Banks, other organizations use UC to improve client service and user experience

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The unified communications market is changing. Feature-rich Internet messaging and voice-over-IP telephony were once mostly the domain of CIOs and IT departments, but these services are entering the mainstream, driven by employees’ uptake of mobile hardware through BYOD initiatives and easy-to-use applications, as well as the subsequent entry of these endpoints into the workplace. Costs have declined and the underlying technology has been simplified, making UC, whether delivered through the cloud or on-premises infrastructure, an increasingly attractive option.

“[F]ocus has shifted to the end-user experience, including ease of use, as well as the business value of UC,” observed COMMfusion president Blair Pleasant in article for No Jitter. “There’s a growing realization that the user experience must be intuitive, relevant to the user’s work and tools, and competitive with the experiences delivered by consumer devices and apps. It’s no longer about getting the ‘latest and greatest’ – it’s delivering intuitive and contextual UC solutions, and the business results that are achieved by simplifying collaboration and meetings and enhancing the mobile experience.”

Unified communications market reshaped by consumer focus
The shifts toward intuitive UC user experience comes at just the right time, as UC begins displacing legacy systems. In the past, communications infrastructure was too limited, costly and complex to cater to the end user. Much of IT’s time was devoted to simply maintaining the status quo, with little left over for improving usability or refining the user interface.

With the emergence of cloud computing as well as flexible, highly capable on-premises solutions, all of that has changed. Third-party hosting companies now steward UC technology, optimizing it for day-to-day use by their clients. At the same time, organizations with large call volumes increasingly utilize on-site UC – with installation help from managed services providers – for maximum stability and cost-effectiveness. Either way, businesses and their clients now benefit from amenities such as:

  • Contextual services: Relevant call histories, emails, texts and documents can be retrieved for each conversation.
  • Embedded technologies: Computer telephony integration in integrated into most contact center solutions, and UC is moving in the same direction. It is no longer a standalone services so much as fundamental communications infrastructure.
  • Video meeting rooms: Video conferencing enables better remote collaboration, and with VMRs it is possible for users to connect using a client of their choice, whether they are inside or outside the company firewall.

All of these features add up to a rich UC experience for users and tangible benefits for the organization. Banks, for instance, have deployed wide-area networks and contact centers to better support UC and improve interactions with clients. According to AllAfrica, Comnavig ICT Advisers CEO Olufemi Adeagbo recently identified a well-designed, technologically sound contact center – with features such as UC and video conferencing – as the only way to ensure that business opportunities are realized and brand reputation maintained.

“Imagine a car sale opportunity that is lost because the advertised mobile number is off, unavailable or cannot be answered,” stated Adeagbo. “Imagine the dormant account the bank does not proactively place a call about to understand the issue and reactivate.”

How BYOD can be made easier through desktop virtualization

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Bring your own device policies, already buoyed by rapid uptake of smartphones and tablets, may gather additional momentum as prominent technology vendors devote attention to making mobile hardware valuable in the workplace. Dropbox for Business has made several big acquisitions related to BYOD, with the aim of helping businesses transition to multi-device, highly consumerized IT environments. Meanwhile, Apple has included advanced support for email, device enrollment and calendar collaboration in iOS 8, making the mobile OS more amenable to BYOD than ever.

It’s clear that BYOD isn’t going away. However, organizations are still adjusting to the new pressures that the phenomenon places on data control, security and compliance. While major firms continue to work on BYOD-centric solutions, enterprises have to assess their mobility needs and decide whether to implement measures such as desktop virtualization to enable BYOD.

Virtualization makes BYOD more secure for leading steel producer
The central issue with any BYOD policy is the transfer of control – over hardware, software and data – from the IT department to employees, who may be less scrupulous in terms of what applications they use. For example, files that should remain behind the company firewall may be shared with consumer-facing cloud services. Mobile devices enable such habits, even as they hold potential to enhance collaboration and remote work.

Fortunately, desktop virtualization facilitates a middle ground between BYOD adoption and enterprise security. Rather than let each endpoint have its own OS and applications, IT departments distribute a single desktop experience via a virtual machine. Devices connect to the VM securely and gain access to approved software. Data is not retained on user hardware after a session ends.

Essar Group, a conglomerate involved in steel, oil and telecom services, turned to desktop virtualization to standardize and secure its employees’ mobile experience when working with company assets. Ultimately, it moved 5,000 users to its new virtualized platform.

“Security of data was the primary point of scope for looking for [a] desktop virtualization solution,” Jayantha Prabhu, CTO at the Essar Group, told Dataquest. “We had a good experience of the ability to control the data at the disposal of the employee when we deployed the same for some of our teams which handled data which was very critical both from a confidentiality and a brand perspective. We had around 3,000 BlackBerry users and more than 2,000 people with tablets, and with all the applications being accessed on the tablets, it was tough to ensure security of critical information.”

Desktop virtualization is a powerful tool for securing data and controlling mobile devices, but its benefits don’t stop there. Other perks include:

  • Reduced power consumption through the use of thin clients (machines that depend on a server for most or all of their software).
  • Centralized management of software and devices, with much more efficient patch distribution and application upgrades.
  • Support for remote collaboration since users can get the same experience from any Internet-enabled device.

With a broad set of advantages for organizations in finance, healthcare, education and other sectors, desktop virtualization is a practical, versatile way to incorporate BYOD while maintaining the integrity of company data.

Getting better device and data security through desktop virtualization

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Desktop virtualization is an increasingly popular way to get more out of old IT systems while enabling access to company applications from virtually any device. By hosting an operating system on a centralized virtual machine, organizations can avoid the hassle of installing and managing extra software on every last piece of equipment. Under ideal circumstances, virtualization contributes to high levels of security and convenience.

Virtual desktop infrastructure and mobile security
The influx of mobile endpoints into the workplace, fueled by bring-your-own-device policies, has made such virtual desktop infrastructure appealing. IDC recently estimated that 155 million smartphones would be used for BYOD in the Asia-Pacific region in 2014.

But what about security? Employees who use their own hardware may be prone to mingling personal habits and data with corporate assets. A classic example is managing sensitive work documents through consumer applications such as Dropbox.

Enter VDI. Important data can be kept in cloud storage services and accessed exclusively via secure connections. Information is usually not retained locally, and all permissions are protected by authentication mechanisms. VDI basically provides a catch-all solution to managing application access in the context of BYOD.

"The move to BYOD was a wakeup call for mobile security because information security is a key IT responsibility – regardless of whether the mobile device in question is company-provided or user-owned," observed Michael Finneran for TechTarget. "Unless an organization opts for a solution that avoids storing corporate data on a mobile device, systems will be needed to protect that information."

Virtualization vendors target health care, financial industries
VDI's potential for securing applications and data has caught the attention of organizations in health care, finance and other regulated sectors. At the same time, major technology vendors have worked on thin client solutions for these markets, crafting products and services that enable desktop virtualization through minimal infrastructure.

Still, as virtualization becomes more popular, there have been concerns about balancing performance and security. Network Computing's Jim O'Reilly dug into the dilemma by noting that many providers have added instance storage, which are usually solid-state drives that provide the speed and muscle to overcome common bottlenecks such as VDI boot storms (i.e., when everyone logs in at around the same time).

Instance storage enables outstanding performance, but it also results in data states being preserved and, in theory, prone to surveillance and theft. Persistent data could be an issue for health care organizations obligated to comply with legislation such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Organizations should understand the ins and out of any virtualization solution before entrusting data to it.

BYOD could evolve into bring your own everything

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Bring your own device has certainly had its fans in recent years, with a growing number of organizations drawn to the collaborative and productive capabilities of smartphones and tablets. Gartner has estimated that by 2017 half of firms will not only allow but encourage employees to take advantage of company BYOD policies.

BYOD and the path toward bringing in anything and everything
Although BYOD is commonly associated with someone simply bringing in a personal device and connecting it to various company applications (as well as attendant security mechanisms), it has the potential to become, or at least influence, something much bigger. Some firms believe that the same ethos behind BYOD could lead to employee-supplied software, storage and services – basically a bring your own anything/everything state of affairs.

According to the Australian government document "Victorian Government ICT Strategy 2014 to 2015," chronicled the shift to BYOD by public sector agencies, citing core benefits such as:

  • Efficient working arrangements: Employees can work from anywhere, potentially driving down organizational costs for office space and power
  • Higher productivity: Workers may feel more comfortable operating out of their homes and using their own devices
  • Easier hardware management: Organizations don't have to buy new endpoints as often, if at all.

The implications of BYOD adoption are wide-reaching. With enterprises becoming increasingly less reliant on hardware, software and even facilities that they have paid for upfront, there's the allure of supporting more operations through cloud computing services that can be delivered to any device, anywhere. It's possible that workers could supplement their personal smartphones and tablets with productivity tools and online storage of their choosing.

"Underpinning BYOD, a range of policies and standards are required to ensure that security, interoperability and performance are not compromised. BYOD is a first step in a broader approach to employee [information and communications technology] productivity, leading to bringing your own productivity software and some storage – i.e. BYOE ('bring your own everything')," wrote the report authors.

The range of use cases for BYOD is certainly impressive. Eight years ago, Seton Academy in South Holland, Indiana introduced student laptops, containing 70 percent of the required textbooks, and now it is transitioning to BYOD. More specifically, its educators plan to use cutting-edge hardware to support school-wide initiatives such as delivering books through the cloud and moving to electronic-only submission of papers.

Unified communications brings real benefits to education

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As its name suggests, a unified communications suite gives the user a variety of business services, from instant messaging and email to voice calling and video conferencing, in a single convenient platform. On top of that, UC can serve as a natural path into cloud computing. Many of its key functionalities do not even require on-premises physical equipment since they can be run from remotely hosted servers.

UC solutions are ideal for organizations looking to consolidate their communications processes and save money while doing so. Let's look at some of the general benefits of UC, as well as how it has worked in practice for institutions in higher education.

Why organizations should consider replacing legacy systems with UC
The well known limitations of legacy hardware and software – inflexibility, difficult maintenance and total cost – can hold back businesses that are in the midst of rapid growth. Rather than deal with arduous upgrades of traditional phone systems, for instance, companies can adopt a UC platform that provides a broader set of communications services with a lower price tag.

Some of the most notable perks of UC include:

  • Better overall user experience: Thanks to the rise of mobile computing, individuals now expect immersive, intuitive interactions with all devices and applications. UC offerings may feature rich interfaces, plus they're usually compatible with smartphones and tablets, making it possible to work from anywhere.
  • Reduced equipment- and support-related costs: Investing in a UC system may not even require purchasing new hardware upfront. Services are delivered through an IP network, an appealing arrangement for cost-conscious small and midsize businesses. The UC provider may also handle support issues, freeing up the IT department to attend to other matters.
  • Flexibility and scalability: Backed by cloud storage services, UC solutions can be easily modified and extended as business requirements evolve and the user base grows.

University puts UC to work in modernizing practices
How does UC look in the real world? EdTech chronicled the Florida State University College of Medicine's adoption of a UC suite that included video conferencing and was supported by server virtualization.

Five years ago, the institution upgraded its network to support the added bandwidth requirements of video conferencing, and more recently it virtualized its servers to save rack space. The result has been a UC video conferencing platform that enables remote work and easy video viewing by students and guests.

"We now have more than 2,000 recordings that take up in excess of 2 terabytes of data," college media specialist Patrick Sparkman told EdTech. "While virtualizing our UC servers was part of the college's effort to modernize its server infrastructure, adding the [storage area network] gave us the storage capabilities we needed. And, through the server virtualization, we now have the redundancy we didn't have when we started."

The college is still moving toward full implementation of UC. Over the next few years, it hopes to continue making use of platforms such as Microsoft Lync and also integrate voicemail with email.

Clear policies and user education enable effective BYOD

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Bring your own device has been all the rage in recent years, ever since iOS and Android smartphones and tablets entered the mainstream. Although modestly powered compared to a modern desktop PC, these devices have many built-in advantages over older hardware, including high-resolution, pixel-dense displays, 3G and 4G LTE cellular connectivity, and excellent portability.

Still, there are some key considerations to make when adopting a BYOD strategy. Are devices properly secured? How much will it take to support each new endpoint? There are plenty of options out there for organizations seeking to make the most of BYOD and overcome common obstacles related to security and cost.

BYOD has solid momentum, raising the stakes for user education and sound implementation
One of the biggest benefits of BYOD is that it potentially frees the organization from having to shoulder the costs of additional hardware upgrades, since each user supplies his or her own device. On top of that, the freedom and flexibility conferred by BYOD can translate into new business opportunities, such as ones for sales teams that need to make presentations or access corporate data while on the road.

“BYOD strategies are the most radical change to the economics and the culture of client computing in business in decades,” stated Gartner analyst David Willis. “The benefits of BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs.”

Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of all businesses will require employees to adopt  BYOD, in hopes of achieving these benefits and others. Setting up and enforcing BYOD policies could save companies a lot of money that would have otherwise gone toward building dedicated networks and procuring compatible hardware.

Solutions such as desktop virtualization have come to the fore alongside BYOD, making it increasingly possible to provide a consistent operating system experience to every device within the organization. Vendors such as Samsung have also created device-specific security suites designed to ease BYOD management.

Ensuring security and productivity with a BYOD strategy
It is important to have an actionable plan in place before implementing BYOD. As ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes pointed out, a seat-of-the-pants approach usually does not work since companies can run into trouble trying to ensure that, for instance, assets are not moved from the internal network to public-facing cloud storage services.

Instead, companies have to train employees on using BYOD-enabled hardware responsibly and regularly reinforce guidelines. More specifically, some considerations for a sensible BYOD policy might include:

  • Guidance on how to deal with lost devices
  • What happens if a BYOD user leaves the organization
  • Listing of what company data, if any, is governed by regulations

Ultimately, BYOD is an exciting opportunity for organizations, but one that must be approached with care. Common sense and technical know-how can transform employee devices into valuable company assets.

“We are now entering a period of transformation,” Samsung Telecommunications America vice president David Lowe told FierceMobileIT. “It started out with clients being very reluctant to support mobility in their enterprise, trying to figure a way to keep it out. We are now in the transformation stage where enterprises are finally embracing it. That’s where the real innovation is going to come.”

Unified communications expands into new deployment models

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It's long been clear that the era of the phone exchange as it's traditionally worked has come to an end, but the era of its initial replacement, the traditional on-premises unified communications, is dissolving as well – not that the market is in decline. Instead, companies are migrating toward hosted unified communications solutions that leverage a diverse cloud environment.

A recent Infonetics Research study found that the market for VoIP services grew 8 percent from 2012 to 2013, and sales of hosted PBX and unified communications systems increased 13 percent. These trends suggest that business VoIP has moved into the mainstream, according to Infonetics principal analyst Diane Myers.

"Hosted unified communications are seeing strong interest up-market as midmarket and larger enterprises evaluate and move more applications to the cloud, and this is positively impacting the market," she said.

Not only are more companies considering hosted UC options, many are embracing the modern reality of UC, which is more fragmented than in the past, a recent No Jitter article reporting from the UC Summit said. While cloud hosting solutions are perfect for some business needs, many companies prefer to keep other tasks on-premises. Given these challenges, businesses can benefit from working with a managed services firm to develop a clear UC strategy that blends internal data center and external cloud resources.

How desktop virtualization enables better BYOD management

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Virtual desktop infrastructure gained traction recently as more organizations adopt and support mobility initiatives. Employees, empowered by bring-your-own-device policies, are increasingly capable of working from anywhere. Companies that are phasing out Windows XP PCs may even choose to replace these aging machines with mobile devices that provide more streamlined user experiences and offer a slew of modern applications.

VDI’s role in enabling mobility
Where does VDI fit into this picture? With device fleets becoming more fragmented, VDI can be a cost-effective means of providing critical access to core company assets such as enterprise resource planning, client relationship management and line-of-business applications. It’s economical because it requires less investment, both in time and money, than crafting mobile experiences from scratch.

“Applications can also be enhanced for mobile access on the server end, without building a mobile development capability within your organization or hiring expensive outside help,” explained TechRepublic contributor Patrick Gray. “You could use your existing ERP developers to create a dozen screens and reports that have a limited number of fields, and space them more appropriately for mobile use, without writing a single line of mobile code.”

In practical terms, VDI can give sales teams access to full desktops so that they can make use of important tools such as CRM and PowerPoint while on the road. Even if the organization has a BYOD initiative in place, VDI simplifies common BYOD issues such as hardware management and security enforcement – each device communicates securely with the VDI servers via an encrypted session.

VDI and the growing uses of desktop virtualization
Moreover, VDI fits into many organizations’ growing interest in virtualization. Forrester Research’s David Johnson told InfoWorld that more than half of IT decision-makers cite desktop virtualization as a top priority for 2014. Although the market for PCs may be stagnant right now, there is still enough demand for virtual desktops that many companies have turned to VDI to deliver secure computing environments and access to applications on any device.

Certainly, there can be technical and financial challenges in implementing effective VDI, but these obstacles can be overcome with the expertise of an IT solutions and managed services provider. Organizations can also optimize VDI through the use of thin-client software to connect to VDI systems. Eventually, VDI implementations can pay for themselves by making workers more capable, regardless of where they are, while also streamlining mobile device management.

Approach BYOD with a realistic mindset

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Companies are increasingly embracing bring your own device programs, but BYOD is also introducing new security risks into the business. As a result, having a clear plan for BYOD deployment that acknowledges the realities of the way users behave is essential for avoiding a data breach or other security incident. To smoothly manage a BYOD rollout, companies can benefit from working with a managed services provider and adopting sanctioned hosted collaboration solutions.

At the recent CITE Conference in San Francisco, Cisco executive Brett Belding and Sanofi executive Brian Katz explained that the security problem of BYOD is a simple one: No matter what restrictions are placed on them, users will find a way to access the services they want for cloud storage, collaboration and email on any device with a screen. They said that users are going to be drawn to the services they are familiar with, such as Evernote or Apple's iCloud, CITEworld reported.

Short-term benefits but long-term risk
Using ad hoc or consumer solutions to store and share data gives employees short-term benefits but can create long-term exposure risks, Alex Gorbansky, CEO of document management company Docurated, told Business News Daily. In many cases, employees are bypassing IT and adopting consumer solutions, which then can linger in the cloud without corporate knowledge after those employees have left. The solution to these management issues is for IT to provide sanctioned solutions.

"Employees need to work with IT to adopt a consumer-grade experience with enterprise-grade security," tech executive David Lavenda told Business News Daily. "Without IT buy-in, end users will continue to choose between engaging in risky file sharing behavior with consumer-centric alternatives, or taking a productivity hit through clunky legacy enterprise file sharing systems."

Working with a managed services provider, companies can craft a custom BYOD deployment plan that leverages sanctioned cloud storage and collaboration tools, avoiding the risk, inherent to BYOD, that employees will head off on their own and deploy risky consumer solutions. A third-party vendor experienced in BYOD strategy and cloud systems can help businesses of any size navigate this type of rollout and ensure employees buy into it. With guidance for employees, achieving BYOD success is more likely, Katz said, according to CITEWorld.

"Nobody follows a standard, but everybody follows a recommendation," he explained.

Heading into a BYOD deployment with a realistic mindset and an understanding of how employees will behave is essential, and a managed services partner can help.

Creating BYOD value while minimizing risk

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Bring Your Own Device programs are growing in popularity, and, as they evolve, the techniques for managing them are evolving as well. Introducing BYOD programs into the workplace comes with obvious security risks, as more connected devices present more vectors for malware or network breaches, but there's no avoiding the reality that smartphones and tablets are here to stay. Nonetheless, companies need to be deliberate in the way they deploy BYOD.

In many cases, employees are either unaware of the security risks their device use can introduce, or they simply don't care. According to a recent survey by identity management software firm Centrify, 15 percent of employees believe they have minimal to no responsibility to protect data stored on their personal devices. Additionally, 43 percent said they have accessed sensitive corporate data while connected to an unsecured public network.

Traditionally, the response to this type of threat has been to limit employees' device use with restrictive policies and enterprise mobility management tools, a recent TechTarget article noted. However, such limitations can easily restrict the benefits BYOD offers in the first place. As a result, the preferred approach is trending toward implementing better controls on the network and storage levels, giving users more choice of device while taking precautions like protecting their data via hosting it remotely in a secure cloud environment. The ideal security approach will vary by organization, making it useful to work with a managed services provider specializing in BYOD to develop a custom solution.