Disruption is happening all around us in the incredibly fast-moving world of real time communications (RTC).

Over a decade ago, enterprise IT teams made a strong push to the cloud and succeeded. They lowered costs, enabled innovation, unlocked the value of data analytics and delivered a more secure computing environment than when they were responsible for running all computing on-premise.

RTC has emerged as the second, massive wave in organizations’ transition to the cloud. They have greater confidence today in adopting cloud-based voice and video communications sessions, which are increasingly being integrated into business workflow and applications.

For the most enlightened enterprises, part of this movement to the RTC cloud includes embracing Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), particularly as more and more communications are happening in a mobile-first world.

At the same time, the market is relatively new, definitely “hot,” and therefore fragmented with many new competitive players.

What happens when enterprises start comparing their options – especially those with the exact same platform? The price wars are on and enterprise decision makers are in a “buyers’ market” when they ask the right, time-tested questions: which platforms will deliver the reliability, quality and guarantees of service our business needs – and at what price?

Everything Old Is New Again

It’s easy to become enamored with the easier and cheaper ways to do things.

But ask a seasoned enterprise technology or security leader about why they haven’t adopted a wild-west strategy by allowing employees to use consumer-style applications to conduct official business and they will tell you straight out: these applications are free for a reason.

Consumer versions of applications typically have very limited controls and put businesses at risk of losing confidential information, private data and overall visibility into communications, a particularly thorny issue given certain compliance regulations and corporate policies.

Instead, enterprise decision makers are pushing to implement modern solutions, which better integrate with their cloud infrastructure and deliver the functionality required by employees in addition to the enterprise-grade security demanded by organizations. These decision makers also recognize that end-to-end solutions require them to fully think through the communications stack into the applications layer.

What should enterprises evaluate as they create their migration strategies away from premise-based and legacy hosted-private branch exchange (PBX) solutions, and into the future of truly secure, unified real time communications platforms?

• Execution: This includes understanding product and service capabilities, quality of service, features and support;
• Operations: What happens once a solution is implemented? Operations must living up to the commitments made pre-implementation;
• Sustainability: Is your solution going to be able to scale as your organizational needs change? Enterprises should consider resources, financial health, the ability to invest in evolving products and services, and willingness to define new improvements;
• Economics: Initial pricing is one thing, but it’s important to consider ongoing licensing and usage fees, help desk fees and more;

Ultimately, enterprises need to fully understand a solutions’ ability to meet their business needs, while ensuring new IP-based services are secure and won’t compromise an enterprise’s data or reputation.

This includes asking:

• Who offers the solution that delivers the higher-value capabilities?
• Who has the range to offer UCaaS solutions with a roadmap that enhances and extends investments by adding real-time communications capabilities to web-based business applications and mobile applications?
• Who understands the synergies between UCaaS/CPaaS and integrating real time communications into common business tools, so within a workflow, people need only click to connect with one or more peers or partners to get work done?

Migrating Voice, Messaging and Video

A clear vision, improved economics, advanced capabilities, a proven commitment to service and a track record of true partnership are key drivers for enterprises, especially when it comes to something as serious as migrating voice, messaging and video to the cloud.

In the switch to IP telephony and VoIP applications; the more some things change (technology) the more some things remain the same (trust).