Not getting the collaboration experience you want? Look at your technology provider

Avatar for Maurie MunroBy Maurie Munro|Sep 28, 2021|7:30 am CDT

Last year, we all witnessed the great rush to unified communications solutions, from medical centers using telemedicine applications to limit high-risk patient interactions to millions of businesses and schools adopting video conferencing apps for remote work and distance learning. While most of these technologies look and feel the same, none will perform the way they were designed to without the right support systems, services, and partners behind them.

In fact, these days it’s what’s behind the technology curtain that matters most.

The user experience, service experience, and the level of support and security you get are much more important today than simply the lookalike features of your collaboration tools. It all boils down to three things:

  1. Network Performance,
  2. Security,
  3. and Consolidation.

Network performance: Your service experience starts here

With active monthly users still skyrocketing, collaboration software providers have it really good today, but that doesn’t mean things are great for the customer. Many collaboration solutions don’t come pre-packaged with high-performance network services to ensure the most predictable application performance. This can lead to latency and jitter, which hurts the user experience, disrupts business, and makes it difficult for IT teams to deliver consistent communications service to employees located all across the globe.

There also needs to be a top-tier service monitoring team dedicated to 24/7 responsiveness. Who is watching and advocating for your service quality? How quickly will your UCaaS provider inform you of a network or service outage and, more importantly, what will happen next? How fast can you get service, and what are the issue escalation processes? What is the provider doing to prevent finger-pointing when it comes to the network service provider and internet service provider? Will you get a dedicated account manager? These are all critical questions to consider.

Security: It shouldn’t be an afterthought

Collaboration software providers are scrambling to launch new security features as people continue to work and learn from home, but are they global leaders in the security market? The security of cloud communications cannot be taken for granted, especially if IT needs to integrate multiple systems across clouds. Does your provider offer network security and cloud security capabilities embedded in the solution? Do they deliver security add-ons like firewalls, continuous threat monitoring, and incident response services? Do they help you address other work-from-home security issues like endpoint detection and response? Not only do you need performance and uptime assurance, you also need security assurance–and it shouldn’t be an afterthought. Think security-first collaboration.

Simplicity through consolidation: Don’t chase multiple providers to accomplish a single goal — look holistically at work-from-anywhere needs

Companies need to consolidate – and it’s not just all the different collaboration apps they’ve acquired over the past two years but also providers, dashboards, and services. Putting UC, network services, and security services under one roof offers much needed IT visibility and simplicity. Plus, it gets companies the experience they want now and for the long haul. Having multiple network dashboards can make it hard for IT to see what’s happening inside the network. Network service consolidation takes the burden off the client and makes it easier to troubleshoot and identify any issues more quickly.

When evaluating your options for consolidation, think not only about specific tools and vendors but also about the IT infrastructures behind your solution. Network providers and their platforms are your  on-ramps to the cloud, offering direct connectivity to the critical voice and video applications you need to succeed (more on this below).

Partnership is paramount: How Masergy does it best

At the end of the day, many collaboration apps are commoditized, offering virtually the same features. It’s not so much about whether the technology will work (it will), but more so about whose boat you’re going to be tied to for the next year or multi-year contract term. The most important thing to prioritize is the user experience, the service experience, and the level of support you get.

Here’s what Masergy brings to the table:

  • One solution for UC, network, and security: While most UCaaS applications and network services are sold separately, they shouldn’t be thought of as individual components. Masergy embeds UC into the SD-WAN network fabric itself, making your UC platform part of a holistic technology suite that provides a single integrated solution crossing collaboration, network services, and security.
  • Fully managed services: Get a dedicated project manager for implementation and ongoing service management. Take the burden off your IT team and allow them to focus on higher valued-added areas while we ensure 24×7 application performance monitoring backed by Masergy’s network operations team who handles any hiccups. Enjoy no escalation restrictions as well as first-call engagement. Need security monitoring and response services? Masergy does that too.
  • Unrivaled app performance with clear visibility: Masergy’s software-defined network was purpose-built to deliver video and voice applications across 120+ countries and offers industry-leading SLAs including 100% in-sequence packet delivery. One dashboard provides deep visibility into mean opinion score (MOS) and app performance with real-time analytics on a per-application and per-location basis. When you use Masergy’s SD-WAN and software-defined network services, artificial intelligence helps you predict and prevent outages proactively via a tool called AIOps.

Learn more about Masergy UCaaS.

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