Outsource Your Network Headaches

By: John Shepler

Back when all the network equipment fit into a literal broom closet and Cat5 cables hooked it all together, running a LAN with a connection to the Internet was an all in a day’s work. Now you’re dealing with multiple clouds, multiple locations, bad actors constantly trying to intrude, and equipment going obsolete almost before you can even power it up. The level of complexity is growing exponentially, but your staff and resources aren’t. Is there any way to simplify all of this?

Make Network Woes Someone Else’s Problem
You can keep doing it all yourself. That means hiring more and more staff, constantly refreshing hardware, troubleshooting outages and dealing with outside attacks on a daily basis. Or, you can let someone else take care of it.

The first approach to outsourcing network grief is to contract with a Manage Service Provider or MSP. This is an outside company that acts as your IT department. You still own all the equipment and services, but someone else provides the staff to manage it for you.

A newer approach is Network as a Service or NaaS. It’s a logical extension of Software as a Service. You stopped buying boxes with CD-ROMs to update your systems years ago. Most software is now offered on a subscription basis. Computing hardware has gone the same way with cloud-based services. Why not take the same approach to networks?

How NaaS Works
When you employ NaaS, you are essentially turning your network into a subscription. Just like SaaS you pay as you go and you pay for what you use. You dump capital expenditures and trade them for operational expenses.

NaaS can be implemented on a WAN or LAN basis. WAN networks include whatever it takes to interconnect various business locations, cloud providers and general Internet service. You can also outsource your LAN so that NaaS provides all the in-house routers, switches and security appliances needed to run the network.

What about SD-WAN?
Software Defined Wide Area Networking is a flavor of NaaS that can improve WAN performance, especially in accessing the Internet. SW-WAN combines multiple lines, such as fiber optic, Fixed Wireless Access, cable broadband, and satellite to get the highest performance for your most critical functions. It automatically monitors each line and selects which path each packet should take. Higher priority packets get faster and lower latency paths, while lower priority tasks get what’s left. NaaS may incorporate SD-WAN to improve network performance.

The NaaS Advantage
There’s a certain efficiency in not being short of resources when you desperately need them to conduct business, or getting stuck with a back room full of hardware you’ll have to keep until things pick up or unload at fire sale prices. Worse yet, who wants to be laying off valuable tech employees during a downturn only to have to recruit and on-board new ones when business increases?

NaaS can also introduce some new features, such as constant AI monitoring and self-healing networks. Your network becomes another type of cloud that just gets a job done without you having to fight fires or worry about how to add this or that capability.

When NaaS Doesn’t Make Sense
As attractive as outsourcing your network woes sounds to many companies, it’s not for everyone. Companies that have large expert teams with deep knowledge of the network infrastructure and business operations may be able to provide an operational ability and efficiency beyond what an outside company can. This is especially true in heavily regulated industries or those with unique requirements.

How about your business? Does your network run like a well oiled machine with a staff that has knowledge not easily replaced? Or, are you struggling to deal with growth, a changing environment, difficulty in finding the right staff, constant problems that are hurting productivity or facing an equipment refresh that is going to be a strain on the finances?

Before you spend a fortune, you might want to consider the alternative of Network as a Service. Get expert consulting and proposals that meet your particular needs now with compelling NaaS solutions.

End of the Premises Contact Center

By: John Shepler

Business telephone operations have changed a bit over the years. Single line phones soon gave way to the switchboard with live operators to direct calls. Automation replaced the switchboard with the receptionist backed up by a key telephone PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone system. Call centers with dozens or hundreds of agents performing customer service developed specialized version of PBX systems with integration of computers and telephones. Still, one thing remained constant over the decades of technology evolution. The facilities all remained on-premises.

What’s Wrong With Premises Equipment?
The idea of keeping everything in-house has a appeal to it. After all, if you have the equipment right under your nose, you have complete control of how it works, who gets to use it and what services are available. You might even get lulled into the notion that in-house means much higher reliability than facilities located somewhere out there.

With premises based facilities you do have the ability to take a look at the system whenever you like. You can even give it a love pat from time to time just for good luck.

Along with this ability, you also pick up some responsibilities. You have to provide space, reliable power, connections to each and every phone and on-going maintenance. You didn’t think that these things ran themselves, did you? You also didn’t think that they came free of charge? No, sir. There are some major bucks involved with setting up a call center or contact center phone system and keeping it up to date.

Moving on Up to the Cloud
Unlike the last century or so, today you have the option of being able to run an efficient contact center while unloading the equipment burden. Where does it all go? To the cloud, of course.

Not everything, mind you, but the core system relocates to a remote data center. What you are left with are the actual telephones and computers that you can’t do without. But with a cloud based system, those phones and computers can be scattered around the globe and even at home for some agents, yet all connected as if they were in the same building.

More that Cost Savings
Cloud based contact centers have the obvious advantage of eliminating a major money pit in the form of PBX equipment, software and on-going maintenance. That means less tech support needed at your end. The service provider takes over the support function and handles tech issues 24/7. You may not have been able to even afford this level of scrutiny in-house.

The cloud also has its own benefits. What’s different about a cloud-based system is that a dedicated service prover builds a massive technical plant way beyond what any single company could justify. The benefit to you is that you can likely expand or contract your use of the system at will. If business grows you add more seats and pay for them one by one. If business goes into a tailspin, you eliminate the seats you don’t need.

Another cloud benefit is that you get the latest technology, including features that your in-house system probably can’t provide. That includes individual user features but also major infrastructure like redundant data centers. With duplicated facilities running in parallel, if one center goes down for any reason, the other picks up the load invisibly to you. That translates to higher availability. One vendor, inContact, boasts 99.99% availability.

Tools for Higher Productivity
The inContact suite of tools includes ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) with skills-based routing, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) with speech recognition, CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), predictive , progressive and preview dialers, call recording, extensive reporting, quality monitoring and Workforce Optimization tools.

Sure, you might develop an ad-hoc solution in-house that could provide similar functions, but you’re looking at a substantial development process that sucks up time and money and then YOU have to keep it all running and make improvements over the years. Why re-invent the wheel when the latest in call center efficiency is available for your use right now and can grow with your needs?

Do you have a stand alone call center or a contact center as part of your core business that includes 15 or more “agents” on the phones? If so, cloud based communications
may be exactly what you need right now.


Note: Original photo of telephone operators courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives on Wikimedia Commons.