How to Choose a Cloud or SaaS Vendor

Posted by Elizabeth Miller on February 26, 2015 Posted in Unified Communications Tagged cloud, collaboration, enterprise communications, security, Smb, UCaaS, unified communications

2015-02-26_1113 Choosing a cloud and SaaS vendor can be tricky for SMBs with small IT organizations and larger corporations looking to lower operating costs. There are many benefits to choosing cloud or SaaS over on-premises but the route to those benefits is not always risk-free.

Difficulty vetting cloud or SaaS vendors is a common problem in today’s IT world. We see many organizations that continue to sweat older assets, having used on-premises software for many years. Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research, has pointed out, however, that more than 90 percent of businesses are starting to employ these technologies on some scale.

Vetting cloud or SaaS vendors can be very easy if you take the right approach. Rather than simply taking trusting the vendor’s qualifications or what you’ve read/heard, you should validate each claim the vendor makes to ensure that they don’t overstate their capabilities.

Verification is the key to success when choosing a cloud or SaaS vendor. Here are our tips to help you make the comprehensive assessments needed to make the right choice.

Vetting the Business

You wouldn’t buy a car from a manufacturer you knew nothing about. The same should be said of a cloud or SaaS solution. When your business is thinking about adopting a new cloud or SaaS technology, its imperative that you vet the vendors’ businesses as well as their technology.

You need to ensure that their leadership is strong, their business model is sound, and that the firm has the financial stability to survive the stressors of the current economy. This stage is the time to ask the tough questions, and get real, specific responses in return. Keep pressing until you get a real answer, one that’s supported by policies and procedures. Questions like these can help you determine the viability of the business at large:

Do you have a burn rate where you are making less than you are spending? If so, how long is the runway where you can survive at this pace without new partners investing?
Is your leadership rounded and truly qualified? Do you have a technologist at the helm, and has he surrounded himself with the operational, financial and sales expertise to keep turning out great products and services?
How do you maintain accountability for your administrative staff in regard to the control and management of customer data within/and outside of your application? What security challenges might we face if we give you direct control over our sensitive or compliance-relevant data?
How do you address government regulations?
Can we adjust our services as the business evolves?
Where does my support come from (vendor, support partner, etc.)?
What will I really pay?

Vetting the Technology

Just like with the manufacturer situation stated above, you probably wouldn’t buy a car you hadn’t test driven or looked under the hood of either. In order to determine whether the products/services you’re vetting work properly, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty and test each cloud or SaaS product/service for yourself. Does the product/service have known glitches/issues? Will it fit into the environment(s) as expected? Will it work with all of your platforms and impacted software products?

Now is the time to get the engineers involved to assess the technologies behind the vendor and ensure that they are ready for your purposes. Again, specific instances and case studies will help provide proof points to the vendor’s claims. Questions like these can help determine the efficiency, security, and usability of the technology itself:

What role does customer input play when your company plans updates and enhancements?
Can I see the software/technology’s R&D roadmap? What other changes are planning for performance and usability? Is this investment actually future proof?
Can you describe your data center?
How do you define uptime and downtime?
How frequently do you test your disaster recovery procedures?
Do you have a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
How different is our current infrastructure from yours?
Can I move existing apps/services from my private cloud to your public cloud without massive reconfiguration?
How do you support my workforce’s mobility requirements?
How are my apps and data protected from other users on the same cloud servers?

Vetting their Customer Service

Let’s hit the car analogy one more time. You wouldn’t buy any car from any manufacturer if you weren’t going to get service and support to help you maintain the car over the course of its life.

So when vetting vendors, you need to ask point-blank if they are ready to handle you as a client. The only question that need to be asked during this phase is, “Can I speak with some of your customers?” Current customers are the best resources when it comes to determining whether the vendor’s product/service is on par with what you are expecting.

Don’t settle for the few they give you either. Look at trade shows and vendor events for customers that aren’t raving fans. Looking for non-specific issues can save you a lot of headaches in the future. Be skeptical, but open-minded. Knowing the issues that could arise will help you prepare for them in the future.

Vetting cloud or SaaS vendors can take up to 200 man-hours and could require some policy changes on your part. To do it right, though, you do need to assess more than the technology—you need to look at everything; the vendor’s business, technology, security, service, and employees. While it might seem like a bit of an undertaking, spending more time up front will save you headache and frustration in the end.

SaaS and Cloud in Perspective: UCaaS

Let’s take a quick look at a unique cloud and SaaS perspective: UCaaS.

Let’s say you aren’t ready for a full cloud deployment. You still have some reservations about the public cloud, and you have on-premises assets you want to continue to use. Research is actually beginning to show that “Hybrid Cloud UC Demands Unified Platform Management”. This is one of many cases where UCaaS makes sense.

The market for UCaaS is growing pretty rapidly. Among IT pros responding to a 2014 Spiceworks survey, 11% had adopted UCaaS. However, another 12% indicated they are planning to adopt it in the next year, more than doubling the number of people using UCaaS today.

Some suggest that growing confidence in hosted solutions in general is the impetus for the projected dramatic increase in adoption. Much of that confidence is due to the service providers’ dedication to security improvements.

We are excited about the opportunities UCaaS presents to the cloud and SaaS Markets.

Fear of vetting vendors shouldn’t hold you back from learning more. Check out the Reducing UC Costs and Increasing Business Performance whitepaper to take a deeper dive into the advantages of UCaaS, market drivers, concerns, and what to look for in a provider.

4 Crucial Steps to Implementing a UC Cultural Shift

Posted by Elizabeth Miller on February 13, 2015 Posted in Unified Communications Tagged business continuity, enterprise communications, Smb, UCaaS, unified communications, VoIP

7K0A0129 The advent of unified communications (UC) technology has transformed the business landscape for companies that successfully adopt and use it.

These days, email, instant messaging, and social media combined with the myriad types of mobile devices can work together to create an incredibly versatile and productive work environment. But this environment, known as unified communications, is only successful if a business devotes the time, energy, and resources to implement both the physical UC solution as well as a UC-oriented cultural shift.

It’s estimated that roughly 80 percent of companies never “fully realize” their UC implementation. Why? Well, while the physical implementation of a new technology is often planned for, it’s typically assumed that users will accept the new communications system out of the box and will automatically understand its features. More often than not, this isn’t the case.

Here is the problem stated as blatantly as possible: either plan for the culture shift or reap the consequences that unrealized ROI can bring.

Whether your business is thinking of making the UC transition or if you’re just upgrading to a new iteration of your current communications system, there are steps to follow to make sure that everything goes both physically and culturally smoothly.

Here are our 4 Crucial Steps to Implementing a UC Cultural Shift.

1. Involve the Entire Team
The first critical step in implementing a UC initiative is obtaining the needed buy-in from everyone in the company (not just the management team). The need for buy-in warrants a process that ensures consultation of all department leaders and requires they come to the same understanding in regard to the implementation. This process makes it so all stakeholders can work and learn together—helping define what the vision for the UC implementation will be.

But developing a clear-cut picture of the UC initiative is just a small part of this step. Once upper-management has communicated the needed information to the department leaders, these key players must then take the time to energetically and continuously communicate with their subordinates. This portion of the implementation process is the time to cull departmental knowledge—on the current technology’s best practices and failings, and to get employee opinions on the tools that they think would increase productivity.

Topics discussed should include all of the opportunities that UC offers, even those that may not directly affect most people’s daily work. Case in point: a good UC solution can help businesses realize more timely interactions (that means more revenue) and can help them implement a Capex/Opex shift.

While Capex/Opex isn’t something that even I think about on a daily basis—I more than realize the need for more revenue. And if a new affordable technology is the way to achieve that, then I can more readily get on board with the technology change than I could if I didn’t know anything about the change at all. And, when I get a look at the full picture, I begin to feel included in the actual decision-making process (which also makes me more likely to be at least interested in the new solution, if not a little excited in anticipating it).

2. Test for User Acceptance

While your IT department will lead the technical aspects of the implementation, departmental leaders, and other key personnel will need to be and should be included in the piloting phase. The role of the latter is to ensure that the software is usable in a practical, real-world, day-to-day scenario.

This step should include demo sessions for both senior executives, who can give “big picture” recommendations, as well as front-line employees. These employees are your best resource when testing new UC solutions because they can explain and highlight specific difficulties with certain tools—giving you the opportunity to take note and the company to tailor the solution appropriately.

Even if this project is your responsibility—i.e., you are the one who knows more about it than anyone else in the company—you must remain open-minded to any recommendations or criticism. In the end, a new UC solution will have to both accommodate the needs of everyone in the company more easily while also helping achieve new business objectives.
3. Market Internally

There are many enterprise-level software products that are remarkably robust and dependable. The failure of a UC-oriented one is rarely the fault of the technology. Instead, the more common cause is implementers failing to impress upon their team the importance of embracing the new “initiative.” Everything must be planned for, and everything must be explained.

The vendors, however, can’t do all the explaining themselves. The department leaders mentioned in Step One should “champion” the initiative, developing the messaging and communicating directly the benefits the new solution will bring to their direct reports, co-workers, and other staff.

But you can’t force change. You have to win over your converts. And that requires marketing. The language and materials that you use to market your UC initiative internally can have a dramatic effect on user acceptance and can potentially win over converts. The choice of the word “initiative” instead of “project” is not accidental. The word “initiative” denotes more powerful and compelling reasoning than the word project, and better conveys the all-encompassing nature of a UC implementation.

That vocabulary choice that we just made is actually called marketing. And when you market appropriately to the majority of your end-users, the stragglers will inevitably follow.

4. Mandate Training and Measure Afterward
Here’s a fact. People hate “training”. When you’re in the process of implementing any new technology, you’ll find that most of your co-workers will balk at the idea of attending when the training sessions start.

In the same vein, many businesses are also hesitant to make training mandatory. Regardless of how your employees will feel about it, training provides valuable information on how to shift to the new solution and gives you another opportunity to champion your new solution. So they need to be there. And if you have to incentivize it with something awesome to keep everyone happy, then that’s what you should do. Making UC training fun and valuable—and it is imperative that you have your vendor’s help during this period—is the key to getting ultimate buy-in.

BUT, before you count the implementation as “complete”, you need to measure the adoption rate. Analytically speaking this is your one chance to determine whether the UC implementation initiative was truly successful. It’s also an opportunity to identify the last pockets of employee resistance. If you want to overcome any and all lingering objections to the implementation—measuring the adoption rate is the way to do it.

Keep these tips in mind as you plan your UC implementation. They will make the whole process simpler and really will raise your overall chances of success.

How will the Internet of Things be Strategic to the Enterprise?

Posted by Elizabeth Miller on February 5, 2015 Posted in Unified Communications Tagged enterprise communications, Internet of Things, unified communications, VoIP

NEC-Ubiquitous-Connectedness The Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly becoming entrenched in both consumer and enterprise IT as both a technology priority and a buzzword. As IT practitioners continue the ongoing evaluation of the rapidly growing array of IT tools and technologies available to the Enterprise, it might be time to question how strategic the IoT will be to the successful and smart enterprise of the near future.

Perhaps it would be best to discuss the IoT by first removing its “buzzword” status. The IoT is nothing more than a convergence of today’s pre-existing top IT Trends—think smart mobility, cloud, biometrics, and big data. But it is the true convergence of these technologies—working together seamlessly as interoperable parts of a whole—which is the goal and should define the term “Internet of Things.”

The data should be familiar. By 2020, IoT will be an $8.9 trillion market with over 212 billion connected “things,” meaning that within the next 5 years, the connectedness of everything will be one of the world’s largest industries.

But the question is not “will the IoT be important” but is rather, “will it be strategic to the enterprise?” Will planning for and installing “IoT” ready devices now result in success over your competitors?

Adoption of the IoT

At its core, the IoT is technological equipment that is connected to a network enabling information transfer, and improving efficiencies. The benefits can be vast for enterprises.

First, businesses can accelerate product development and deployment cycles by unifying information from diverse sources and applications. Second, the IoT introduces new revenue streams by allowing businesses to take advantage of the latest smart technologies before their competition. Finally, all these new connected devices produce a ton of data that can be disseminated and quantified for more reliable outcomes.

Because IoT connects tens, and eventually, hundreds of billions of active devices that capture and project data that broadly enriches the network, both consumer and enterprise technologies will continue to be important, and both will affect the enterprise. Consumer products manufacturers like Philips, GE, (and now Google ) and carmakers are racing to connect their products to internet networks for this reason. This connection will generate incredible accumulate data value, and that data will have enormous competitive consequence.

Smart enterprises should be starting to build their IoT ecosystems, leveraging new technologies and growing their network effect in order to be the most appealing and valuable offering within their vertical industries.

Where the IoT will impact the Enterprise?

The best techniques for exploiting the IoT to create business value are still emerging. But, it’s becoming apparent that the IoT will affect the enterprise in the following ways:

Creating smart, connected workplaces. The smart, connected workplace is full of emerging IoT related technologies. Think wearables, 3D printers, and any other sensor or control technology that can be connected to the network.
Creating new, quantifiable business activities. With business process monitoring, control, and optimization technologies connected, disparate, previously unmeasurable business activities in the office will be systematically categorized and improved. Wearables and technologies like smartdust will be instrumental in capturing deeper levels of data. Technologies refined to process this big data will be applied to manage, orchestrate, and extract meaning from the vast streams of digital knowledge elicited from daily enterprise activities.
Automating products and services. Companies will first IoT enable their products and services, but then soon design them for and around IoT.
Creating new business intelligence. IoT network connection will have profound new levels of insight into how the world around us works and interacts with technology. Like Big Data, IoT will help businesses adapt and become better attuned to new realities.

Staying engaged and connected with customers via UC

In short, the IoT represents a zero-sum presence in our customer’s lives. By being connected in a meaningful way 24/7 with millions of our customers through IoT-enabled systems of engagement, we can ensure our organizations stay relevant and keep the competition from doing so.

There is a lot going on in the background of the IoT discussion to bring this meaningful content to the consumer that involves Unified Communications. What’s exciting from a UC perspective is that the IoT integrates into mainstream enterprise systems and supports interoperable real-world, on-line end-to-end business applications.

So, in short, yes, IoT is strategic to the enterprise. There isn’t much time, so build your ecosystem, accumulate knowledge, and get it delivering and capturing data as soon as possible.

What does WebRTC do for the Enterprise?

Posted by Mark Pendleton on December 9, 2014 Posted in Unified Communications Tagged collaboration, Customer Satisfaction, enterprise communications, unified communications, WebRTC

nec-webrtc-unified-communications-enterprise-trends With the New Year nearly upon us, now is the time to scrutinize new technologies, business strategies, and capabilities. How will they fit your enterprise? Will they live up to the hype?

WebRTC is an emerging open source project that aims to enable the web with real-time communications capabilities—giving users the ability to conduct peer-to-peer voice and video communications directly through web browsers without needing a plugin.

WebRTC has set the Unified Communications industry to buzzing. But while early WebRTC apps seem promising, WebRTC has yet to see mainstream adoption by enterprises.

So, with WebRTC making the rounds on all of the “Top 10” IT lists (it even makes an appearance on our own), now is the best time to take a closer look and see where WebRTC hits the mark for enterprises, and where the misconceptions lie.

Separating Reality from Hype

There are many expectations and misconceptions as far as what enterprises can expect from WebRTC functionality. Slowed by standards battles around video codecs, the lack of end-user demand, the absence of browser support from Apple and Microsoft, and the high priority challenges facing the UC architects who are attempting to incorporate the standards into their solutions, WebRTC has so far failed to gain the support/demand needed to cross into the mainstream communications market.

In early 2014, Nemertes Research interviewed approximately 200 IT leaders responsible for unified communications strategy, architecture, and operations in end-user companies (not vendors or service providers). During the interviews, the IT experts were asked about their plans for WebRTC adoption. As it turns out, fewer than 7% of the respondents had definitive plans to deploy WebRTC over the next two years, while the vast majority had either no plans, or were still in the evaluation phase.

Here’s a breakdown of what the “early-still” applications of WebRTC will and won’t do:

WebRTC will (eventually):

Be most useful for public-facing organizations—Businesses with public-facing websites will likely see the most use out of WebRTC. The protocol allows SMBs and Enterprises to enhance their web properties with click-to-call capabilities—features that, up until recently, cost money to have. WebRTC gives public-facing organizations an opportunity to recoup that money—spent on 800-number services that enable browser-based calling, and/or multiple trunk lines. WebRTC will enable customers to talk immediately to the right person, keeping them from having to dial multiple numbers or sift through multiple menus with numerous extensions (hello customer service benefits).
Free users from extraneous plugins—the opportunity for plugin-less communications is on the horizon. WebRTC will allow enterprises to host internal and external meetings using only a web browser on any device. Once the open-source, pre-standardized protocol is available on all web browsers, the need to download extra plugins will disappear. WebRTC is currently enabled in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Microsoft recently announced future support, whereas Apple’s has yet to say anything at all. As long as there are hold-outs, the standard will still require plugins. The use of plugin-less WebRTC, however, could potentially spur further development, greater functionality, and greater cost savings as the standards gain popularity according to Irwin Lazar, VP and Service Director at Nemertes Research.

WebRTC applications won’t:

Communicate freely without the help of an Session Border Controller (SBC)—Despite what many people believe, WebRTC audio and video sessions are encrypted—something that cannot be said of the still popular landline telephone call. But, with enterprise firewalls in place, the web clients supporting these conferencing sessions will have to “negotiate” with each other to determine whether or not the level of encryption coming from the alternate party will be supported. Session border controller vendors will be key to helping peer-to-peer communications technologies work with enterprise firewalls.
Replace whole VoIP/video conferencing infrastructures—while software development around WebRTC applications is increasing, that does not mean that enterprises are or should be jumping to replace current video and audio meeting infrastructures for WebRTC counterparts. WebRTC is not yet mature enough to replace existing technology—and never will be without greater adoption and significantly more development. WebRTC can, however, fill certain gaps that current communications technologies leave open, said Nemertes’ Lazar. WebRTC gives many businesses—especially those with call centers—an opportunity to simplify customer engagement. There could be real possibilities for financial and healthcare organizations to apply WebRTC to: customer meetings, telemedicine, and when improving customer service.

Other Communications Alternatives

All of this to say that while WebRTC can benefit the enterprise, it hasn’t yet. For businesses looking for more immediate ways of streamlining and simplifying business communications, the still-immature WebRTC shouldn’t be too high on your list of solutions, but should be at the forefront of the trends you watch develop during 2015. Applications for the contact center such as ‘click-to-call’ for customer facing e-commerce or service websites may be the most successful initial commercial use of WebRTC and could be avialble through several UC vendors in 2015.

Consultants agree that more widespread enterprise adoption will become more likely if the WebRTC protocol can soon deliver on the promise of very little maintenance and support. Until then though, a Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution would be your best bet in terms of ease-of-use and high return on investment.

Want to learn more about this year’s Smartest IT Trends?

How Secure is the Cloud? Your Questions Answered

Posted by Mark Pendleton on November 20, 2014 Posted in Unified Communications Tagged business continuity, cloud, enterprise communications, security, UCaaS, unified communications

nec-cloud-security-unified-communications--as-a-service-ucaas Cloud security is a hot discussion topic these days. Security is one of the main reasons that many business leaders have been slow to adapt to the cloud. Keeping data on premises makes business and IT leaders feel more secure.

But lately there seems to be a shift—the cloud tipping point has arrived, and more companies are moving to the cloud to replace various on-premises technologies and services.

The truth is that the cloud offers many of its own security advantages—many of which are the same as on-premises storage technologies. Before you assume that the cloud isn’t safe, it’s worth taking a look at what’s available to you and evaluating the risks associated with moving to the cloud—particularly when doing so could provide serious benefits.

According to Corey Louie, the Head of Trust, Safety, and Security at Dropbox, the best solutions will serve as an extension of the network and security infrastructure that you already have in place. When deployed properly, cloud solutions can help SMBs and Enterprises achieve more agility and can help with cost savings.

If we specifically look at one cloud service—let’s take Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), one of the fastest growing markets in communications, the cloud can enable companies to:

Offload equipment costs
Shift certain budgeting from a CAPEX to an OPEX model
Simplify management and cost tracking
Increase scalability
Increase IT speed and agility
Improve disaster recovery and business continuity

There are still those who hesitate when choosing the cloud, which is why it is important to understand what the security threats are, and how to approach security for a cloud-based technology or solution.

What are the risks?

In 2013, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) identified “The Notorious Nine,” the top nine cloud computing threats. The report reflects a consensus among industry experts surveyed by CSA, focusing on threats specifically related to the shared, on-demand nature of cloud computing.

These nine threats include:

Data Theft/Breaches
Data Loss
Account/Service Traffic Hijacking
Insecure Interfaces/APIs
Denial of Service
Malicious Insiders
Cloud Abuse
Insufficient Due Diligence

Physical theft, employee mistakes (like lost devices), and insider threats are responsible for 42.7% of 2013 data breaches in the United States, according to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. In another 29.6% of data breaches, hackers broke into data owned by companies and government agencies. Big tech companies, major retailers, and airlines were some among many 2013 victims.

Each year, Alert Logic, an IT services provider, publishes a semi-annual State of Cloud Security report, surveying their customers to understand from where security threats are coming.

The results are interesting:

An enterprise data center (EDC) is 4x more likely to suffer a malware/bot attack than a cloud hosting provider (CHP).
EDCs and CHPs are equally vulnerable to a “vulnerability scan” and a “brute force” hack.
EDCs are 3x times more likely to suffer a recon attack and 4x an app attack.

Cloud providers are 40% more likely to suffer a web app attack and 10% more prone to vulnerability scan weakness than an enterprise data center. In recons, malware, bot, and app attacks, the cloud seems to have less risk than most on-premises technologies.

According to Louie, the takeaway is not that cloud is better but that the risks are manageable. No one—regardless of their resources—is 100% secure.

What are the benefits?

Cloud-based technologies and services are not without their own security advantages. For many cloud service providers, there is a deep commitment to security—perhaps deeper than the media typically portrays. This commitment means a few, quite significant, things:

You get enterprise hardware for a small business price.

With cloud computing, your data is stored on enterprise-grade hardware, equipment that is typically unaffordable for most small and mid-sized businesses. By using the cloud for your business, you are upgrading to safer equipment.

You get more focused security.

For cloud vendors to succeed they need to focus on securing their service. This means that instead of attempting to prevent a variety of more general threats (as your in-house model would require) cloud vendors are free to (and great at) securing the one thing you want protected: your data online.

You get flexibility and agility.

Many IT organizations are stretched thin and struggle to balance day-to-day operations with strategic projects. One of the advantages of cloud services is the speed of deployment. Businesses have the flexibility to rollout cloud services without the IT time, and resource commitments typically associated with a legacy deployment model.

You get professional management.

Using the cloud to store data means that you get trained professionals managing your patch updates and keeping the server’s software up-to-date. Maintenance and support time are reduced since there is no longer a need to plan and implement system updates, and you can redeploy IT resources to more strategic initiatives to help advance the organization.

You get well-funded security.

Investing in top-level security features adds value to individual cloud service providers’ businesses. Investing in this way is a necessity for success. Businesses adopting cloud services gain the opportunity to put someone else’s financial resources to work, which can help take the sting out of security spending.

That deep commitment to security means that cloud service providers have to invest far more in scalable infrastructure and information security than do most organizations. Those investments are quite significant, and service providers will bear that burden for you. They can create economies of scale and efficiencies that benefit you.

Think about it like this: services like Dropbox go above and beyond to protect your data — so that you don’t have to invest heavily in secure systems and servers, constantly consider network and product security threats, submit to in-depth compliance reviews and audits, undergo regular testing against attacks, set up complex logical access controls, and assure data centers have advanced physical, environmental, and operational security measures.

The Cloud in Perspective: UCaaS

Hopefully, it’s clear why the cloud has some real advantages. Let’s take a quick look at UCaaS for a perspective on a unique cloud service.

This projected growth tracks consistently with the expectations of UCaaS market growth reported in 2013 by researchers at MarketsandMarkets. Their report on UCaaS projects that the global market will grow from $2.52 billion in 2013 to $7.62 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 24.8%.

Some suggest that developing confidence in hosted solutions in general is the impetus for the projected dramatic increase in adoption. Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research, has pointed out, “…more than 90% of companies now use software as a service (SaaS) applications.” Much of that confidence is due to the service providers’ dedication to security improvements.

Are you excited by the opportunities UCaaS presents to the communications market?

Security concerns shouldn’t hold you back from learning more. Check out the Reducing UC Costs and Increasing Business Performance whitepaper to take a deeper dive into the advantages of UCaaS, market drivers, concerns, and what to look for in a provider.