February 8, 2022

We are pleased to share a new issue paper from industry analyst, Metrigy, which gives the business case for unifying UC and network management. Download the issue paper here. So, what does it tell you?

Industry challenges

Today, most organizations treat UC management separately from network management, which means:

• Unnecessary delays and inefficiencies, frustrated employees, and poor customer interactions
• Companies are unable to implement an integrated approach to fault identification, isolation, and recovery
• Companies are unable to implement automated self-healing via AIOps
• They also lack the end-to-end performance insight to predict problems before they occur 

Organizations often lack necessary insight to ensure high-quality end-user experiences. For example, just 36.1% have the capability today to measure voice and video performance, yet nearly half (47.7%) report network-related issues that are impacting video conferencing experiences. 

Absent end-to-end insight into network and application performance, IT managers are essentially flying blind, unable to identify areas of need quickly, and instead resorting to high-cost approaches such as just adding more bandwidth.

 Useful points of note

The report explains that more than 63% of companies are integrating contact center and UC platforms to allow agents to conference with back-office personnel.  (Learn about VOSS for Contact Center Management) 

Interestingly, more than 70% of those using Microsoft Teams Phone System for calling, are using their own PSTN connectivity services (an approach known as “bring your own carrier,” or BYOC for short). A BYOC environment requires the ability to identify and troubleshoot voice problems as they arise. The growing adoption of CPaaS adds to IT organizations’ need to ensure that they have visibility into real-time application performance, as well as insight into the behavior of the underlying network.

Benefits of an Integrated Approach

Successful companies, defined as those with the highest measured ROI for their collaboration investments, extend IT support to remote employees, treating the home office the same as the company-owned office. 

72.4% of successful companies have integrated their UC performance and administrative management tools with IT service management platforms, enabling front-line support workers to have direct visibility into application performance and provisioned devices

Companies see a 41.3% reduction in MTTR for those that deploy their own performance management tools in conjunction with cloud-based calling and meeting apps. Being able to leverage performance management tools enables visibility

Service providers that adopt integrated management approaches are likely to improve their competitiveness and increase customer satisfaction, leading to reduced churn and the ability to provide customers with better visibility into performance of their applications

Selecting the right platform for your business

•  Enterprises should look for solutions that integrate with their current set of collaboration and communications applications, and that can interface with their current network environment
• Service Providers including Managed Service Providers should look to leverage integrated solutions to improve delivery of customer-facing application services. They should look for tools that integrate with operational support systems (OSSes), including provisioning, billing, and self-service

 Vendor Comparison

While a number of vendors offer UC performance management platforms, few offer integrated UC, and both historical and automated network management and the ability to leverage AIOps to automate network provisioning and response to issues that do occur. The following table provides a high-level overview of the capabilities provided by leading providers in the UC performance management space:

Conclusions

Metrigy advises the following:

• Reevaluate your current approach to managing UC applications, to ensure that you are fully able to provide end-to-end insight into voice and video performance, even if using cloud platforms
• Evaluate management platforms or managed services that integrate network and UC application performance management into a single view to reduce mean time to repair
• Look to leverage AI for enabling self-healing and automated configuration to minimize impact of outages or other disruptions

Learn more about digital workplace management, or download the Metrigy issue paper here.