Evaluating a UCaaS Provider...

Being in the business of helping organisations improve and innovate their collaboration to address an increasing distributed workforce, converge and simplify their tech stack, and other benefits I did a quick investigation to see what came up on a google search for “Evaluating UCaaS providers”.

A bit of explanation first though, UCaaS refers to unified communications-as-a-service, and the UC is the convergence of traditionally multiple communication/collaboration services you may have in your organisation, into one – Zoom, Slack/Skype for Business/Teams, phone and packing that all into one service that you access via the Internet.

Here is a quick distillation of the common points checked across 4 sites (see links below) and the frequency of those evaluation points:

- Track Record of vendor – vendor reputation, reviews, references – 1 x;

- How comprehensive are the tools and features, future enablement? 3 x;

- End-user experience, ease of use 1 x;

- Integration opportunities with other software, CRM, Microsoft, ERP, Open APIs – 4 x

- Security and Compliance - 2x;

- On-going support model – 1 x;

- Phased migration capability? – 1 x;

- Reliability – as in, high availability, credits for service outages - 2x;

- Cost, elasticity of cost with changes in the business – 1 x;

- Infrastructure – data storage sovereignty, redundancy, DR (relates to Reliability) – 1x;

- Scalability – scale with business change – 1x;

- Administration – how easy is it to administer with non-technical people – 1x;

- Future releases, product roadmap, track record for innovation – 4x;

- Financial stability – 1x;

- Single or Multi-Vendor Approach – 1x.

Sources:

Publisher Article Date

PGI 4 Tips for Choosing a UCaaS Provider March 6, 2019

UC Today Top 7 Tips for Evaluation a UCaaS Provider February 20, 2020

Mitel (vendor) Key Questions To Ask When Evaluating UCaaS Providers not listed

TOOLBOX Guide to Evaluating UCaaS Providers May 11, 2020

for Collaboration

And a view of the “Top Vendor UCaaS Platforms 2021” published by UC Today, February 17, 2021