UC
One of the key themes at last week’s Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando was the rise of UC in the cloud. Often referred to by the acronym “UCaaS” (UC as a Service) or “CaaS” (Collaboration as a Service), cloud based UC offers significant potential for enterprises to reduce costs, improve deployment flexibility, and avoid the challenges associated with integrating on-premise UC solutions.
Distinct from the Centrex offerings of yore, UCaaS or CaaS combine multiple communications capabilities—typically voice, conferencing (audio/video/web), and IM/presence into a unified service, or they deliver parts of the UC architecture that customers can integrate into their own on-prem platforms. The timing couldn’t be better: UC deployments are near-ubiquitous, with 73% of organizations deploying today, and 83% expecting to have deployed by the end of 2011. As these companies look for ways to reduce costs while increasing flexibility and agility, CaaS starts to look appealing.
The bottom line: Include UCaaS/CaaS in any and all communications-related RFPs.
