September 25, 2018
What is UCaaS? It's an acronym that stands for Unified Communications as a Service, and it's a communication solution that's Powered by Mitel. Watch this video where I explain this solution and offer up some of its key benefits:
What is UCaaS?
As a communication solution, UCaaS combines voice, video and collaboration tools into a single solution. It's much more than the voice-centric solutions of the past. UCaaS encompasses all streams of communication.
Benefits
This unified communications platform allows for increased collaboration among company members and with external customers, too. Sure, UCaaS has traditional phone functions like voicemail and four-digit dialing, but it also has video conferencing, web conferencing, internal chat, presence and video. UCaas helps employees in large organizations or remote locations easily and intuitively stay connected. Its many features help companies bring employees together.
Real World Example
UCaaS is the communication system I use every day to communicate with coworkers and clients. Just the other day, I had an imperative business issue that I needed to address with a client. I called them at 8pm, which is pretty far outside business hours, but because they had voicemail to email, they were able to read the voicemail I had left them.
Then, they launched their UCaaS mobile application on their smartphone, returned my call through the applications and talked directly to me using their business phone system. It's a simple example of how UCaaS makes business communication seamless.
Frequently Asked QUestions About UCaaS
1. What Does "as a Service" Mean?
In the simplest terms, the comparison can be made by purchasing a product you have to buy, maintain, manage and update because you own the asset. Whereas "as a service" converts that transaction to a subscription where you simply subscribe, use and benefit from the product. This removes all of the responsibility of ownership, updating, patching, managing and ensuring the functionality of the service you're consuming. That's what the "as a service" in unified communications as a service represents.
2. Does Voice Work Over the Internet?
I receive this question pretty often. Clients wonder whether their voice service will work over the Internet or over data networks. There's a lot of questions about call quality and issues with voice over IP services. However, in today's age, with the availability of high-speed Internet access and high-quality data networks, VOIP has been very successful in delivering high-quality audio to customer locations around the world. In fact, many of the voice calls today actually occur in HD audio, which is higher quality than a traditional phone line.
3. Does the Subscription Price Include a Device?
There are varying offers available in the marketplace. Some providers include a device per users, and others disassociate the hardware from the user subscription. We believe that allowing flexibility on the user subscription and the device type is the best combination for a customer. And then we add in the ability to monetize the hardware into the monthly payment. This provides the customer with a choice of subscription type, a choice of device and the ability to consume it in a monthly payment, as a service.
If you'd like more information on UCaaS, feel free to check out my other videos:
- What is UCaaS? - this video provides a brief overview of the service.
- The Power of Mitel and Marco UCaaS - this video outlines how and why our UCaaS offering is built by Marco and powered by Mitel.
- Three Common Myths about UCaaS - this video details assumptions clients commonly have about this offering.
To discuss how Marco's UCaaS would impact your organization's communication, contact a Marco rep:
