Home News Savings and Productivity: Promises Of Unified Communications

Deploying a unified communications platform is a way to save money in terms of telecommunication and use of cloud services. It is above all a formidable tool for the digital transformation of organizations, by streamlining collaboration between employees.

2016 will be the year of unified communication. An IDG Enterprise survey of 2015 shows that the Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC & C) market will see an increase in activity over the next three years. 56% of large enterprises and 66% of SMEs will deploy or increase the scope of their unified communications solutions in 2016. IP communication has become widespread among individuals, whether with Skype or Facebook Messenger applications, and The companies finally decide to switch their telecommunications towards the whole IP, the big companies as the more modest companies.

Unified communications goes far beyond IP telephony: a modern unified communication platform will combine IP telephony with e-mail, with a voice mailbox, a fax number and e-mail messages that can be viewed from the same interface. It will also offer web conferencing, audio and video conferencing capabilities as well as the younger generation’s favorite communication tool, instant messaging.

Another key point of a unified communication platform is to provide its users with fixed / mobile presence management where everyone can communicate with a contact person in the most efficient way, Ie without interrupting him in his work if he is on a complex task and by the most appropriate means according to the workload of each one.

Better services for users at reduced infrastructure costs

A communication platform will help to contain international telecommunication costs. From the technical point of view, the transition to an all-IP architecture is an element of simplification in telecom equipment. Less equipment means less space occupied in technical rooms, data centers, less power consumed and a lighter administration load.

Even video conferencing rooms are now experiencing their revolution. Thus, with Unite, Intel offers an ultra-light solution for transforming any meeting room into a connected room. Far from the heavy and expensive equipment of the classical rooms, it is a mini-PC type Intel NUC which is used as computer “master”.

In addition to improving the quality of voice calls and conferences, HPE now makes contact with a member of the company a click away. It is no longer necessary to dial a number, no longer need to enter codes and passwords to start a video conference call in real life. The average time to connect to a conference call has dropped from 45 seconds to a maximum of 1 or 2 seconds. Joining a conference call is possible at any time with a click, whether you are on your computer or in a mobility situation with your smartphone.

In addition to the acceleration of internal exchanges and decision-making processes, 10 million minutes per week of conference calls and 20 million minutes of long distance calls are now transmitted via the internal HPE network.

The HPE DSI has carefully prepared this deployment, particularly with regard to its network architecture. This should be prepared for the success of “Click to” among users and the rapid growth of VoIP apps. To this end, the American has deployed Multi-Services Router (MSR) routers as well as SVM (Survivable Branch Communications zl Module) communications modules on the thousands of routers and switches on its global network. What to face serenely the network flows generated by the users of Skype for business because, on this side, the adoption is both very fast and massive.

While the pioneers of unified communications have often been key accounts, the benefits of unified communications are now fully open to SMEs. On the one hand, it is no longer necessary to renew all terminals. The 100% software approach is now totally conceivable, especially since the rise of smartphones, tablets and mobile phones in the nomadic populations. On the other hand, on the infrastructure side, it is possible to opt for a hybrid offering, in particular with the collaborative component in the Cloud on Microsoft Office 365 and the purely communication component in on-premise deployment for Skype for business.

HPE helps companies to switch their collaborative platforms to the cloud and offers its Flex offerings to deploy Microsoft Lync 2013 to the enterprise. In addition, the American will soon offer a Skype for Business or some Skype for Business alternatives hosted in France to offer unified communication in high performance mode to French companies.

For companies that prefer to deploy their platform internally, the manufacturer has developed generic configurations based on its latest generation ProLiant DL380 HPE server. A machine running Windows Server 2012 R2 running Microsoft Lync 2013. Optionally, HPE offers its HPE switches 8206-44G and HPE 3800-48G as well as a HPE MSR50-60 router. This reference configuration, recommended for a site with up to 250 users, is available for a main site and a remote site for a total of 1000 people and for one main site and three remote sites. Already tested and validated by the manufacturer, these ready-to-deploy configurations are an effective way for SMEs to move towards unified communications without risk-taking in their deployment.

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