I recently had the opportunity to talk about the increasing complexity of UC (unified communications) and CC (contact center) solutions with Sonali Karnik, Director of Product Marketing at Tekvizion and Scott Hoffpauir, Managing Partner at True North Advisory.

The following summarizes some of the important discussion points from our conversation.

Regardless of the UCaaS or CCaaS platform, organizations have more choices than ever. If we take the Microsoft Teams ecosystem as an example, we see an exploding number of choices.

As you can see from this image, the number of choices for Teams-certified devices and solutions is growing rapidly across multiple areas.

For example, you can choose from over 20 Teams certified IP phones, over 50 session border controllers from over 20 vendors, over 70 operator connect providers, over 200 USB and video devices, over 100 Teams room systems, and over 20 contact center solutions (with more in the certification queue).

This emphasizes the versatility and flexibility of the Teams platform, as well as the vibrant and growing ecosystem of partners and vendors that support it. You can most likely find the best fit for your organization's needs and preferences among these diverse and innovative options.

More Choices is Good

A key theme that emerged from our conversation was the idea that having more choices for UC devices, room devices, and add-on applications is good for customers, as it allows them to find the best fit for their needs and preferences. Some customers may prefer a certain brand of headsets, or a specific type of camera, or a particular configuration of meeting rooms. Having more options means that customers can customize their UC solutions to match their workstyles and workflows.

However, having more choices also comes with a downside: sometimes people can get overwhelmed (have "analysis paralysis") when they have too many choices to evaluate. This can lead to confusion, frustration, and delays in decision making. Some organizations end up choosing “not to choose” and get “stuck”, always waiting for the next version.

However More Choices Bring Complexity

Moreover, having more choices also means having more potential compatibility issues, as not all devices and room systems may work well with each other or with the UC platform.

Another downside of having more choices and complexity is that it can affect the stability and reliability of the overall solution. Even when multiple solution components work together initially, there is no guarantee that they will continue to do so in the long run, as vendors may simultaneously be changing things on their end, such as software updates, bug fixes, or feature enhancements. Even with regression testing by each vendor, the overall solution could break unexpectedly, causing disruptions, outages, and user dissatisfaction.

The CI/CD Blindspot

One of the most common challenges that organizations face when adopting a cloud-native approach is ensuring continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) of their applications and services. CI/CD is the practice of automating the build, test, and deployment processes, enabling faster and more frequent releases of software. However, CI/CD also introduces a blindspot: how can organizations ensure that their solutions work as expected across different cloud platforms, vendors, and configurations? How can they avoid compatibility issues, performance degradation, or security vulnerabilities due to the dynamic and diverse nature of the cloud ecosystem?

With many moving parts, what happens when multiple vendors make a change at the same time or within a small window of time?

More Sources of Complexity

Beyond fast changing product versions, organizations today are increasingly dealing with people working in different places. Almost all organizations are dealing with hybrid work situations, which means sometimes employees are operating within the confines of a corporate controlled real estate on a corporately controlled network; however, sometimes employees are operating form home, using personal WiFi, and internet service providers that also may be providing connectivity to support television and gaming services.

Additionally, while many workloads have moved to the cloud, some workloads remain on-premises. This then requires integrating solutions with vastly different architectures.

The Impact of Outages

As Scott points out, in an organization of 10,000 people, a 30-minute outage represents 625 person-days of lost productivity. IT Pros want to know about an outage before the users do, so that they can communicate and coordinate mitigation strategies.

Continuous Testing for Continuous Service Delivery

The solution to managing this increase in complexity according to Sonali from TekVizion is continuous testing.

Continuous testing relies on automated agents to constantly monitor your services availability and performance. These agents, located at strategic points throughout your organization, or your customers infrastructure, are able to simulate and monitor the end-user experience and immediately alert IT staff in the event of service degradation. This allows you to act often before end users are even aware of an issue.

Key takeaways

TekVizion has long been a leader in providing comprehensive testing and validation services for cloud-native solutions. TekVizion helps organizations verify that their applications and services function correctly and consistently across multiple cloud environments, regardless of the complexity or variability of the solution components. To do this, TekVizion leverages its deep expertise, extensive lab resources, and automated testing tools to perform rigorous and reliable testing scenarios, covering functional, performance, scalability, security, and interoperability aspects of the solution.

While TekVizion excels at providing device and software certification testing for leading platforms, the increased complexity of UC and CC solutions, and the integrated components, has led to TekVizion introducing new continuous testing services that can help organizations and service providers deliver better overall reliability, quality, and user satisfaction.

Watch the entire discussion here: The Pitfalls of Ignoring the UC Experience | LinkedIn

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About TekVizion

TekVizion delivers user experience testing for leaders in enterprise communications. We’re familiar with every technology provider in the industry, equipping our clients with the context they need to innovate. We help discover and fix the root causes of their biggest challenges.

For more information visit https://www.tekvizion.com/ or contact us at [email protected].

About True North Advisory

True North Advisory is the premier trusted advisor to the Enterprise and Service Provider B2B industry providing bespoke high-impact advice combined with tailored senior-level access. As world-class operators and advisors, we cater to the unique needs of both early-stage founders, CxO’s and boards as well as the complexity of later-stage and public companies throughout their lifecycle - incubation to exit. For more information visit https://www.truenorthadvisory.us/