An increasing number of companies are trying to cut costs by not taking out IT maintenance contracts. Many are now regretting this decision. When IT problems arise, they experience unexpected bills and business disruption.

Two things in life are certain: death and taxes. Many people might also add “problems with IT”.

This isn’t a cynical view of technology. The rapid pace of change in computing and business means at some stage you inevitably face problems with your IT.

These problems are often part and parcel of daily work. As a result, you can deal with them in-house. Other difficulties are not so easy to solve. You require external help. What’s more, you need that help quickly. The longer a fault remains on your network, the more your business may suffer.

IT maintenance contract

The answer is an IT maintenance contract. If you can’t fix a problem in-house, you use the contract to call an expert.

You aren’t obliged to have a contract, of course. By not paying for an IT maintenance contract, many companies believe they’re saving money. In the current economic climate, cutting costs is an appealing idea.

The reality is otherwise. Network support businesses are reporting an increase in calls for help from companies without contracts. These companies have network faults they can’t fix in-house, and are desperate for assistance.

This means the company ends up paying unexpected, one-off repair fees. They experience costly delays to business. And they may suffer serious disruption to compliance.

The benefits of an IT maintenance contract

An IT maintenance contract helps you avoid these difficulties:

• With a contract in place, you ensure continuity for your network service. When a problem arises, you can solve it quickly.
• An IT maintenance contract gives you a predictable operational cost. You don’t have to find money for a repair you have not budgeted for.
• You ensure compliance. With an IT maintenance contract, you can call on instant help. 
• You can include the latest updates and fixes in your contract. These can pre-empt likely network problems.
• You protect your IT investment and assets. You gain reliability and security.
• You achieve peace of mind. You can focus on the core competencies of your business knowing your network is in good hands in the event of a problem.

A maintenance contract doesn’t eliminate IT problems. But it does something vital for any business: it helps put you in control.

Read our article> on Reducing the pressure  you’re under

In theory, call recording should be a simple process. Unfortunately, call recording programmes aren’t always compatible with phone systems. And retrieving recordings can waste valuable time and effort.

Good call recording systems exist, of course. But you have to ensure you ask the right questions about the systems and get the right answers.

In some industries, call recording is mandatory. Financial Service Authority (FSA) rules require it for a business. So if you have to record phone calls, all you need is a call recording system to do the job. But things aren’t quite that easy.

Call Recording Functions

When a system records calls, it has to perform a number of functions. It must:

• Record calls clearly and reliably
• Share these calls with staff and third parties when necessary
• Allow a user to find a call, or part of a call, quickly
• Offer value for money

Recording

These key requirements aren’t always straightforward to achieve. Even the apparently simple process of recording a call can give headaches to both the agent and the IT Manager. The recording mechanism has to be compatible with the phone system. If it’s not, some calls may not be recorded, or the recording may start after the conversation’s begun. The recording mechanism must also keep up with the number of calls coming in to a busy office at any one time.

Finding and Sharing Calls

The next problem is sharing calls. Apart from the general FSA requirement, you record calls for a purpose. You use them for training and ultimately to improve customer service. You also want to refer to calls when a dispute arises.

The difficulty with some systems is finding the calls you want among the hundreds – possibly thousands – your business receives and makes each month. You need to be able to track down specific calls without wasting time. If you can’t, your call recording system has little to offer you.

Call Recording and Value for Money

Finally, if you’re unlucky enough to have a call recording system that’s not up to scratch, you’re not getting value for money. A call recording system is like any other business tool. You should ask if it’s doing the job you expect of it. If it isn’t, it’s time to change.

What to Look For From a Call Recording System

What you need from a call recording system is:

• 100% compatibility with your phone platform
• 100% compliance with FSA regulations
• Fast location of specific recorded calls
• Reporting and call visualisation for auditing
• Ability to find the member of staff who took or made a call
• Ability to share calls easily without calling in an IT expert
• Same-day implementation of the new call recording system
• Ongoing support and prompt answers to your questions
• Value-added features to improve your business
• Cost effectiveness

Overall, you want an easy-to-use call recording system aligned with your business needs. This way, call recording is an asset and not a problem.

Comprehensive industry analyst study shows ShoreTel Unified Communications solution has lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2012 – ShoreTel Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), today announced the results of an Aberdeen Group study on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of unified communications solutions. The survey of 236 different businesses validates that ShoreTel’s unified communications solution is the easiest to use, deploy and manage when compared to other solutions on the market today.

Total cost of ownership is a key metric for assessing costs, benefits and risks of a UC solution – enabling organizations to properly evaluate ompeting solutions. It aligns their final decision with business needs, while understanding the effects of future requirements and functionalities.

ShoreTel Total Cost of Ownership

ShoreTel’s UC solution was designed from the ground up to take advantage of IP technology – making it better suited to the realities of business than other “IP-enabled” legacy technology or bolted-together systems, which are inherently complex. The ShoreTel solution is based on a unique, open distributed architecture that integrates seamlessly with existing business applications and processes. Enterprises can scale with ease by simply plugging in an additional switch – without the need to rip and replace infrastructure. Moves, adds and changes (MACs) can easily be performed in-house because of the ability to manage users instead of devices, reducing the time, complexity and cost of system administration. These fundamental differences are what enable ShoreTel to provide the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.

Specific examples of ShoreTel’s ease of use and TCO advantage are highlighted in Aberdeen’s study:

• ShoreTel is the easiest to implement. ShoreTel customers experienced a 67 percent savings in internal implementation cost per phone when compared to Avaya Aura Communication Manager.
• ShoreTel is the easiest to train and certify. Up-front training costs per administrator for ShoreTel systems were one-third the cost of training an administrator for a Cisco UCM solution. Ongoing annual training costs are 85 percent less than Avaya IP Office and 73 percent less than the average for all telephony.
• ShoreTel is the most flexible. Performing moves, adds, and changes (MACs) on a ShoreTel system took one-third the time it takes to perform MACs on a Microsoft OCS/Lync system, and 60 percent less than the average for all telephony.
• ShoreTel is the easiest and most cost-effective to manage. System management and administration of a ShoreTel system cost 42 percent less than Avaya Aura Communications Manager and 77 percent less than Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

When choosing a Unified Communications solution, enterprises must consider upfront capital costs, infrastructure and training costs, as well as network upgrades, system implementation, maintenance contracts and other factors. Aberdeen notes key insights for evaluating the total cost of ownership of a unified communications solution include:

• Don’t stop with maintenance and software assurance.
• Understand the full cost of labor in managing Unified Communications.
• Depreciate all potential operational costs over five to six years.

All costs were accounted for in the study including capital costs, operational costs, training costs, system administration costs, and ongoing support costs. The study focused on end users and their experiences with UC solutions from Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel and
legacy TDM systems. The survey results confirm that ShoreTel has the lowest TCO in the industry.

Read the full study at
http://www.shoretel.com/resource_center/white_papers/TCO_Benchmarking_Study.html. Hyoun
Park, Research Analyst from the Aberdeen Group, will present the results of the customer
survey in a ShoreTel webinar on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012. Sign up at
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/113451674.

ShoreTel Quotes

“Total Cost of Ownership represents a holistic measure of the complete financial impact associated with the Unified Communications purchase decision and should be the most important issue for any IT financial stakeholder purchasing a new system. To uphold corporate fiscal and governance responsibilities, decision makers must fully examine all significant upfront and recurring costs to identify the UC solution offering the greatest value throughout the entire lifespan of the solution.”
– Hyoun Park, Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group

“It’s easy to say you have the lowest TCO in the industry, but this third-party research backs up what ShoreTel’s customers have known for a long time. ShoreTel delivers the industry’s lowest TCO because we designed complexity out and complexity is costly to the end-user. Our brilliantly simple approach to business communications removes the high operating costs and unnecessary complexity and this is fundamentally different from any other provider out there.”
- Mark Arman, vice president of business development for ShoreTel

“Our network infrastructure is mostly Cisco, and while we considered demonstrations from four leading vendors, only ShoreTel was able to meet all of our requirements for cost, support, simplicity and integration. We had to do extensive cost justification for our executives who were familiar with Cisco, Avaya and Centrex, but not with ShoreTel. In the end, ShoreTel offered the very best total cost of ownership—by almost 10 percent—and had a simple straightforward architecture.”
- Ann Roland, IT Manager, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency

“The costs to Hidalgo County for the phone system went down from about $900,000 a year in 2002, to about $400,000 a year since deployment in 2006. These massive savings are because now we can handle changes in-house, and make calls through the network using ShoreTel’s least cost call routing feature, instead of having to go long distance across the county.”
- Renán Ramirez, Chief Information Officer, Hidalgo County

“There is no question that the ShoreTel system provided a lower TCO. Not only did ShoreTel beat out all other solutions on a 5- year cost, but the simplicity of the administration further reduced the cost by allowing us to eliminate our outside Nortel consultant. We’ve also been able to recognize increased productivity through ShoreTel features that were extra cost items from other vendors and reduced carrier costs through the use of SIP trunks. And for the most important value benefit we have a lot of very happy users who feel they have a telephone system that provides them capabilities that were not previously available.”
- Kevin J. Sullivan, Director of Technology, Cohen & Grigsby, P.C.

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A chief executive avoids detail. Other staff absorb business data, sift the most relevant facts, and present these to the company’s board. The chief executive’s role is to make decisions based on the facts and the board’s advice.

This approach to management has a proven history of success. But according to recent surveys, there’s a problem.

Many chief executives are uncomfortable about the fast-moving nature and jargon of IT. They fail to grasp the importance of technology in the decision-making process. 

IT Growth And the Effect on Business

Consultants stress the adverse effect this attitude has on business. Technology moves at such a fast pace, and offers such significant opportunities, a chief executive who ignores it is courting disaster.

In addition, IT services have vital roles within business strategy and objectives. Chief executives who don’t recognise this aren’t providing a comprehensive leadership role.

Cloud-Based Services 

One valuable IT service is cloud computing. Increasingly, businesses rely on third parties such as cloud or managed services for IT provision.

With cloud computing, businesses cut costs, increase flexibility and gain immediate access to the latest technology. The return on investment is worth serious consideration.

Chief executives aren’t necessarily aware of these benefits. A lack of understanding taints their attitude to cloud computing and other technologies such as social media and the Web.

Role of the Chief Information Officer

Things are changing, however. Some chief executives are becoming aware of the need to embrace IT for the sake of their businesses. The decision-making process for IT is becoming a common part of the agenda. But in keeping with their working methods, chief executives don’t want to become embroiled in too much detail.

This is where a new breed of chief information officers (CIOs) comes in. Company CIOs have responsibility for raising IT issues with chief executives and boards. Having done so, many CIOs now encourage chief executives to champion IT. This contrasts with the former practice of leaving IT departments to promote technology.

CIOs are also pointing out the value of IT throughout an organisation. HR, recruitment, sales and customer service can use computer services to make improvements.

CIOs have a new job priority: to manage information and process business assets. The appointment of CIOs reflects this change of approach. About a third of CIOs now come from operational rather than technology backgrounds.

This brings us back to chief executives. CIOs study the operational benefits of IT and present the facts. In this way, chief executives can avoid detail and jargon, and have essential IT knowledge to hand. This knowledge can help build businesses and increase profits.  

The Problems IT Professionals Face

If you’re an IT professional, you deal with a host of challenges every working day. You must ensure your company’s IT infrastructure remains available at all times; you have to be ready to adapt to a fast-moving IT environment; and you need to run systems so they meet targets.

As if these challenges aren’t enough, you have to cope with other pressures. For example, in today’s economy your budget is likely to face cuts. You may have to reduce staff numbers. And despite this, company directors expect your service to give more to the business than ever before.

Managed Services and Problem Resolution

The aim of this list of problems, to which you can no doubt add, is not to cause dismay. Every one of these difficulties has a solution.

The term “managed services” is one you’re familiar with. But what you may not realise is the way some service providers have transformed it to mean far more than traditional IT maintenance contracts.

Company IT is now an integral part of business strategy and success. In your role as an IT professional, you have to focus on strategic processes and goals. Forward-thinking managed services recognise this.

Delivering Exceptional Network Performance

Managed service products must enable your company to deliver exceptional network performance. To achieve this, the services need to integrate with your company’s existing IT skills.

The goals of this integration may vary. But they are likely to concentrate on reducing costs and improving profits. You can help achieve these goals by ensuring your IT system runs to maximum efficiency and never goes down.

As an example, Voyager Managed Services (VMS) does this by offering a fully managed IT support solution. With this comprehensive approach, VMS maintains a proactive link with your IT system at all times.

Proactive Management Keeps Problems to a Minimum

The benefits of such a link are numerous. For example, the service provider handles network management and server management.  This immediately cuts the complexity of your day-to-day work.

Remote monitoring and management shifts the ownership of problems on to the service provider. You no longer become responsible for the time-consuming issue of system risk.

You’re also free to choose what the service provider manages. You may wish to opt for hosted services such as email scanning, backup, disaster recovery, data protection and unified communications. In other words, you can arrange a cloud-based service.

With a flexible managed service solution, you reduce the pressure you’re under. You can engage in business strategies with confidence knowing you have predictable costs. As a result, you and your staff can pay more attention to core competencies. After all, these are what boost company profits.

Email, voice and video are the three methods of business communication which we all rely upon but are now putting considerable strain on the corporate network.  Add to this the need to drive down cost by centralising applications and leveraging cloud based applications, and suddenly the corporate wide area network, (WAN), is having to carry a lot more load. This additional load causes congestion on the WAN and subsequently business communication and user productivity can be seriously affected.

Causes of WAN Congestion

As we try and reduce cost and increase efficiency by deploying technologies such as Voice over IP and Video Conferencing, we need to ensure our corporate WAN is capable of delivering these services. The same applies for consolidation and the adoption of cloud applications. Cost savings can be huge if we are able to successfully centralise all of our key business line applications. Removing the need to administer applications and data on individual user’s machines and enabling apps to be delivered from a single copy in a single location equates to massive savings in time and administration.  If we are also able to incorporate cloud based apps into this strategy then savings can be further amplified.

However, if these services don’t perform as good as or better than their predecessors then user resistance will mount to a sufficient level to ensure such initiatives are shelved or considerably improved.

Recreational video use on the WAN

Video used to be confined to the realms of the consumer world with corporate communications taking a more traditional approach. Until recently if the CEO wanted to address the organisation with, the latest company results or strategy this would be achieved by posting an update on the corporate intranet or communicated via email. Now it is not uncommon for the CEO to address the organisation by way of a pre recorded or live streamed video. Sales and product training is now often delivered by video to create a more interactive learning experience.

Of course recreational video use will always be prevalent and companies increasingly need to consider how all of this video content is managed across the WAN.  Video content is incredibly bandwidth hungry. A single iPlayer stream will consume anywhere from 500k to 1.2Mbps and the emergence of HD video online will only increase this.

Strategies for WAN Optimisation

With all of these applications and content fighting for bandwidth across the WAN we need to reduce congestion to optimise the delivery of applications to ensure user productivity is maintained, or ideally, increased.  There are several ways we can achieve this with one of the most successful being the use of WAN optimisation technologies.

Voyager have had a focus on networking solutions for many years and during this time have partnered with Blue Coat Systems to deliver WAN optimisation solutions. Using a variety of techniques, the Blue Coat Mach 5 solution serves to optimise the WAN to ensure it is capable of delivering the variety of applications and data demanded by businesses today.  Protocol optimisation, compression, caching, and intelligent video stream splitting, all combine to create one of the most advanced WAN optimisation products available today.

If you need to enable your WAN to be capable of handling today’s variety of traffic, it’s probably wise to speak with Voyager about how we can assist with Blue Coat Mach5.

Web analysts tout video as the next stage in the way the Internet is transforming business. By 2014, they predict video use on the Web will represent more than 90% of Internet traffic worldwide. This is a major development. So it’s worth looking at why this is happening, and how you can prepare for it.

Video is Becoming Integral to IT strategy

High-quality video gives communication an added dimension. When you’re in touch with someone using video, you react not only to voice but also to body language. This can be especially useful for a sales person who is trying to judge what a client wants.

As for meetings, video saves time and money. Participants don’t have to travel to a venue. Today’s videoconferencing can take place on smartphones and tablets with wireless connections (see our blog on Green Screen)

You can also maintain staff mobility for training or presentations. Video gives people the freedom to stay on the move or work in remote locations. This flexibility streamlines business processes, reduces carbon footprints, and gives a competitive edge.

Ever-Growing Demands for Multimedia 

For these reasons alone, video is expanding. But there’s a further driver of video use: expectation.

Staff, customers, suppliers and vendors assume a leading company employs the latest technology. Smartphones and tablets can create and share video content. Video is a significant part of the multimedia world. People therefore expect businesses to use it.

Preparing Your Network Infrastructure

Providers such as Cisco are ensuring network infrastructures can cope with the boom in video traffic. One hour of HD video needs many gigabytes of storage, and requires a suitable network bandwidth. If you fail to take storage or bandwidth considerations into account, your network won’t handle video efficiently.

For a consistent, high-quality VaaS (video as a service), you need to integrate video into your whole network. This includes switches, routers and wireless solutions. After all, you want video to help grow your borderless network, and not slow it down.

These challenges needn’t become tiresome problems. With the right infrastructure, you can simplify video deployment. You can have the tools to capture, share and store video content automatically and with ease.

Video is set to shape networks around the globe. To find out more about how you can benefit from the video revolution and prepare a media-ready network, attend Cisco’s free Webinar on 24th November.