What is Unified Communication As-a-Service (UCaaS)? Definition, Types, Advantages, and Examples
UCaaS is a cloud-based communications service delivery model that offers the necessary infrastructure, applications, and resources that companies need to streamline their communication strategies.
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is defined as a cloud-based service delivery model that offers all the necessary infrastructure, applications, and resources that organizations need to streamline their various modes of communication.
These modes include chat, telephony, SMS, video conferencing, VOIP etc. It equips companies with the capability to centralize their entire communication architecture and provide access to a range of turnkey applications and services without the need to invest in bulky IT hardware or specialized support teams.
In this article, we explain what Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is today, when to choose UCaaS versus similar solutions such as VoIP; the benefits and advantages, pitfalls related to UCaaS deployments, and UCaas deployment models available today.
Table of Contents
What is Unified Communication As-a-Service (UCaaS)?
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a cloud-based unified communications service delivery model that provides all the necessary infrastructure, applications, and resources an organization needs to streamline their various modes of communication.
These modes can include chat, telephony, SMS, video conferencing, VOIP etc. UCaaS is the ‘as a service’ cloud computing model, designed to deliver seamless multi-channel experience across both internal and external business conversations and collaborations.
It offers organizations much-needed access to a wide range of cutting-edge applications and services to support critical internal and external communication strategies, including business telephony, enterprise messaging, online meetings (web, video, and audio), team collaboration, presence, customer support and more, without expensive hardware, software or maintenance investments.
According to a recent research report by MarketsandMarkets, the UCaaS market size is expected to grow to $24.8 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 9.5 percent. This figure will probably rise due to the global pandemic and the resulting shift to distributed, remote workforces. The trend will become the ‘new normal’ for most enterprises. That means IT organizations are tasked with addressing the critical business need to enable employees to work, collaborate and communicate seamlessly with minimal disruption to business deliverables, outcomes and security.
Why is UCaaS important for enterprises?
While most companies have been using some components of cloud communications, the need to streamline communications and offer users a seamless experience, minimize deployment and maintenance costs and drive flexible responses to a highly dynamic business environment make UCaaS a key solution to consider for businesses seeking streamlined enterprise communications solutions.
1. UCaaS delivers all the critical components of enterprise communications on a cloud-based platform. This makes the deployment of unified communications far more efficient, flexible, scalable, and cost-effective, helping companies address dynamic business requirements without making expensive investments in infrastructure and resources.
As more companies adopt remote working as a reliable model in the ‘new normal’, UCaaS platforms are emerging as a popular model to deploy unified communications, by allowing the business to streamline all the multiple communication strategies, from business telephony to email, audio/video conferencing, instant messaging, presence, and more, in a flexible and cost-efficient manner on the cloud.
2. UC offers a single, unified solution that supports everything from instant chat and messaging, to SMS, presence, conferencing, and more. With the UCaaS model, they can do that on the cloud, accessing cutting-edge innovations and real-time maintenance and upgrades, without any significant investment in infrastructure or people, and without compromising on security, access or ease-of-use.
3. UCaaS services charge a monthly or annual service fee, and the service provider manages the entire communication environment, including regular maintenance, upgrades, and periodic functionality and feature improvement or innovations. UCaaS scores on its ability to offer low-cost, low-effort access to cutting edge cloud communication solutions for companies of all sizes.
4. By empowering organizations with the capability to integrate multiple communication platforms via a single cloud provider, Unified Communications as a Service facilitates greater collaboration in the workforce and improved business productivity.
5. Some UCaaS vendors even support integrations with existing software such as interactive voice response (IVR), auto-attendant, and customer relationship management (CRM) to streamline the communication strategies of a business, and in turn, unlock quality interactions with their customers, almost treading into the waters served typically by contact centre as a service (CCaaS) platforms. This does seem to be a future direction in which UCaaS solution providers are heading, to truly offer an integrated and seamless solution to customer-facing businesses.
Learn More: What is Unified Communications? Definition, System, Cloud Service, Best Practices and Examples
Unified Communication as-a-service (UCaaS) vs. VOIP
Today, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) has taken over Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a more acceptable platform to streamline enterprise communications across multiple channels. Almost two decades ago, VoIP emerged as a game-changing model to replace the legacy telephony systems that businesses used to communicate with clients and among each other. Unlike traditional wired phones, VoIP allows businesses to connect their phone service via IP networks and make calls directly from a computer, phone, or app rather than through wire-line connectivity.
VoIP
For companies, VoIP came as a unique opportunity to reap all the benefits of a landline phone such as making or receiving calls across both mobile and landline phones, call monitoring, and more via IP networks at half the cost and added flexibility. VoIP is known for the ease of management and cost-savings it offers—it only needs an internet connection to make or receive calls and therefore, virtually eliminates the need to enable a phone and internet service simultaneously.
When combined with cloud hosting service, VoIP drives the efficiency of enterprise communication, which includes robust calling features, integrated mobile access, streamlined data transfers, and more. It also offers features like voicemail to email, simultaneous ring, auto-routing, etc. to ensure that every vital call is attended and allows firms to keep specific tabs on their business with a 360-degree view.
UCaaS
However, as the digital communication landscape is continuously evolving today with customers demanding seamless interaction with brands, companies find it necessary to adopt a streamlined communications strategy that offers both – video conferencing and instant messaging – features that VoIP does not offer.
This is where Unified Communications as a Service jumps in. It effectively combines multiple platforms such as messaging, video conferencing, contact centers, business apps, and even chat apps into a holistic communications system that is accessible from anywhere, at any time.
UCaas vs. VoIP
The key difference between unified communication as a service (UCaaS) and VOIP is the scope of coverage, where VOIP is a standalone service for only internet voice calling, where as UCaaS covers all enterprise communication formats, including telephony, VOIP, text, video conferencing etc.
For example, with UCaaS, an employee can make or receive an important call on their mobile device while commuting to work and if the situation demands, immediately switch to the laptop or desktop without having to disconnect the call.
Aside from instant messaging and real-time communications, many UCaaS providers feature easy document sharing, simultaneous editing, shared calendars, and even joint file storage to facilitate deep collaboration and group project management.
One of the critical reasons for organizations choosing Unified Communications as a Service over VoIP is the capability to integrate third-party solutions or applications such as Salesforce or Microsoft Outlook 365. For example, if a sales representative has access to customer order history before making a call, then they can have a more relevant and personalized interaction with the customer. Besides, it also enhances the user experience for the employee by allowing them to initiate voice or video calls directly from the Salesforce dashboard, view the customer’s interaction history, and add notes synchronously.
Similarly, a Microsoft Office 365 integration can catalyze streamlined communication with one-click-call functionality, contact sync, and more. These integrations pay-off well in the long run, enabling firms to customize their tools to meet changing business needs as well as drive effective internal collaboration in the organization.
Learn More: Is VoIP Right for Your Business? 5 Factors to Help Decide
Who Needs UCaaS and When?
A CCaaS solution is ideal for businesses that operate in omni-channel environments and where customer service is mission-critical to revenues.
But, for companies who need a more robust system to deliver omnichannel communications across multiple locations, devices, and platforms, for both internal and external conversations, the UCaaS service model is the perfect fit to help save both time and capital investments without compromising on accessibility, productivity or security of the system. UCaaS solutions are especially attractive for businesses that:
- Operate in very dynamic environments, where there is a need to scale up or down on both- employee and business communication needs frequently and unpredictably
- Where there is a need to work with the very latest communication solutions to stay competitive
- Where digital-first business requires the ability to manage security vulnerabilities with agility and expertise
- Where IT resources are already stretched thin and are focused on the more core business operations
- Where an increasing percentage of employees, partners and customers are remote, distributed and mobile
How to decide if you need UCaaS?
Today, multiple solutions are available to serve enterprise communication needs. While every business needs to make a decision based on its unique needs, context and resources, it is important to consider what the use-cases and expected outcomes of deployment would be, before signing up to a UCaaS solution.
Of course, available resources and state of current installed solutions is central to the decision.
1. Your specific use-case is also critical. For example, as discussed earlier, VOIP, CCaaS, CPaaS and custom-built UC frameworks are all possible solutions to consider. If your priority is to enable seamless communication and collaboration of a global workforce, UCaaS would work, but if it is to serve customer support via multiple channels, then CCaaS may be more apt.
2. Other considerations revolve around the regulatory framework of your industry and data security considerations. While UCaaS vendors do invest huge resources to ensure cutting-edge security, like with everything on the cloud, certain accountability – and liability- for data security and access-control does come down to the users. Does your business allow you to take any risks with communication security? Are you able to train all your users on safe cloud communication practices?
3. Finally, organizations need to consider the level of customization they need for their use-cases. UCaaS does not offer the most customizable solutions, and any specific industry-specific needs would require IT leaders to think about a CPaaS or a custom-built UC system altogether. FOr example, healthcare solutions and even some types of financial services, or highly niche industries with very specific requirements, would consider alternatives to UCaaS.
Choosing a UCaaS Vendor: Critical Evaluation Parameters
If you decide to go with UcaaS, critical evaluation parameters to choose the ideal solution include:
- The total cost of operation with a UCaaS, including any hidden costs, maintenance fees
- Will the vendor offer unhindered access to upgrades and new features or innovations, or will they cost additional?
- What are the rules around upscaling or downscaling capacity? Are you bound by any specific timelines or commitments or does the vendor offer true flexibility?
- What connectivity and bandwidth requirements does the service mandate, and can you ensure that all your users have access to the required bandwidth?
- Ease of use is also crucial – will your users adopt the service easily or does it need additional investments in training and driving adoption. To that end, involving users and getting feedback from them on what they need and what would best serve their needs is a critical exercise that IT should lead at the information gathering phase.
- What has been the track record of the vendor when it comes to security and how do they address the demands of today’s highly dynamic security environment
- Access to on-demand support and customer service across all the time-zones your users operate in
- Finally, consider how easy or difficult integrations may be to ensure the UCaaS solutions work with any existing installed base or app your team already works with that can’t be replaced.
Learn More: Top 10 Unified Communication as-a-Service Companies and Providers in 2020
Types of UCaaS Architectures with Examples
Whether its a call center, law firm, consultancy, logistic provider, or healthcare organization, UCaaS offers a comprehensive set of tools to address all communication issues that companies deal with today. The result is a streamlined, omnichannel communication experience for users—customers and employees alike—regardless of their location, timezone, or the devices they use.
Cloud-based unified communications platforms present a host environment to streamline business communication, collaboration, and services, bundling everything together in a single cloud platform. Adopting UCaaS systems equips companies with a range of benefits such as zero or minimal investments in capital, tools, management, support, and maintenance of the architecture because the service provider takes care of it all.
For those exploring the deployment of UCaaS for their organizations, there are two primary architectures to choose from—single-tenancy and multi-tenancy. Let’s explore what each is:
1. Single-Tenancy Model
In this model, providers design a highly customized software platform for businesses, which delivers seamless integrations with their existing, on-premise applications. This model offers a higher level of security as each customer’s data is kept separate, thereby ensuring that downtime for one customer does not affect any other customers. The service provider equips different clients with personalized software in accordance to their needs and demands – only the hardware is shared.
For example, imagine an organization that deals with sensitive data such as a healthcare provider or one that needs a high degree of customizations, such as a bank. Both need to ensure privacy protection, user experience, and seamless integrations with on-premise applications as vital touchpoints in their communications strategy. For such firms, the single-tenancy UCaaS model is the best fit due to the enhanced level of security and reliability it offers. Besides, as the system falls under client, it can be restored in case of any unprecedented emergencies.
As the single-tenancy architecture is more customizable and secure, it is a popular choice to ensure data security, dependability, as well as easy backup and recovery. However, single-tenancy is more expensive because the cost of upgrading the software often comes to each individual customer.
2. Multi-Tenancy Model
A multi-tenancy UCaaS architecture means that multiple clients share both the software and the hardware elements of the service. Each customer can have the ability to customize some parts of the application, for instance, the color of the UI or business rules, but not the application code or functions of the software. The multi-tenancy model offers more vendor support and is a very cost-effective option for organizations to cut capex without missing out on essential capabilities such as driving virtualization and remote access. The service provider acts as the shared host to the whole system, thereby enabling companies to receive updates instantly and remain at the cutting edge of functionalities.
Even though it offers fewer choices for customization, the multi-tenancy model is very popular due to the cost-effectiveness, minimal maintenance, superior vendor support, and automatic upgrade options that it enables.
3. Hybrid UCaaS
There is a third model available to companies called a hybrid UCaaS approach. This is a good fit when users want to keep some components of their UC systems on-premise and the rest on the cloud. Implementing a hybrid UCaaS system allows organizations to retain key components on-premise for security or management reasons and move other applications to the cloud, thereby empowering them to find the right balance between security, agility, scale and budget. Choosing the right deployment model depends solely on the demands, context and requirements of the company.
Advantages of UCaaS
Today, companies continue to make the switch to UCaaS in an attempt to transform both their internal and external communication. An optimized service model to support the mobile workforce in the digital age, cloud UC services offer the independence and advanced integration capabilities that digital-first companies of all sizes and across industry verticals demand.
As a cloud-based offering, UCaaS systems provide superior scalability and flexibility for organizations in highly dynamic business environments to expand and scale their communications functionalities without significant investment of time or resources. . It can also be a good option for companies that need to quickly remove and add new employees to their environment, allowing easy onboarding or separation of staff without significant infrastructure changes.
UCaaS provides a range of benefits to businesses that adopt the technology, including cost-reduction, scalability, flexibility, disaster recovery, and improved functionality. Let’s delve deeper into some of the benefits that firms can leverage by adopting UCaaS platforms..
1. Employee productivity and efficiency and collaboration
UCaaS platforms offer improved functionality that allows users to interact seamlessly across multiple channels and enhance their communication or collaboration strategies. Employees can switch seamlessly between voice, video or instant messaging without compromising on the user experience, at the click of a button, without disrupting the conversation for other attendees.
Seamless integrations with high-quality video conferencing tools enable organizations to initiate lively and real-time interactions in virtual meetings similar to face-to-face interactions. This, in turn, drives quality engagements with employees, clients, and partners around the world without hefty travel costs.
UCaaS adoption drives the efficiency of remote workers by providing them access to all the company’s communication tools from anywhere, regardless of location or time zones. This can go a long way in supporting business reach and boosting employee productivity. New concepts in employee communication are easily accessible and that helps keep companies at the cutting-edge of best-in-class communication solutions.
2. Save on the cost and effort of system administration and maintenance
A major benefit of migrating one’s UC systems to the cloud from legacy architecture is the significant cost savings that a hosted service offers by shifting the expense from capex to opex. There are no upfront inventory costs as the provider hosts the equipment at their facility and gives access to the services via the cloud. The ‘pay-as-you-go’ model ensures that customers pay only for what they need, which results in significant cost reduction both in the short-term and long-term.
Additionally, UCaas eases the burden of IT teams by taking care of all the system maintenance and upgrades, thereby freeing up IT’s time to focus on mission-critical tasks that have a more direct impact on the company’s growth. With multiple clients and thousands of endpoints under management, providers can administer their systems more efficiently and cost-effectively than the clients.
3. Access to cutting-edge security
Cybersecurity is a key concern in today’s increasingly connected world owing to the rising number of organized cyberattacks on enterprise networks. Consolidating multiple communication channels under a UC system can enable businesses to secure vulnerable endpoints better and make security aspects easier to manage. With a cloud service provider, businesses have access to the most rigorous security measures and technologies in place to protect against new forms and mechanisms of cyber threats that surface almost every day.
As cloud vendors are exclusively focused on keeping their equipment and services updated and reliable, they invest adequately to ensure end-to-end security for users. It would be almost impossible for in-house IT teams to keep up with the daily demands of cyber threats and ensure security, patches and system updates to handle them. Adopting a cloud UCaaS that features adequate certifications and expertise in security can go a long way to safeguard your data as well as boost your company’s reputation in the market, although there are still several obligations that users need to fulfill to ensure systems are not misused at their end.
4. Superior Scalability and Reliability
Cloud-based UC systems offer unlimited scalability to its clients, assisting firms to quickly add or remove users and functionality based on dynamic market demands. This allows buyers to expand their communications capabilities as the company grows, scaling up capacity in an almost unlimited manner, or adjust to seasonal changes in demand in the most cost-effective manner.
Another benefit of embracing UCaaS is the enhanced reliability that the cloud delivers to streamline operations. Many providers own in-built geo-redundancy features in their architecture that ensures continuous availability, and minimal downtime. This ensures that even if one equipment goes down, another one in a different location kicks in and if one channel fails, you can seamlessly switch to another without affecting the user experience.
Cloud service providers focus specifically on maintaining and repairing their equipment and dedicate significant resources to deliver superior reliability for the customers. They also offer disaster recovery plans and adequate backup options to ensure any risks are mitigated.
For businesses with operations and employees spread across the globe, this can be a significant factor as it enables the most cost-effective and reliable way to deploy UC solutions globally.
Learn More: 10 Exciting New UCaaS Launches and Upgrades in 2020
Conclusion
While there are many solutions available for enterprises of all sizes to switch to a unified communications model, UCaaS is a great option for companies operating in dynamic environments where scale, flexibility and reliability are critical. In the post-Covid19 world, with remote work and distributed workforces becoming the new normal, UCaaS will gain importance across almost every kind of business in every industry, given the need to quickly switch to cutting-edge collaborative and communication solutions across the organization.
With AI capabilities gaining traction, UCaaS solutions are set to get even smarter, while all the while improving their reporting and analytics capabilities, improving uptime and security, driving stronger integrations and serving a wider set of use cases for enterprise communication needs.
Do you think demand for UCaaS will rise in the post COVID-19 world? Comment below or let us know on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
