According to the Gartner Global Telephony and Messaging Forecast 2016–2023, 2020 marks the first time in history that spending on cloud-based telephony and messaging surpassed spending on on-premises solutions. While this is clearly a benefit to Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) providers, there are also misconceptions around these offerings. Organizations need to tread carefully and deliberately as they consider moving collaboration to the cloud.

Cisco has had Webex Edge Audio for Expressway for some time now. The concept behind Edge Audio is to provide an alternate path for Webex audio calls, diverting them from potentially overtaxed public switched telephone network (PSTN) connections to the internet. Now, Cisco provides an additional method to take advantage of Edge Audio via the Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE).

Edge Audio for CUBE was released for Webex in Q3 2020. It is an audio solution where Webex calls originating within your enterprise route from your Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM)/PBX to CUBE, over the internet, and into the Webex cloud. Similarly, callbacks initiated by Webex users are routed from the Webex Cloud, traverse the internet, leverage CUBE infrastructure, and are delivered onto your CUCM/PBX for on-net routing. This can greatly reduce PSTN loads and expenses, offloading that traffic to leverage internet bandwidth instead.

Moving away from legacy file servers is on the agenda for many organizations right now. It’s understandable that many companies are still using these on-premises systems. File servers are old standbys, and most organizations have never had a pressing reason to modernize the way they store and manage their files.

However, the remote work boom stemming from the global pandemic has quickly changed this calculus. Companies’ VPN connections have been overloaded with employees trying to access huge amounts of data from home, and many business and IT leaders are searching for a new solution.

At CDW, we’ve begun offering file modernization workshops to help with this process. We’re able to assist companies with assessments of their existing data environments, helping them to define their goals and develop a plan to transfer files to cloud-based tools such as Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams and Azure.

Here are four key benefits of file modernization.

If you haven’t moved some portion of your collaboration needs to the cloud yet, you are likely thinking about it. While on-premises communications platforms had been popular for the past several decades, “the times they are a-changin.” Almost every customer I talk to is planning a move to the cloud for at least some portion of their communications strategy. Most are doing it to get out of the server management business, while others are more focused on the continued advancements that cloud brings.

Luckily, I have had the opportunity to focus on the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market for the past couple years and have witnessed the growth of some of our closest partners here at CDW. Over the past couple months, I’ve worked to get our Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) services off the ground, and I thought I would share some of what I learned through that process, as much of what I saw will be compelling to many of our customers.

In 2020, we’ve seen to what happens when companies roll out cloud collaboration solutions in a hurry. Forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to support remote work in new ways, many organizations struggled to deploy tools that met their performance needs, complied with their data safety regulations or even addressed their employees’ most common use cases.

With the lessons of 2020 still fresh, now is a great time for IT and business leaders to build an implementation roadmap for tools such as Microsoft Office 365. Here are seven steps they should consider along the way.

Roughly a decade ago, many businesses moved from legacy PBX (or private branch exchange) phone systems to on-premises Voice over IP (VoIP) systems. In more recent years, some organizations have taken the next step and moved away from on-premises to embrace cloud collaboration suites that incorporate voice, video, persistent chat, file sharing and other features in a hosted model with simplified management.

Still, many companies maintain their on-premises systems. Leaders at these organizations know they’ll likely need to deploy a cloud collaboration suite eventually. But to get the most value out of both their existing systems and their future solutions, they must carefully consider when, why and how to make the move.