COVID 19 has brought in changes to many industries and technology verticals, Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) is no different to it. Before March 2020, usage of UCC platform was limited to office workers and few remote users. However, this crisis has compelled a substantial number of users to log in remotely. The pandemic is still evolving with the spread of the virus, efforts to mitigate its impacts, continuing to evolve quickly.
Recovering from disruption and transformation of work culture
With such pandemic spanning over months and uncertainty prevailing for a longer time, the entire community has already started to think of transforming the work culture. Many tech organisations have enabled their employees to log in remotely from anywhere, reducing the dependencies on offices. Some tech organisations have already announced a permanent work from home for their employees. With the rapid movement to work-from-home style, employees need to be provided with secure access to applications and data. Maybe it’s time for organisations to explore the idea of a digital workplace fully. The essential aspects for this consideration are:
- Putting employee safety and security in the first place
- Improvise the technology and drive the changes in the digital workplace to tackle the evolving changes due to pandemic
Communication Service Providers (CSPs) need to consider the following aspects while building/designing a digital workplace:
- Employee engagement
- Communication and Collaboration
- Secure access to the business application from anywhere
- Agile working
Effective remote working with UCC
Unified Communications and Collaborations (UCC) becomes a crucial ingredient for remote working with voice & video communications alongside data (information, documents, etc.) collaborations fueling to maintain the same productivity levels as an office. The unprecedented situation has challenged the IT team of organisations to re-look at the UCC structure/increase the capacity and enable a maximum number of employees to use UCC services remotely. Thanks to the tremendous development in UCC technology over the past decade, which is ready for such a scenario, it has become easier for organisations to enable and adopt it. Tech organisations can now literally switch over-night to remote working, ensure the same level of productivity or rather more because of saving in commuting time, which also leaves ample amount of time to spend with loved ones.
UCC has opened a massive opportunity for many CSPs to either start a new hosted UCC Services offerings to offer to enterprise customers or increase the capacity of the existing offering. CSPs can also partner with OTT players and bundle the services and communication/access links, thus improving user experience. Whatever option may be, CSP’s role will be pivotal in future.
Preparedness for a work-from-anywhere future
The pandemic has caught many organisations off-guards, and it also highlighted the need for effective remote collaboration with secured access. Except in a few industries, the typical eight or nine hours workday has almost vanished, and employees work when they feel most productive. To attract and sustain the best talent, organisations will have to provide work-from-anywhere options and for that organisations need to prepare for widespread remote-work enablement. They will have to offer the right tools and secured accesses to ensure business continuity. UCC technology would see drastic (& positive) change with steep growth in next 3 – 5 years, so it is never so late for any CSP to start thinking it as the new business model with the new normal. Collaboration platforms are here to stay, and there is no going back to old ways of working from this stage.
Tata Communications Transformation Services (TCTS), being an enabler for Communication Service Providers globally, is positioned uniquely having a comprehensive portfolio of services within UCC technology vertical. Whatever may the architecture type of UCC - Hosted/Cloud or On-premises or Hybrid, TCTS has ready-made services portfolio to be used under the white-labelled model. TCTS has developed skills and services with leading OEMs - Cisco, Microsoft & Avaya. Managed UCC/IPT Services, Managed Services for UCaaS, Managed Services for Nextgen Video Communication Services with strong use cases and customers stories speak volumes to us. TCTS’ UCC solutions help CSPs to activate a resilient, flexible workforce who can access their trusted enterprise applications across devices, anytime, anywhere. TCTS is ready to serve CSP community as a right partner to encounter the above challenge and shorten the time to market to our CSPs to enable their respective enterprise customers to achieve the goal of remote working for their employees. TCTS, with years of experience in system integration and managed services, enables CSPs to deliver professional managed services for digital workspaces with focus on Better average per user, meet the growing demand for collaboration and flexible engagement model.
Author
Sandeep Kulkarni
Lead- UCC Practice, Tata Communications Transformation Services (TCTS)
Sandeep has 20+ years of experience in UCC. He has seen the growth of technology right from PBX/EPABX to current day’s Cloud-based UCC. He has worked on major UCC OEM products like Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, Polycom, etc. He has worked in Telecom, IT-ITeS, BFSI industries in his career span.
