaping the benefits of UC!!!

17

Next Steps

Develop Your Visionary and Innovative SkillsGrowth Partnership Service Share your growth thought leadership and ideas or

join our GIL Global Community

Join our GIL Community Newsletter Keep abreast of innovative growth opportunities

18

Your Feedback is Important to Us

Growth Forecasts?

Competitive Structure?

Emerging Trends?

Strategic Recommendations?

Other?

Please inform us by “Rating” this presentation.

What would you like to see from Frost & Sullivan?

19

http://twitter.com/frost_sullivan

Follow Frost & Sullivan on Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, and Twitter

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frost-Sullivan/249995031751?ref=ts

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/4506

http://www.slideshare.net/FrostandSullivan

20

For Additional Information

Donna JeremiahCorporate CommunicationsAsia Pacific+61 (0) 8247 8927 djeremiah@frost.com

Carrie LowCorporate CommunicationsAsia Pacific+603 6204 5910carrie.low@frost.com

Jessie LohCorporate CommunicationsAsia Pacific+65 6890 0942jessie.loh@frost.com