The Business Case for Cloud-based Unified Communications
“Through this agreement we are expanding our provision of cloud computing services with a solution that covers the communication needs of companies in one single package. We think this will satisfy a market need that is currently not being met,” says Bjørn Ivar Moen, manager of the business market for Telenor.
Dagfinn Ringås, director of business and partners at Microsoft Norway, commented further on the integration. “With Telenor’s telephony services fully integrated into Lync Online and Office 365, companies will be able to optimize their telecoms, collaboration and IT infrastructure. We have already seen considerable interest amongst customers for this type of solution in the markets where Telenor will be launching the service.”
UC&C and DT
Deutsche Telekom is currently the world’s largest provider of services for collaboration in the private cloud, and has actively partnered with Microsoft and others to leverage the cloud for UC&C. One of its largest enterprise customers is BP; Deutsche Telekom’s UC&C solutions enable more than 83,000 BP employees from around the globe to access the communication services they need at any time, in any place, with their mobile end devices or over landline connections.
In late November, Deutsche Telekom issued a press release announcing the acceleration of its cloud partnership campaign, with a bullet point claiming that “collaboration in the cloud is the number one trend.” It now offers Microsoft Office 365 in its business marketplace, which makes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online available all from the cloud. Business customers gain significant advantages: their employees can work together simply and securely using a multitude of devices, including PCs and smartphones; save data in the cloud; have access to their emails, documents and calendars whenever and wherever; and start a web conference with a single mouse click.
“Secure cloud solutions are a significant part of our group strategy for more growth,” says Dirk Backofen, who manages Deutsche Telekom’s cloud business. “When it comes to the cloud there’s a clear trend: after the initial tendency to use the cloud purely for storing data, things are now moving towards collaboration. The cloud brings people together.”
An optimistic UC&C outlook for 2013
While keen observers point out that Lync Server 2010 doesn’t offer native integration with Skype, and that it has some weaknesses on the mobile side — no voice client for Android, for instance — these issues will be addressed by Lync Server 2013, which is just around the corner. What is particularly significant about rolling Lync Server support into the UC&C framework is this: by becoming a larger component in the vibrant Microsoft ecosystem, CSPs get a stab at providing and managing the pipes for an increasingly larger services opportunity.
The overall market for collaboration services will continue to grow, as illustrated in figure 3, with the greatest amount of growth occurring outside of voice.
To fully benefit from UC&C market opportunities, CSPs will need to offer increased flexibility and capability to their business customers, and that means embracing the cloud and partner ecosystems. It’s the only way to deliver bundles that include voice, video, conferencing, email, storage, IM, and presence and that function seamlessly across federated and non-federated wireless and wireline networks. If Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and Telenor are any indication, the future for UC&C is bright, not to mention a significant opportunity for CSPs in the new year.
