CSC Launches Unified Communications as a Service in Canada

CSC, a global systems integration and outsourcing company, recently announced UCaaS cloud offering in the Canadian market. This is the first Cisco HCS-based UCaaS offering in Canada, but not the first UCaaS deployment for CSC. The Company has offered UCaaS in other venues for the past three years. The CSC UCaaS solution consists of its consulting, assessments, monitoring and management services wrapped around the HCS core. For those companies looking to migrate to hosted services over time, or those that prefer the added control of on-premises applications, the architecture is flexible to allow mixed hosted and managed models, both of which are offered by CSC.

UCaaS supports CSC’s strategy of creating cloud architectures that can underline its outsourcing business as well as deliver multiple service configurations to broaden its fit to client problems. UCaaS builds on CSC's existing CloudCompute IaaS capability which delivers compute, storage and network resources as a service, and its related BizCloud offering. Although BizCloud uses fundamentally the same architecture/infrastructure that CSC delivers from its data centers as CloudCompute services, it is installed as a private cloud at client premises within 10 weeks and billed as a service from a standard rate card. Using the same cloud fabric, architecture, rate structure, service level and management options in all CSC cloud models provides multiple options supporting customers’ evolving cloud strategies.

CSC’s UCC solutions suite (see Figure 1) is deployed on top of the VCE Vblock cloud infrastructure – the preferred technology stack for CSC Trusted Cloud data centers. VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company, was formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel. As such, the Vblock platform combines virtualization software from VMware; unified networking, security and computing from Cisco; and storage, security and management technologies from EMC.

Figure 1 CSC’s UCC Solution Suite

The Cisco HCS architecture is also based on the VCE Vblock converged infrastructure platform, which makes it a good fit for CSC. The Cisco HCS collaboration engine is multi-customer, not multi-tenant. Each customer is served by shared hardware delivering dedicated customer application instances of the following applications:

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager
  
  
• Cisco Unity Connection
  
  
• Cisco Unified Presence
  
  
• Cisco Unified Mobility for Nokia, iPhone, and Google Android clients
  
  
• Cisco WebEx Meeting Center
  
  
• Cisco Unified Enterprise Attendant Console

CSC UCaaS is targeting the large enterprise market using tiered pricing tied to seat counts (500- 2000, 2001-5000, 5001-10000, 10001-15000, 15001- 20000, 20001-1000000). The solution is not currently cost-effective below 500 seats – a limitation of the cost of Cisco HCS licenses. Under Cisco’s new HCS licensing policy service providers face a tier-base cost policy – more volume less cost. As a matter of fact, the recent 2012 Enterprise Connect RFP competition for cloud-based UC services found the two HCS-based solutions highest among eight submissions in both total cost and monthly-recurring Opex.

Today CSC advertises five different cost models for UCaaS. It starts with basic IP telephony with voice mail all the way up to premium UC that has all the features including WebEx and audio conferencing, and smartphone clients for iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry. UCaaS is built in a modular fashion so that customers desiring video as a service or contact center as a service can have that addition. But is all begins with a basic PBX replacement, which CSC finds as a natural entry point for many of its customers.

Key CSC UCaaS Differentiators

Communication Enabled Business Processes

CSC’s Communication Enabled Applications (CEA) portfolio delivers communications and collaboration capabilities into business applications using SOA and Web 2.0 principles to create these new capabilities. CEA uses a number of industry protocols, including SIP, TR-87, JTAPI, XML, MLS and others to transmit communication instructions to the communications infrastructure such as “make a call,” start a video conference” “add a participant to a call” and communication information such as “presence,” “location” and “call information” that will be presented into the user applications.

CEA Applications and solutions include ready-to-go applications from CSC such as Hot Desk, Click-to-Call and Mobile Cost Optimizer. Pre-integrated solutions are also available for a host of leading third-party UC solutions, including Microsoft Office and IBM Lotus Sametime. CEA can also integrate the customer’s enterprise applications and business processes through SOA and Web Services APIs.

SLA Availability

UCaaS is a utility model with SLAs built into it. And the SLAs are negotiated with the customer. CSC has a standard set of SLAs based on a standard architecture. However, they have encountered customers who are looking for higher or lower SLAs which, of course, impact the architecture and attendant pricing. Some customers want to remove some of the resiliency from the architecture, because the UCaaS solution is more of a backup system or being used as a trial environment. Others want five 9s availability. CSC is able to add/remove some redundancy and resiliency from the architecture as requested. SLAs on application performance and on the hardware are available as well. However, CSC doesn’t have pre-specified security-based SLAs. Nonetheless, these could be individually negotiated if desired.

Canadian UCaaS Traffic Remains in Canada

Canadian UCaaS is hosted from a Canadian data center. This is a principal differentiator for some customers. For example, the Canadian federal government is very keen on keeping its data inside Canada. Others feel more comfortable knowing that their traffic remains at home even though it’s not a stated requirement. This localization of Canadian traffic doesn’t preclude CSC from serving other global customers out of the Canadian data center. Today CSC has 14 cloud centers around the world which offers customers a choice on just where their data is backed up.

CSC Challenges

Connecting with Customer Priorities – Specific for BDMs and TDMs

Reaching out to BDMs is major thrust as they drive solutions sales. The CIO used to be the focus of sales relationships. This has changed. Today it’s the business unit head because of the need to drive a clear understanding of the impact of CEBP on business productivity and agility. Clearly, there’s a business case around cost reduction, but cost reduction is only one component. Business productivity and agility will drive sales, time to market and ultimately profitability, and this needs to be addressed within the context of the business case. It’s important to equip and empower the IT sponsor to help position the solution area with BDMs. But it’s BDMs who make the decision to buy or not to buy and this decision process will cut across various business units, sales, marketing and HR.

This is a time consuming process if done right. CSC has experienced a sales cycle of 4-5 months. Fundamentally, BDMs and TDMs want to understand how UCaaS changes the relationship between business models, operational models, the services that those models deliver and the costs and benefits involved. Some of the key questions that customers need to have answered are:

• Security: Can the same security available to applications be applied in the cloud?
  
  
• Compliance: Can applications in the cloud meet the same regulatory compliance requirements?
  
  
• Reliability and QoS: Can the same SLAs for reliability and QoS be met in the cloud, especially given the multi-tenant use of the underlying IT infrastructure?
  
  
• Control: Can application owners still have the same amount of control over their applications and the infrastructure supporting them in the cloud?
  
  
• Fear of vendor lock-in: Will use of a particular vendor for cloud services or infrastructure prevent use of a different one in the future, or will the enterprise’s data and applications be tightly locked into a particular model?
  
  
• Change in Productivity and Business Agility: How will UCaaS serve to increase the productivity of my mobile workforce, increase my supply chain effectiveness and strengthen relationships with my customers?
  
  
• 5-year Internal Rate of Return (IRR): Does the business case show an IRR that’s above an acceptable hurdle rate for the risks involved?

CSC conducts a presales UC strategy and assessment engagement consisting of: Discovery to understand the current environment and identify business requirements; Direction setting leading to the design of a high level UCC architecture; and a Roadmap for recommendations to assure that the customer isn’t locked into something that doesn’t meet their business priorities down the road.

Indirect Channel Development

An indirect CSC sales channel is a work in progress as they have traditionally gone to market directly with only occasional opportunistic partnering with SPs. However, the belief is that an indirect channel white labeling or reselling CSC UCaaS could scale further downstream than CSC could, since partners wouldn’t have to invest in hardware, software or services. Cable Cos appear to be the first partners to enter the new program.

Certifications are not considered a must, but training is. Strategic partnerships would be developed in cases where the partner wants to package resold CSC UCaaS with its own services. These situations would be supported with co-branding, co-marketing, etc.

Key UCaaS Solution Assumptions that Customers Need to Consider

• 1-5 year for managed and 3-5 year for utility contract term.
• POE (Power over Ethernet) ports will be available at client LAN for UCaaS.
• CSC UCaaS will leverage all the existing network services like DHCP, DNS & NTP from the client environment.
• It is assumed that the client having well structured, highly available, and resilient network infrastructure as well as an integrated set of network services like DHCP, DNS & NTP from the client environment.
• It is assumed that end-to-end QoS will be available at client environment to ensure reliable, high-quality voice by reducing delay, packet loss, and jitter for the voice traffic.
• Rack space & power requirements at client for the UCaaS setup will be provided by the client.
• All the sites are connected to each other via the client’s WAN.
• Clients will be charged for the WAN Bandwidth between CSC data center and the connected locations on actual usage.
• Power/UPS/cooling/network upgrades/cable plant are OUT of scope.
• Quotation is valid for 3 months from the date of approval.