May 26, 2022

Tim Jalland, Solution Manager, VOSS Solutions

We have observed that many enterprises embark on the migration to Microsoft Teams and other cloud UC platforms with a limited understanding of the existing UC infrastructure. This typically results in adoption challenges with end user frustration, delays, and unplanned additional costs. It’s time to discover what is in your existing PBX configuration, before planning your move to Microsoft Teams Voice and the cloud.

I’d like to share our solution to avoid this challenge – VOSS Discover. This is a new package from VOSS that helps customers examine and understand their existing PBX configuration. It supports more effective planning and ultimately a better outcome of the initiative to transition their telephony to new cloud solutions such as Microsoft Teams Voice.

What is the big news?

Experience has shown us that it is super important for our customers to understand where they are starting from before they begin a UC migration project. You would not set off on a journey, blindfolded, would you? Maps are good but without your current position, they are a spider’s web.

It is the same for a migration project: you really do not want to plan a migration and agree on a budget without any idea of what’s involved or the possible risks. But it is a scenario that many organizations find themselves in.

The Process

So, taking a step back, the first thing to do in a migration project is access the existing PBX configuration and get to know it. This is a journey in its own right. You need technical resources and selected command line scripts, and the output involves complex interrelated data. This is all tricky to manage if the PBX is running with a live service.

But this preparation work is fundamental to the success of the migration. The existing data needs to be extracted, reviewed, cleaned up, and rationalized. Then mapped, transformed, or redesigned for the new Microsoft Teams service.

This is where VOSS Discover can help. We make a complex, often daunting process, incredibly simple, by:

1. Collaborating with you to get an export from your existing PBX
2. Uploading the extract into VOSS Migrate – a tool that provides an automated discovery process with the data managed and modeled in a SQL database – to make sure it is accurate and runs at scale
3. Providing a complete inventory of the PBX, so that you can understand what is running on the existing service
4. Presenting a summary report that is clear and easy to understand

Importantly, you will also receive a gap analysis that highlights the features that need attention as you plan your move to Microsoft Teams. It is not “a like for like” migration, so features will need mapping, transforming, or redesigning.

There are two flavors of VOSS Discover:

• Option 1: VOSS Discover is designed as a first and fast view into the existing PBX configuration, to understand what needs to be migrated and some of the possible complexity associated with it.
• Option 2: VOSS Discover Plus provides a deeper dive into the existing PBX configuration, makes use of additional data sources (e.g. usage data), and is suitable for organizations that require a fuller audit at the start of the migration program.

Rest assured that VOSS Discover works to your timescales. We will get the report back for first review within two weeks.

VOSS Discover is available now for all popular PBX systems. If you would like more information or a sample report, get in touch or click here.