Premise, Hosted or Both? What UC Model Will Prevail in the Future?

Cindy Whelan

Summary Bullets:

• As the unified communications (UC) market develops, enterprises have access to a wide range of solutions from equipment vendors and service providers that offer hosted and on-premise UC solutions.
• Enterprises that want to deploy hosted and managed UC solutions must consider which entire service wrap has the best model for their needs.

Carriers have long supported premises-based managed IP PBX solutions, typically based on platforms from Avaya, Cisco and Siemens.  In 2011, as interest in unified communications services began to grow, major service providers added hosted UC offers based on the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) platform.  In 2012, service providers continued to build out their UC solutions, adding support for Microsoft Lync.  BT launched a pilot program for a dedicated hosted Microsoft Lync solution in February 2012, followed by its October 2012 commercial launch of hosted Lync in the U.S.  In November 2012, Verizon opted for a different approach with the launch of a managed customer premise-based Microsoft Lync solution that can be offered alongside a professional services practice specifically designed for Lync implementations. Orange Business Services has had a dedicated hosted Microsoft Lync offer for some time, and plans a Microsoft Lync ‘as a service’ shared hosted platform in 2013.  Many more carriers have certified their SIP trunking solutions with Microsoft Lync, even if they don’t yet provide a fully managed UC solution for the platform.

End of Year Thoughts on BYOD: Fad or Here to Stay?

Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• BYOD remains ‘the big issue’ according to suppliers of enterprise mobility technology and services, with consulting and professional services, MDM/MAM platforms, containerization, and dual persona solutions promoted as ways to ‘solve’ the problem or deal more effectively with an issue that has both pluses and minuses for enterprises.
• Now that 2012 is nearly over, can we say conclusively that BYOD is here to stay?  Might it still go away and be seen as a fad that came and went, ultimately more trouble than it was worth for both the employee and their employer?

There is literally not a single presentation from a service or technology provider for enterprise mobility that does not begin with the premise that BYOD has changed ‘everything.’  Not only are devices coming into the workplace, but the concept of an ‘enterprise’ smartphone does not even make sense anymore in many companies, because the employee needs to love the look and feel of their mobile device and will select it based on what used to be considered consumer criteria: the numbers and variety of apps it can access or provide, the quality of the browser, the camera, the color, and screen size.  Tablets are also mainstream in the workplace, but vendor surveys show they are somewhat less likely to be purchased by the employee than a smartphone.  Moreover, the various payment schemes for BYOD devices have matured (i.e., employee-funded, partial reimbursement based on either a set stipend or a predefined percent of the cost, or full reimbursement), with partial reimbursement the most common choice.