In at the moment’s extremely aggressive enterprise setting, each minute of communications downtime has a value. Misplaced connections imply missed clients, delayed gross sales, and stalled alternatives. To forestall that, organizations make investments closely in redundancy methods that maintain communication operating when methods fail.
One more and more widespread method is twin UC licensing, the place organizations keep two unified communications platforms, usually a major UCaaS supplier and a backup for catastrophe restoration functions. For companies the place uptime is non-negotiable, this will look like a sound safeguard towards disruption.
But the safety comes at a steep price. UCaaS platforms are costly, and sustaining a whole bunch of backup seats that see little or no use can shortly pressure IT budgets. Extra regarding, latest occasions just like the AWS or Cloudflare outage have highlighted an uncomfortable fact: if each platforms rely upon the identical underlying cloud infrastructure, failures can happen concurrently.
There’s a higher technique to obtain resilience. A absolutely numerous continuity mannequin can maintain communications operating throughout outages whereas avoiding the waste and complexity of duplicate cloud telephone methods.
The Hidden Prices and Vulnerabilities of Twin Licensing
Organizations keep backup UC platforms to keep away from the price of downtime, however holding two methods creates its personal important monetary drain. Microsoft Groups Enterprise with Groups Telephone add-on and Cisco Webex Enterprise calling plans can price a whole bunch of {dollars} per person yearly, which means organizations sustaining each platforms for redundancy successfully double this expense per person every year.
Past licensing charges, operational bills, reminiscent of upgrades and sustaining configuration parity, compound the burden. Organizations should put money into coaching workers on each platforms, keep administrative experience throughout two methods, and guarantee assist desk groups can help customers in both setting.
Lathan Lewis, Head of Merchandise at Tango Networks, explains:
“Though the opposite platform is simply there as insurance coverage, you continue to should put money into coaching your workers to grasp find out how to correctly function it within the occasion of outages.”
These necessities enhance the annual price and add important overhead to the technique.
Extra troubling than this mixed monetary burden is the truth that twin licensing can fail exactly when it’s wanted most. A number of UC firms run a dual-cloud technique, with some depending on third-party cloud suppliers for important sections of their service. Ought to an outage have an effect on a cloud supplier that helps each an organization’s essential and backup UCaaS platforms, performance could be disrupted on each. This renders the redundancy ineffective.
These points create a dilemma: organizations are paying substantial premiums for defense that also carries threat. One resolution, nonetheless, addresses each issues by changing the backup UC platform with a cell network-based various that delivers superior resilience at a fraction of the associated fee.
The Resolution: How Built-in Cellular UC Gives a Higher Method
Reasonably than duplicating cloud-based UC platforms, using cell community expertise affords a basically completely different method to enterprise continuity.
Options like Tango Prolong display this method in apply. Prolong is an eSIM-based cell UC community that creates a UC communication endpoint instantly on an worker’s private cell phone, utilizing the present enterprise quantity. This implies if the enterprise makes use of Microsoft Groups or Cisco Webex for cloud calling, the cell phone turns into a Groups or Webex extension.
The cell endpoint delivers enterprise continuity throughout a cloud outage as a result of the cell gadget has its personal connection to the telephony infrastructure through the cell community. Equally, when the UC platform’s software layer experiences points, workers can nonetheless obtain calls as a result of they’ll nonetheless be routed through the cell service.
This structure permits the answer to proceed functioning even throughout main cloud outages that would have an effect on each an organization’s major and backup UC platforms directly.
These features in resilience are compounded by price effectivity. Utilizing a cell community resolution like Tango Prolong prices as little as half of a single UC platform license.
Lewis quantifies the distinction:
“Fifteen {dollars} per person per thirty days is actually all you’re paying for all the things there. It’s considerably cheaper, each OPEX and CAPEX sensible.”
For a 500-employee group, this interprets into substantial annual financial savings in comparison with sustaining a backup UC platform.
Rethinking Enterprise Continuity for Cloud Communications
The twin licensing dilemma reveals that organizations are paying substantial premiums for an answer that also leaves gaps. Though main cloud outages affecting each platforms concurrently are comparatively uncommon, sustaining two cloud-based methods affords no hedge towards that situation.
UC Built-in cell community options change this equation. By offering communication pathways that function independently of cloud platforms, they tackle each application-level outages and infrastructure failures by a single implementation.
For organizations presently sustaining twin UC platforms or seeking to put money into a backup UC resolution, switching to cell community options means safeguarding budgets from pointless prices whereas providing safety from the total vary of outages that twin licensing can not tackle. This method represents a basically smarter technique for holding enterprise communications operating when methods fail.
