Posts by Wavenet

Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) deployments are increasing with organisations now becoming conscious of the advantages it can bring their business. UCC can help businesses boost productivity, increase revenues, reduce costs and enhance customer relationships together with other tangible benefits such as increased responsiveness and accelerated collaboration. UCC aggregates the communication services that people use into a single interface, including instant messaging, voice, presence, video conferencing, desktop sharing, apps and so on. In the modern business environment, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all voice & UC solution. The tangible benefits of UCC will differ from organisation to organisation, depending and based on individual communication and collaboration needs within the company. Hence why deploying UCC successfully requires a plan aligned with the company strategy. Below are our top 4 tips for a successful UCC deployment: Users come first Almost every business, and every vertical within it, has communication bottlenecks and inefficiencies which slow the workflow. As already mentioned, each organisation has different communication needs and the easiest way to identify them is to look at the end users. If you trace back these inefficiencies and the communication activities of your employees, you can easily pinpoint which tools they are using including devices, individual applications for different tasks and which tools will be most useful to adopt. Also, it is extremely important to take into account individual usage profiles - each department or group within your company such as customer service, sales reps, marketing and so on are involved in different work processes and therefore have different communication needs. For example, marketing, design and other departments with similar functions are likely to benefit from a collaboration platform where they can communicate quickly and efficiently to make decisions, using instant messaging whilst sharing their screens to present to a customer or colleague. On the other hand, sales reps are constantly on the move and need to be able to join a conference call from any place with a click of a button from their mobile device, as opposed to using lengthy dial in numbers to join a bridge. A way to ensure that sales reps will never miss a call from a customer or prospect is a term used in the industry ‘find me, follow me’ which involves integration of your mobile and voice environment. It is crucial to plan out the different communication needs of the various departments within your organisation and having a user-focused strategy prior to any deployment. Choose your deployment method carefully An on-site solution is no longer the only option for organisations when they come to review their UC strategy. It is time to consider the right deployment method for your business in terms of your resource, DR, growth plans, budgets etc. The question to ask yourself is: Is on-premise, hosted or a hybrid platform best for you? Each of these solutions has its own benefits as well as its potential drawbacks according to what is important to you (upfront costs and costs of maintenance, DR strategy, resources to run the system internally, current bandwidth etc.), and in each case you will have to ensure that not only the provider is the right one to accompany you and fulfil your needs in the long term, but also that the product/technology they are putting forward is exactly matching your needs and is in accordance with your company strategy. At Solar we work with ShoreTel, which is an award winning industry leading provider of telephony and UC solutions. Their phone system is based on an open architecture which enables the integration with other leading solutions including Salesforce, Skype for Business and NetSuite among many others. The platform has various other features including CRM integrations, call recording, prioritisation of queues together with other smart telephony functions. Try before you make the final decision We speak to too many IT managers who feel the pressure of making their decision the final one and therefore delay the decision-making process by fear of choosing the wrong solution and wrong provider. It is likely that you will keep this new solution for the next 10 years and making a decision for such a long-term commitment can become difficult especially if you have multiple sites and a large number of users. When it comes to telephony and UCC, most IT managers tend not to consider doing a POC, fearing it a waste of their time. Paradoxically, the IT managers we speak to who are trialling different solutions on different sites - or with different groups of users - appear to be the most serene. Why? Because they get the opportunity to trial the solutions, test the service and relationship with the provider, but also gain valuable feedback from the users. It might seem laborious to install a new system for the sake of a POC, but consider how much time (and money) you will have saved yourself in the long run by keeping the best provider and solution - by simply trialling, comparing and potentially getting rid of an incompetent provider, inadequate solution, or both! Train the users Another crucial but often neglected aspect of a successful Unified Communications and Collaboration deployment is getting the employees excited and familiar with the new technology. In order to take full advantage and explore all the benefits of UCC, all users need to understand how to use it, which requires training or a familiarisation session. Even if your employees already have experience using some UCC applications such as IM and video conferencing, training is helpful to ensure that all users are confident with the solutions, make the most of it and help with a faster adoption rate, and therefore faster ROI. Alternatively, if there are too many changes and unfamiliar applications and processes, or your employees are just not very tech-savvy, a phased deployment can be implemented. Let the users adopt and experience each UC component for a time before moving on to the next one. We hope this article has been of interest. If you need additional information about successful deployment of Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions, please contact us and we will be happy to help you.

Today, the majority of Enterprise WAN’s are based on MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) connections. However, with the growing number of applications being delivered from the cloud combined with the need to enable direct-to-cloud communications, MPLS is no longer sufficiently performant or cost-effective. The need to increase streamline WAN infrastructure, combined with the interest for cheaper and simpler WAN, is driving SD-WAN adoption. The SD-WAN market is set to at least double in the next 3 years with 70% of companies interviewed planning to adopt SD-WAN in some form in the next 18 months, IDC reports. SD-WAN over DIA (Direct Internet Access) can fully replace existing MPLS, or a hybrid of MPLS and DIA can be leveraged. The leading motives cited driving the adoption for enterprises are price, security, visibility and reduced complexity. Couple these advantages with the other benefits SD-WAN can bring to your business and it becomes clear why MPLS networks are in decline year on year. Here are the top 4 reasons why SD-WAN will replace legacy MPLS connections: SD-WAN improves application and network performance Before the advent of the cloud, organisations needed only to be concerned with the performance of the applications hosted on their private networks and centralised data centres. Now that applications are moving to the cloud and are relying on the Internet to carry them to offices, MPLS can no longer deliver, which is turning businesses away. The Internet is a much better scaled network than it was a decade or even 5 years ago. Business-class high-speed Internet bandwidth with speeds up to and beyond 1Gbps are available and can be used for enterprise networks. Leveraging broadband Internet as an alternative to MPLS ensures network-wide predictable performance regardless of where the applications are hosted. SD-WAN ensures high availability with minimum downtime. When running over pure Internet bandwidth, the best way to maintain 99.99% availability is to utilise 2 links from 2 different providers in case of link failure. Additionally, SD-WAN enables you to measure jitter, latency and packet loss, routeing traffic to the best path available with the least amount of loss. If loss is still present on both links, solutions such as Silver Peak’s Path Conditioning will address the problem, ensuring exceptional performance, reliability and private-line-like performance over the public Internet. MPLS has a complex infrastructure It’s the management and orchestration of SD-WAN which gives it its competitive edge and differentiates it from other solutions. Legacy MPLS has a multitude of single-function devices and appliances connecting via different WAN links. This complex infrastructure proved to be prohibitively expensive and complex, both to implement and maintain. In contrast, broadband internet links are much quicker to provision and deploy. The plug-n-play concept and point-and-click provisioning of SD-WAN are its biggest unique selling points. Additionally, everything is GUI based which means that large and complex WAN’s can be managed more simply the ever before. Savings are substantial One of the biggest drivers of SD-WAN adoption, which accounts for 35% of all deployments, is the cost savings that can be derived. MPLS circuits are not only expensive to install and scale, but the cost of MPLS per Mbps can be up to 100 times the cost of Internet bandwidth. MPLS is priced anywhere between £30 and £60 per megabit per month compared to as little as £2 for broadband Internet. Companies surveyed in a recent IDC survey reported an estimate of at least 20% cost savings with SD-WAN. Security is improved Another motive accounting for a big part of SD-WAN deployments is the network security it provides. Historically MPLS has been considered a secure form of network connectivity as it uses private links and does not require encryption. However, the data travelling through the node is exposed and if anyone gains access to the wire outside the building, the data can be tapped. Similarly, recent events have called MPLS security into question and revealed that governments can easily tap and monitor these networks. On the other hand, SD-WAN predominantly uses DIA and since the Internet is a public and shared medium it represents an opportunity for attackers. However, security across the Internet can be ensured by utilising encryption and firewall level packet inspection used for security, reporting, and traffic prioritisation. Conclusion Substantial cost savings, improved performance, full network visibility, simplified management and consistent security are the top drivers for enterprises considering SD-WAN. Aside from these advantages there are other smaller benefits that SD-WAN has over MPLS including wider geographic availability, unmatched QoS as well as the fact that it is not datacentre-dependent. Due to the myriad of benefits it provides to businesses, SD-WAN has started to replace legacy MPLS networks and the trend is set to scale dramatically over the next few years. We hope this article has been of interest. If your company is considering ripping out and replacing your current MPLS network architecture, contact Solar Communications to find out more about how SD-WAN can support your needs.

With so much information coming out about the cloud and hosted business telephony it is easy to get inundated, but with the market showing the move is inevitable it is understandable for you to be asking yourself “How do I get on to the cloud?”

What is a disaster?

Disaster can strike in a number of ways:

Recent winter storms in the UK mean that many businesses have been caught out due to a lack of adequate disaster recovery planning. So what’s the lesson? Be prepared. Every year severe disruption caused by extreme weather events is becoming increasingly common, so it’s vital to plan accordingly. Reliable disaster recovery solutions can be affordable and easy to implement, so there’s no reason not to.

As organizations grow, they amass tons of tribal knowledge that often sits within documents, SharePoint sites and FAQ manuals. Not everyone is interested in everything and it becomes tricky to find the information quickly. This forces employees to switch context between applications or deal with the specialists / subject matter experts directly which causes frustration for both.

In Safe Hands with Wavenet – the Risktec Story. Risktec is a serious business. It’s a global, specialist, risk management and training company, and is part of the TÜV Rheinland Group. Working with major hazard industries such as the nuclear and gas and oil sectors. Its consultants assist clients in major hazard industries as well as commercial and public sectors to manage health, safety, security, environmental and business risk, and it does this all over the world. This includes the UK, the Middle East and North America. In fact, it works with some of the world’s most impressive companies; managing more than 3500 projects with more than 500 clients in 50 countries. We are proud to say it has chosen to work with Wavenet. A very challenging environment. As part of its role, the company has to develop a detailed reports to support its’ customers. It needs to create and deliver these efficiently and quickly, in various locations, across the globe. Its office technology must be as mobile as its consultants, allowing reports to be delivered and easy communications and collaborations between consultants and clients. Here’s the solution. ‘Wavenet provides a service which supports the technology that we use and meets the company’s needs allowing us flexibility and mobility,’ said Mel Davies IT Manager. ‘As a company that is growing and dynamic and mobile, the service that we needed was something that didn’t tie us down to something we constantly have to replace. There is no need to do that with Wavenet.’ Ricktec chose Wavenet based on a trusted relationship Mel had formed over many years with members of the Wavenet team. He had seen them forge a long and successful career working in the industry and, had proven to him before, that they could deliver on their promises. ‘No matter where I’ve been, these have always been the people that I could rely on,’ said Mel. ‘These people work at Wavenet.’ Working as a Risktec consultant himself, he has used the technology in the field and couldn’t be happier with his decision. ‘Wavenet has proven that it can meet those dynamic needs, can support us, and look after us,’ he said. ‘They deliver the service where we need it.’ IT Manager Mel Davis also works as a consultant so has first-hand knowledge of the benefits provided by working with Wavenet both as a consultant and delivering the services provided by them.

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