5 Questions to Ask of a Global UCaaS Provider
As Vonage expands Unified Communications internationally, we've put together a list of some critical vendor questions to ask potential partners as you think about moving to the cloud.
As a business expands beyond its country of origin’s borders and becomes globally competitive, new challenges arise. In particular, communication and collaboration channels need to become less siloed and more universal. Often this means moving to the cloud. If you’re thinking about migrating your communications and collaboration tools to the cloud, there’s good news: we're here to help.
The catch? A crowded field requires a lot of weeding out to reveal the providers you can bet your business on. Here are five questions to ask to help you as you explore the cloud communications space:
1. Is your UC portfolio really enterprise grade?
Claiming and actually being something are two different things. Start by drilling down to find out exactly how much control a provider has over the big four: quality, reliability,scalability and security.
Control is key for voice over internet protocol (VoIP), which uses data networks for calls instead of traditional telephony infrastructure. This change enables VoIP services to provide more features and clearer calls than what’s known as “circuit-switched” telephony, and at significantly lower cost. The more infrastructure that a UCaaS provider owns, the greater its ability to ensure that VoIP calls get priority over other types of data traffic and that calls can seamlessly switch to an alternate route if part of the network goes down.
Another way to identify a UCaaS provider capable of delivering enterprise-grade VoIP is to ask about its use of multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). This helps network infrastructure prioritize calls and other delay-sensitive UCaaS applications so they provide a great user experience.
2. Where is the infrastructure?
The ideal cloud provider has a dozen or more points of presence (POPs) scattered around the world. That redundancy means your UCaaS services won’t be knocked out by a hurricane, earthquake or other regional calamities. Geographic diversity also boosts the quality of service (QoS) of latency-sensitive services by increasing the chances your location is near one or more of its POPs. The same advice applies to the provider’s global data centers, which host your organization’s applications and information.
3. What types of service-level agreements do you offer?
SLAs help ensure that moving to the cloud doesn’t come with trade-offs in reliability and availability. They’re essentially contracts that spell out the provider’s obligations for service quality, customer support, and other aspects, with financial and other penalties when it doesn’t deliver. SLAs also highlight the importance of MPLS, dozens of international POPS and data centers, and owning a lot of network infrastructure, all of which helps the provider live up to its SLA.
4. Are you truly a global provider?
The world keeps getting smaller as technology evolves to allow real-time communication and business transactions across regions with more ease and convenience than ever before. If your business transcends borders, your cloud communications provider should, too. Storing customer data creates security risks and compromises customer privacy, and this is compounded when data crosses between countries. Your UCaaS provider should offer compliant solutions that align with global regulatory requirements like GDPR and stay abreast of the ever evolving compliance landscape.
Your ideal UCaaS provider enables enterprises to easily expand operations, offices, and employees beyond borders and establish local presence internationally to effectively communicate and collaborate with customers worldwide.
5. What actual solutions are offered?
“Many hosted providers only have a strong pedigree in one area,” Jon Arnold, Principal Analyst, J Arnold & Associates Research says. “Most are rooted in VoIP, with either that as a singular offering, or a lightweight Unified Communications (UC) solution pieced together from third-party partners. For enterprises truly looking for a transformative solution that supersedes the conventional telecom-centric upgrade, they’ll need a hosted partner covering the full spectrum of UC.”
That portfolio should include at least:
High-quality video and audio conferencing.
Collaboration tools such as virtual desktop and screen sharing.
Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as Salesforce®, Microsoft Teams or Office 365™ and workflow tools.
Intuitive mobility tools (like a mobile app) to ensure seamless experiences across devices.
Capabilities to allow employees to make and receive calls and messages from their personal phones while maintaining a consistent business presence.
Why? Moving to the cloud should mean more, not fewer, capabilities and benefits than you have with in-house infrastructure. By supporting the tools you already own, and that your employees know how to use, the UCaaS provider helps you maximize productivity.
As a final measure to determine which providers are leading the space, listen to what the experts are saying. Numerous cloud providers means a lot of competition—and thus a lot of pressure on their profit margins. With publicly held providers, peruse their past few earnings reports for key metrics such as revenue growth, profitability, and cash flow. And, see what respected analysts such as Gartner are reporting. They’re also key for scrutinizing cloud providers that are privately owned.
Of course, we believe we can address all of these concerns and be a trusted partner. If you’re ready to move your communications to the cloud, Vonage can help!
Vonage Business Communications is available in 12 countries, giving brands more reasons to move to the cloud: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. VBC is also available to companies headquartered in the United Kingdom and in Australia in addition to the United States. The timing has never been more important as companies deploy a mobile workforce from all over the world.
VBC is designed to unify calling, messaging, video, and business applications with Vonage Contact Center (VCC), enabling enterprises to optimize communication experiences for employees and customers across all channels and devices from anywhere.
Contact us to talk to one of our cloud communication experts and learn more about our solutions here.
