What the end of service for Optus hosted Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCaaS) means for you.
Optus’s delivery of Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager, which provides communication and collaboration capabilities, and includes features such as Enterprise Telephony, Presence, Instant Messaging, Voice Mail & Unified Messaging and Audio Conferencing, is being discontinued from the end of 2022.
This change creates a tremendous opportunity to review your organisations overall telecommunications service network and select the right collaboration tools and commercial approach to remain agile and relevant in a rapidly changing digital environment.
Fortunately, you don’t need to tackle this change alone – review your Collaboration Tools & Commercial Strategy with the assistance of CDRU.
- Current Contract and commercial assessment
- Technology roadmap & strategy in the context of a Modern Workplace approach
- Improved Productivity through supporting new ways of working
- Integrated communications capability to support flexible working
- Vendor Agnostic approach integrating traditional Telecommunications elements and a modern workplace approach
Situation:
Optus is withdrawing its current hosted Cisco Unified Communications Manager offering by December 2022.
This change is forcing clients to consider how they will continue to provide these services for their organisation.
How are you adapting, and what are you doing to turn this change into an opportunity?
Opportunity:
If you are a current Optus hosted Cisco Unified Communications Manager customer affected by the withdrawal of this service over the next 18 months, you should take the opportunity to ensure that the new service fits with your strategy and provides value against the cost of acquisition.
Don’t just take the default transition to the Cisco hosted offering, take the opportunity to assess which technology stack and vendor fits within your wider strategy, and what price points are available in the market.
Many organisations are adopting a Modern Workplace approach centred around flexible integration across the common productivity tools.
Market moves across the UCaaS market will also have a significant impact on which technical direction should be evaluated. The significant growth in Microsoft Teams adoption highlights another option which should be considered, given it is much easier to interact with customers, partners and suppliers if all are using a common platform.
UCaaS Market Share Trend
Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Wordwide
If continuing with a Cisco platform then the value between the various platforms including Webex, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud or Hosted Collaboration Solution including acquisition, transition and ongoing operation should be carefully considered within the context of your organisation’s needs.
Recent events have sharply accelerated the transition to more flexible working arrangements for many organisations, and traditional telephony biased approaches linked to providing traditional fixed desk handsets are no longer as relevant to the growing flexible working practices.
The finance, management, professional services, and information sectors have the highest potential for remote work.
Optimising the hybrid virtual continuum
Most employees would prefer a more flexible working model after the pandemic is over.
Beyond the technology strategy and demand changes the commercial impact to the wider Optus engagement also needs to be considered including:
- Per Service Minimum spend
- Minimum Service volume commitments
- Loyalty and bonus funds
- Service Design & Transition costs to move the service from Optus hosting to the new platform
As these will all impact the spend required to support the service on an ongoing basis.
Key questions then become:
- What are the costs to acquire and operate the services vs. the alternate options?
- How will each of these change your IT spend profile?
- Which options will align with your organisation’s technology strategy?
Given the impending deadline, you must not wait. Act now, engage CDRU to access the savings and/or productivity improvements available through utilising CDRU’s Australian Technology market knowledge.
Why CDRU?
CDRU has sourced over $10Bn total spend, 500+ engagements, driving value and optimising costs across hundreds of enterprise and public sector clients. Here’s how we will bring value to your company:
Value optimisation:
Through leveraging our sourcing experience, market data and enterprise software solutions, we offer CIO’s the most valuable partnership they can have.
Independence:
We are supplier agnostic, with deep Australian market insights & knowledge across products, pricing, cloud platforms & models.
Time-to-benefit:
CDRU is a responsive and agile group of industry experts who focus on delivering rapid benefit realisation.
Every day we discover new insights that allow our clients to optimise costs and enable powerful, strategic decision-making. We can add value to your company immediately, talk to us today.
Align all these elements for a cohesive solution at the right price, with the support of CDRU
