Communications End Of Support Can Impact Your Organization
Communications End Of Support Can Impact Your Organization by Stephen Leaden
Introduction
Unified Communications is now realized by most enterprises as having gone mainstream in the IT Communications market, and most want to embrace it. The challenge, of course, is what drives interest and approval for UC projects by senior management.
For most of the enterprise clients we serve, the single largest reason for making a move to UC is end of support by the manufacturer. Of course, the move to UC is also driven by other industry drivers, including mobility, consumerization of UC, "virtualized"/remote staff needs, disaster recovery/business continuity, access to personnel anytime/anywhere, and more.
While VoIP systems have been in production for over 12 years, nearly 50% of all end points are still digital. That is an amazing (almost startling) figure considering legacy manufacturers have not supported legacy TDM Telephony systems for over 60 months at this juncture. Even more so, those same manufacturers have/or/are introducing end-of-support notices for their digital end points and support for such.
End of Support – To Be Taken Seriously
End of support should be taken seriously by an enterprise customer, as it poses possible risk to the enterprise and eventual downtime. The key real questions are these: How would your enterprise function in the event of a multi-day outage with no ability for desktop communications in the enterprise? How would your organization communicate in the event something like this happened? What risk(s) would this pose to the safety of the staff and community?
We have seen instances of downtime seriously affect an organization:
- A major hospital incurred a serious outage at a major building, and the problems continued for close to three days based on the non-availability of vendor service staff skilled in their legacy system. This outage had an effect on the ability to communicate at the hospital affecting directly and indirectly patients’ lives
- A major university lost service for close to a day, with no ability to send or receive calls due to service issues with communications systems down
- A manufacturing firm lost voice mail for three days with no ability to respond to voice mails and eventually resulting in missed messages responding to customers and on delivery
- A large regional financial institution’s communications were seriously impaired for close to two weeks because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy in NYC (although this was not end of support and more disaster recovery, the effects can be the same with end of support)
Manufacturers and providers have also given serious notice. Some include:
- System uptime cannot be guaranteed based on lack of spare parts availability
- No support will be provided to the customer after "xx" date if specific systems are not upgraded on or before that date
- A customer’s cloud environment will no longer be available beyond a specific date, i.e., no service, period to the customer
These examples and "threats" are real and not to be taken lightly.
Beyond Your Control
End-of-support notices are typically driven by the industry at large and beyond the control of any enterprise. Those drivers include:
- Parts Unavailability, Increased Likelihood of Downtime – Parts availability is not always local or available for legacy systems, and even a crash kit on site (highly recommended for critical components) may not be enough for a hard system down based on the root cause identified. Although legacy TDM are highly reliable, those beyond 10 years are clearly paid for and beyond the 100,000 mile car odometer equivalent. Those going beyond the 10-year mark begin to see outage relative to circuit cards, processors, power supplies, memory, end points, and more.
- End-of-Support Notices Not Just TDM Digital – End-of-support on older VoIP and UC systems is also true and should be considered for either upgrade or replacement.
- Fewer Trained Technicians – As the time "clock" continues, the number of technicians with the knowledge and skill to troubleshoot a legacy system decreases. In some instances, we have found it difficult to get replacement staff in the event a technician is sick or on vacation. In one vendor’s case, it took three days to get a technician to the site based on his limited availability and territory he had to cover to maintain the base. In this case, the industry knowledge base on "how to fix" has eroded significantly and increases the risk factor.
- Maintenance Pricing Increases – Typical of any industry, an acceptable accounting increase annually for maintenance and software assurance (SWA) is about 3%. Over a 10-year period this increase is valued at over 30%, a significant increase on an annual cost that, at first, appears reasonable. By purchasing a new UC system, the clock "starts again" and resets back to a newly negotiated annual maintenance and SWA cost, thus typically reducing OPEX costs in this area.
- No New Feature Functionality – For legacy systems that are end of support, there are no new features being introduced. The most basic include Caller ID, LDAP directory functions and Unified Messaging. The promise of new features, including the entire UC suite, are simply not available in the older systems architecture.
- "Good Money After Bad" – Any organization with a legacy system must continue to support the legacy environment, and capacities drive additional costs for add-on modules and new systems with integration to other systems just for supporting growth. Without a strategy for an entire upgrade/replacement, monies will be spent on near-term, temporary upgrades to satisfy an immediate need and will be retired as soon as a new UC system replaces the legacy system, throwing "good money after bad." This will essentially "throw away" monies in the temporary investment for a fix short term. In one case, a client had to invest over $200,000 in temporary money to keep the systems alive and expanding.
So, Next Steps?
In the end, no organization wants to run on a legacy system with little-to-no support. As shared earlier, the risks are there and the threats are real and service affecting.
The issue then is, "How do I create a strategy for replacing the legacy system and get the necessary funding for a UC replacement/upgrade and create a logical upgrade/replacement path?" UC upgrades for legacy TDM users are holistic, meaning most/all components require some level of replacement. Areas external to the PBX replacement are also affected – including data closets, switches, WAN, cabling (long range switches such as Phybridge can be answer here), and other components.
A needs assessment can help (a) identify the risk to your organization, (b) identify the benefits/advantages/applications to a new UC system, (c) identify budgetary replacement costs for a new UC architecture, and (d) facilitate hard dollar cost savings and cost avoidance to facilitate such a replacement project. This process is essential to understanding the level of risk and what new UC feature/functionality can be game-changing for your organization. The needs assessments we have performed for our clients have proven to be very beneficial in their decision-making and planning process.
In the end, UC is a fundamental shift in how your organization communicates real time, whether it be through tools such as a call from the desk, presence, softphones, mobility, chat, video, collaboration, and more. Without a going-forward replacement strategy for any legacy system (TDM or VoIP), risks to your organization exist. Assess your existing environment, significant benefits for a full UC environment, consider the current costs, proposed costs and cost savings/avoidance in order to baseline for your executive management team the fundamental needs of the shift to a full UC suite. You won’t regret it.