Jan/Feb 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

at your service: Xaas By Gerald Baldino Exodus to Cloud UC This is good news for channel part- ners selling cloud UC platforms, as 80 percent of respondents said they are considering moving to cloud UC, while 57 percent are actively evaluat- ing solutions. The next year should be especially active in this space, as the vast majority of buyers in the survey indicated they expect to select a vendor by the end of 2019. For many of those buyers, cloud communications are seen as core to ongoing digital transformation strate- gies, argue Masergy executives, ef- fectively addressing challenges seen across the organization. And with the pain points reaching into all depart- ments, investments are easily justifiable as the potential for ROI increases. For instance, 68 percent of respon- dents to the BroadSoft survey said their current system is too expensive to maintain; while 69 percent said their current system lacks critical advanced features. A full three-quarters said it would be too long and costly to restore service in the event of a current phone system failure. Business leaders are also migrating to cloud UC to improve ROI from their technology. Streamlining communica- tion, collaboration and service delivery, BroadSoft says, can lead to improve- ments of over 70 percent in productivity, cost savings, complexity reductions and customer interactions. It’s important to remember, though, that many business leaders still have strong reservations about moving to the cloud, which is one reason why agents are choosing to diversify their portfolios and expand their partner- ships. Cloud UC is a step up from most legacy deployments, but it still poses its share of unique challenges, and partners need to be prepared for po- tential complications. In the BroadSoft study, 80 per- cent of respondents said they are concerned about data privacy and A n increasing number of businesses are trad- ing premises-based communications systems for cloud unified communications (UC) platforms, according to a report from BroadSoft. Q: “Which of these connectivity technologies will be most important to your loT proposition in 2020/2023?” First choice among global operators Source: InterDigital & Mobile World Live When do you plan to move to cloud unified communications? Source: BroadSoft 11% 35% 23% 23% 23% 14% 10% 11% 9% 6% 5G NB-l T LTE Fixed lines LTE-M 2020 2023 8% 45% 47% In the next year In the next 2 years In the next 3 years 50 Channel Vision | January - February, 2019