Blueface Offers Insights on Choosing the Right UC Deployment Model
Today’s modern teams and enterprises have more ways than ever to communicate—email, phone call, instant messaging, business SMS, and audio and video conferencing—the list goes on. And establishing effective, real-time communication and collaboration is now much easier thanks to various Unified Communications (UC) platforms that integrate a number of communications channels in a single solution. With UC, businesses can not only streamline operations and boost employee productivity, they can also increase revenue and enhance customer relationships thanks to effective communication.
While the benefits of UC are clear, there is one vital consideration an organization must look into to reap the most value from a UC solution: the method of deployment. In this article, Neil Doyle, the Head of Marketing at Blueface, a trusted Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) provider to businesses, enterprises, and carriers offers insights on how enterprises can choose the right UC deployment model and shares how Blueface is helping customers ensure a smooth, cost-effective, and timely UC deployment.
Evaluating UC Deployment Models
Once a business decides to invest in a UC solution, the next most important step to take is choosing the right method of deployment. There are three basic deployment models for UC: onsite, hosted, and hybrid. Understanding the pros and cons (as well as the differences of each model) is crucial to ensure a successful deployment.
- Onsite - With onsite or on-premises UC, the business both owns and operates the solution. The business’ IT staff is responsible for the deployment, management, and maintenance of the system. While the business maintains full control of the system, onsite UC can be capital-intensive and may offer limited scalability.
- Hosted - In hosted UC, an organization outsources the communications services, as well as the hardware and facilities needed to support it, to a third-party service provider. Transitioning to a hosted or cloud model means that the vendor now runs the hardware and handles the management, support, upgrades, and more, freeing up a business’ IT resources for more vital tasks. According to Doyle, the real advantage of hosted UC solutions is its scalability. Hosted UC allows businesses to add, change, or remove users, features, and capabilities as needed.
- Hybrid - For companies that want to maintain control over their system while utilizing the flexibility of the cloud, a hybrid UC deployment model is a viable option. With hybrid cloud UC, some elements remain onsite while others are hosted in the cloud. The primary drawback of a hybrid model? Cost. An enterprise has to buy and maintain its hardware onsite, on top of paying for a hosted service.
When choosing a UC deployment model for one’s business, Doyle says the most important factor to consider is reliability. “[Because] communications are a mission critical service, reliability should always be top of the list," Doyle said. "Understanding how a provider can guarantee service availability is a core consideration. What happens if something goes wrong? A company needs to ask 'are there disaster recovery or ‘mirror site’ capabilities?' and if not, is your communications solution fit for purpose?”
Doyle also considers the specific needs and requirements of a business as a crucial factor in identifying the right type of UC deployment. Whether it’s to connect with colleagues located around the world, to manage employees across multiple office spaces, or to become more accessible to customers, the right UC deployment option is one that will seamlessly address a business’ needs.
In addition, Doyle advises companies to choose a deployment model that enables them to easily integrate business management tools. “Contemporary communications should easily integrate and play nice with other business management tools like your CRM," he shared. "Thanks to non-stop innovation, we’re continuing to witness the death of the manual process and your UC solution should fit into your automated operational workflows."
How Blueface is Changing the Face of Business Communications
A trusted provider of IP telephony services to organizations of any size, Blueface knows the importance of having a robust communications system to help boost business performance and deliver value. “Communication is now — and always has been — at the heart of everyone’s workday,” said Doyle. To enrich everyday business communications and help companies achieve their goals, Blueface offers Blueface UC, a leading edge Unified Communications Platform that combines hosted telephony, cloud contact center, and enterprise-grade voice features with extensive API functionality.
Launched last year, Blueface UC aims to revolutionize the way companies do business. The platform was developed in-house by Blueface’s technology team and was designed to be responsive to the needs of customers. Its comprehensive set of features include the following:
Voice (landline/mobile) |
Unified voicemail |
International numbering |
Conferencing |
Call recording |
Fax to email |
Disaster recovery |
Follow me |
Number porting |
IVR |
Call center functionality |
Account management |
Remote working |
User permissions |
Softphone |
Real time billing |
Call reporting |
Busy lamp field |
Time of day routing |
Corporate directory |
Music on hold |
Call barring |
Call parking |
Multi-site deployment |
On top of these rich features, Doyle believes that what makes Blueface stand out in their market is the company's core focus on reliability. “Our commitment to reliability means we took the decision at an early stage to be an end-to-end provider," shared Doyle. "We’ve built our own communications platform thanks to the continued efforts of our in-house network operations team. We also carry and terminate calls with Tier 1 carriers via the Blueface network. Investment in our own resilient data centers provides the physical infrastructure to power our cloud offering. We don’t rely on 3rd parties to provide different levels of our service so we’re confident that when we promise reliability to our customers, we can deliver.”
Ensuring Smooth UC Deployments with Blueface
By recognizing the unique needs of businesses of all sizes and in all industries, Blueface has developed a professional customized approach to make every UC deployment as smooth and seamless as possible. “Each business has at least slightly different needs from their UC solution and the crux of ensuring smooth deployment is understanding and matching your service to them,” mentioned Doyle.
Blueface’s approach includes the following stages:
- Scoping- “During the deployment process, Blueface’s dedicated onboarding team liaise with each organization to spec and build the initial setup of their Blueface account to provide them with a ‘fit for your need’ hosted communications system,” explained Doyle.
- Proposal - Blueface’s account team will formulate a design specification and solution framework to be reviewed and refined by the customer.
- Development - For this face, the Blueface team will build the customer’s design and solution, which will be presented to the company’s IT representatives prior to implementation.
- Implementation - After completion of testing and refining, Blueface will then roll out the solution either through a purely hosted, onsite, or hybrid deployment.
- Completion - This stage involves User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of deployed solution as well as project sign-off.
- Ongoing support - Once the UAT has been completed, Blueface will proceed to provide ongoing support and management to the customer, with front office staff and support of the helpdesk.
For more information on Blueface and how their cloud solutions are making communications simple for businesses, please visit Blueface’s website.
About Blueface
Since 2004, Blueface has provided IP telephony services to organizations of any size. Over 20,000 organizations trust Blueface’s hosted or SIP services on a daily basis to power their communications. Blueface is headquartered in Dublin and serves seven global markets with offices in New York, London, Rome and Madrid.