Accelerating UCaaS performance with intelligent networking

Reliability and consistent service is a must in unified communications as a service (UCaaS). That’s why we see intelligent networks playing a bigger and bigger role in UCaaS in the future.

Enterprises that adopt a UCaaS platform are taking on a suite of cloud-based communications services that are critical to their businesses. Outages or diminished performance of these services mean loss of productivity and in turn loss of revenue. That’s bad for business and bad for the service provider.

Service providers that want to ensure the quality of their cloud communications services should build performance into the network. The services and capabilities available via a UCaaS platform often overshadow the network, but the network can be a big differentiator. It is the difference between a service that looks good but can’t perform and a service that is reliable, consistent, and essential. The network UCaaS offering is critical to its success and ensures enterprises choose your cloud communication services over another service provider.

Intelligent networks give service providers visibility into performance end-to-end and can guarantee the quality of VoIP calling as well as other cloud communications services. This means troubleshooting network issues before the end user sees diminished service and optimising the performance of applications in real-time.

Voice is old news in the telecom industry but it is one of the key indicators of quality for end users. The quality and availability of voice services tell the enterprise how well the overall platform is working and whether they’ve invested wisely in UCaaS.

Similarly, when you have new visibility into the network it is easier to add new services to your UCaaS offering. As new applications and service are developed, they can be added to a service provider’s UCaaS platform with confidence that the network can handle them.

IP-based services delivered via the cloud can be as reliable as TDM if service providers have visibility into network performance. UCaaS needs intelligent networks because performance is so crucial to its long-term success.

As UCaaS is growing with a CAGR of more than 20% over the next five years, I believe it is crucial that service providers look at performance and how they can differentiate their offering. The market is maturing and UCaaS providers need to deliver services that more than meet end user expectations or gain a reputation as ‘best effort’ instead of ‘always on, always optimised’.