Can Outsourcing your Communications meet the demands of a “have it your way” world?
By Danette Hardin, Network Product Marketing Manager
In its recent Magic Quadrant for Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services, Gartner states that “Very few COPS providers are able to meet all customer requirements, across all countries and geographies, by leveraging internal resources for IT service delivery.” And with the challenges in today’s workplace, it’s no surprise that the above statement is a hot topic of discussion among corporate IT departments and popular technology forums. The “new normal” of doing business globally requires better collaboration among workers and partners in different geographies, business units and even companies.
These communication demands remind me of a past slogan from one of the fast-food restaurants that talked about “having it your way.” Employees, customers, partners and just about everyone we deal with these days want to have their communications their way. They want to be able to communicate in the way that works best for them whether it’s tethered to a desk in an office, working on their back porch overlooking the pool, or from a vacation cruise in the middle of the ocean while they get a bit of work done via their smartphone.
All of these requirements put big demands on companies’ IT departments, as well as service providers so it stands to reason that a single Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services Providers (COPS) might find it difficult to rise to the challenge. But with HP’s recent introduction of Enterprise Cloud Services – Unified Communications, I think the company is in a great position to be THAT COPS provider … the one who can deliver it all. Check out these benefits of HP’s ECS – Unified Communications:
- Maximize legacy telephony investment and mitigate adoption risk – By taking a complementary approach to legacy infrastructure and avoiding forklift upgrades, HP ECS–Unified Communications allows you to maximize your investment in legacy infrastructure and undertake a phased approach to adopting newer communication capabilities. Read how HP’s Client Black & Veatch case chose a Unified Communications model to add value to their organization.
- Reduce telecom costs - Consolidate telephony access, without necessarily ripping/replacing the entire legacy telephony infrastructure, leveraging the underlying data network infrastructure (and not PSTN) for interoffice communication, and optimizing PSTN access through UCaaS network data center fabric located in HP data centers.
- Lower capital outlay with a flexible consumption model - Consume IP communication capabilities in a price-per-seat-per-month model, allowing you to stay competitive and focus IT capital on business-critical requirements.
- Improve business agility with a globally consistent delivery model - Highly flexible, open infrastructure, standardized configuration, and globally consistent implementation methodologies enable you to consume reliable enterprise communication capabilities consistently across geographies.
- Improve end-user productivity - Stream the enterprise communication infrastructure and integrate voice with other modalities such as presence, traditional telephony, email, instant messaging, and web collaboration tools to equip end users with the flexibility to interact using the appropriate tools and modes of communication.
While Unified Communications might seem hard to implement and even define, in the end the benefits to your company, employees, partners and vendors can outweigh any confusion and doubts. And HP can be that COPS provider who helps you reap the benefits a UCC solution can offer.
To learn more about HP ECS – Unified Communications and how HP is ranked in the communications space, check out these resources:
- HP positioned as a leader in the Gartner 2011 Communications Outsourcing & Professional Services Magic Quadrant
- Enterprise Cloud Services - Unified Communications
- Betting on the future with Unified Communications (White Paper)
- Black & Veatch unified communications and modernized business processes
- HP helps Portuguese shopping mall developer (PDF)
Are you considering a UCC solution or have you already implemented one for your company? What do you see as the pros and cons?
