“In order to truly unify communications, you have to be involved in the business process, and you have to be ingrained into the business applications that customers are using every day,” observed Mitel’s McGarry. “As enterprise decision makers look at services and applications that can facilitate collaboration and deliver a better customer experience, it should be at the top of their list to make sure that they’re getting those integration points with their chosen UCaaS manufacturer or provider.” Of course, reliability is critical. And it’s vital for businesses to have a partner they can rely on who owns the entire UCaaS solution, whether it’s best-of-breed or a one-vendor solution, said 8x8’s Savwoir. “One thing that tends to differentiate the providers is the reliability of the solution, and whether or not the provider owns the technology, or partners with other providers to deliver the complete suite of solutions. There’s a connection between owning the technology stack and being able to react to market forces on a timely basis.” Mitel’s McGarry agreed. “As interactions with cli- “If there’s one word that ents continue to change, and as features become describes the best-in- more ingrained into the applications and custom- er usage, the ability to own your own platform and class in any industry, it write changes without hitting any roadblocks is would be ‘simplicity.” really important.” By controlling the platform, vendors can better ensure that features continue to interoperate proper- ly over time. Yet some customers will often prefer a multi-vendor, best-of-breed approach designed to more immediately deliver technical differentiation. After all, much of the IT industry is built upon small, nimble startups that disrupted the status quo, and then went on to be acquired by larger com- petitors. “If there’s one word that describes the best-in-class in any industry, it would be ‘simplicity,” said Fuze’s Brown. This is not about a lack of features or the inability to handle a complex scenario, it’s about being able to address the customer need in the most simple possible way.” Despite the industry’s best intentions with regard to simplicity or features and benefits, any new instal- lation can face difficulties or challenges that are fairly organic to the technology, and UCaaS is no ex- ception. Given the strategic communications importance of the telephone system, an outage caused by a problematic migration is one of the great fears of enterprise decision makers who are thinking about deploying UCaaS. While those risks are worth exploring with a Trusted Advisor, it’s also true that sticking with an old legacy system carries its share of risk, as well. Copyright © 2020 AVANT Communications, Inc. 23