While many organizations have begun to move Unified Communications (UC) and Contact Center (CC) applications to the cloud, their cloud journeys are nowhere near complete. Organizations in the midst of this transition would benefit from taking the time to build a smarter path to the cloud by developing a comprehensive cloud strategy that addresses their specific business needs. There is no doubt that the cloud is an incredible business enabler that helps organizations realize a broad range of benefits, including:
- Gaining business agility and flexibility
- Reducing complexity
- Driving innovation
- Improving business continuity/availability
- Scaling up and down at hyper speed
- Shortening time-to-market
- Improving cash flow positions
- Cutting costs
However, if organizations fail to fine-tune their approach, they are unlikely to receive the greatest possible value from their cloud investments. Below are best practices to consider when planning a migration to a best-in-class collaboration cloud experience.
Always Start by Developing a Cloud Strategy
To gain the aforementioned benefits, organizations should formulate a comprehensive and well-informed cloud strategy that aligns with their overall business plan. Depending on the type of cloud and what workloads are intended for each specific cloud, organizations should also adjust existing policies to accommodate the transition. The landscape isn’t if cloud, but how many and which models are optimized to the organization’s business plan. Developing a strategy and adjusting policies are no easy tasks, which is why it is so important that organizations partner with a trusted cloud advisor that has specific experience with collaboration cloud deployments and can help them move through the process.
ConvergeOne is the ideal partner to assist with moving UC and CC systems to the cloud. ConvergeOne is one of the only UCaaS and CCaaS providers that can deliver leading-edge functionality while also providing the scalability and reliability required by many organizations. Further, ConvergeOne has a proven track record of success, helping more than 100 customers migrate to the cloud.
Identify Outcomes, Expectations, and Issues
A great number of CIOs and IT leaders fail to develop a viable cloud strategy because of the diverse issues that emerge within the cloud. Many organizations avoid taking the time to determine what they even wish to achieve by adopting cloud. Instead, they regard cloud as a buzzword and attempt to hop onto the bandwagon without putting effort into developing a roadmap.
It's important to set priorities and identify expectations and optimal outcomes before moving forward with any cloud strategy or deployment model. Is meeting security and compliance objectives the most important consideration, or is the organization more concerned with improving reliability and availability? An advisor like ConvergeOne can match the right cloud solution to an organization’s functional and application management requirements. ConvergeOne advises organizations based on assessing their key objectives and current environment to determine which path is best—and why. ConvergeOne works with different stakeholders across the organization—Line of Business owners, collaboration, infrastructure, security, governance, and networking—to recognize requirements and make specific recommendations on how to proceed.
Unlike other cloud communications providers, ConvergeOne has expertise outside of the UC and CC components, including cybersecurity, data center, and enterprise networking. This becomes incredibly important when organizations start to consider potential issues or roadblocks. For instance, organizations should conduct an assessment to ensure they have the right infrastructure to support cloud. They may also need to implement a new mobile device management strategy, or move from an MPLS Network to SD-WAN. ConvergeOne can help organizations with considerations that extend outside of the collaboration box.
Deliver End-User Training
End-user training and adoption is also incredibly important, because it ensures that the organization will be able to properly take advantage of the new cloud solution. ConvergeOne has a dedicated Transitions Services team to ensure that its customers are properly onboarded and engaged with the ConvergeOne Customer Success Centers (CSC). The Transition Services Team utilizes an ITIL-based five-phased process, with multiple Quality Gates, to onboard new customers:
- Setup: Identify any areas that require care during the onboarding of the customer
- Assessment: Customer Kickoff occurs, with a Transition Workbook that includes a detailed project plan
- Implementation: Includes many components, such as record builds, monitoring configuration/testing, Health Check, creation of Run Books for customers with CSMs, Customer Center Demo, Knowledge Transfers, and weekly status calls
- Go Live: Customer receives a guide with information about how to contact and use the CSC
- Completion: Includes wrap-up activities
Take the First SteP:
ConvergeOne Cloud Advisory Workshops
For many organizations, building a robust cloud strategy that makes sense for their needs can be challenging. That’s why ConvergeOne created UCaaS and CCaaS On-Site Cloud Advisory Workshops aimed at assessing the current state, the desired future state, requirements, and recommendations around various cloud designs and deployment models.
During working sessions, ConvergeOne experts will work on-site to help you craft a strategy and roadmap for leveraging UCaaS/CCaaS technologies. Sign up for a workshop today.
Topics: Cloud, CCaaS, Collaboration, UCaaS
