Many companies were already adopting collaboration technologies before the coronavirus pandemic hit last spring. But the massive shift to a remote work model has created a sort of forced proof of concept for numerous businesses, with employees and managers learning on the fly how to use these tools to support productivity and collaboration.

One thing that many business and IT leaders have discovered: Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) solutions and a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) are often a good fit. UCaaS refers to cloud-delivered capabilities, including voice and telephony, meeting solutions, messaging, presence and other communication applications. With SD-WAN, advanced software simplifies the operation of complex WANs while optimizing the end-user experience.

Here are several reasons why these two technologies work so well together.

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.

“That’s it – we’re moving to another collaboration solution!” OK, be honest: Raise your hand if some version of the above crossed your mind in the past 9-10 months. I hear you loud and clear — you are frustrated with your collaboration provider.

For some businesses, it’s a budget issue; costs go up or you’re struggling to navigate a move from CAPEX to OPEX. For others, it’s the pace of change ― software upgrades are pushed out by the vendor, but now you have to upgrade your hardware. Something has changed with your collaboration platform that makes you unhappy. And while it is true that IT is the business of managing change and risk, that does not lessen your frustration.

I’ve been there too. I have spent most of my professional history in the role of an IT customer, so I have experienced the aggravations that come with managing and being accountable for corporate, foundational infrastructure. In my case it was the voice infrastructure.

Welcome back to the third part of this blog series, where I’ve been exploring the options available in the cloud contact center space. A quick recap of who we have talked about in this series: The first post was on the power of RingCentral, the second was showing off the red-hot Five9.

In this third blog, I will explore where Cisco Systems is at in this cloudy landscape. In a business landscape influenced by the pandemic and remote work, cloud computing has been a valued resource for many companies, especially those relying on cloud contact center technology. Let’s dig into where Cisco, one of the on-premises leaders of contact center, is with cloud.

RingCentral is one of the fastest growing communications platforms out there supporting messaging, video and phones. One of the core components to the platform for years has been the RingCentral Meetings (RCM) platform powered by Zoom on the backend. This rebranded third-party meeting technology seamlessly integrates with the phones and messaging at the core of the RingCentral Office platform, however, this arrangement is rapidly changing.

In April of this year, RingCentral announced their homegrown RingCentral Video (RCV) platform as another alternative. This development is not that surprising given the negative attention Zoom received recently around the security of its platform, along with the fact that Zoom launched its own Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform last year. All things considered, this seems like a good time for RingCentral to move its technology in a different direction.

With demand for businesses to consume collaboration services in the cloud at an all-time high right now, CDW has added the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud (UCM Cloud) solution to its Managed Collaboration Anywhere (MCA) portfolio. This portfolio now includes managed collaboration solutions covering the complete Cisco Hosted and Cloud Calling portfolio of Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), Cisco UCM Cloud and Cisco Webex Calling. Cisco is currently providing collaboration solutions that deliver enterprise-grade service to more than 100 million devices.