Why UCaaS Isn’t Always the Right Option

There is no “one size fits all” approach in Unified Communications (UC) technically, commercially, or geographically. Every market, region, industry, and customer is unique. Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) equals cloud, but the cloud doesn’t equal UCaaS, and “on-premises” is often a misnomer. Today’s on-premises solutions may be hosted in public cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure, providing customers with a means to optimize availability and spend while maintaining tight control over application deployment, management, and customization.

The way Mitel looks at the world, it is about supporting our customers through their communications lifecycle and delivering value regardless of whether they are using on-premises solutions, moving to a hybrid solution, or migrating to the cloud, future-proofing them at the same time. 

According to Metrigy Research’s recent study, the adoption of UCaaS continues to grow. Still, many organizations continue relying on custom-hosted, on-premises, or hybrid solutions to meet their communications needs. For these organizations, on-premises, hosted, and hybrid options provide various benefits, including lower total cost of ownership, greater flexibility and control, enhanced ability to integrate communications and workflows, and higher reliability. 

Metrigy recommends that as organizations develop their go-forward strategies, they should look to implement solutions that best meet their needs, regardless of deployment architecture. They should ensure that the solution they deploy today provides a clear path to where they want to be tomorrow.

Where On-prem Makes Sense

No longer is the size of the company a determining factor in UC architectural decisions. Instead, the most significant variant is industry, with technology companies, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and education the biggest adopters of on-premises platforms, according to Metrigy. 

Customers continue to choose on-prem based on better reliability, security, lower TCO, better customization capabilities, and complex integrations with other business applications. In many cases, UCaaS providers either simply do not support these types of customizations or, if they do, they require the use of additional third-party platforms and complex custom application development. Cost is another factor that drives organizations to stay with on-premises solutions.

A Metrigy study found that in the first year, on-premises solutions are approximately 21% less expensive than UCaaS. The study also states that of customers with on-premises solutions today, 61.2% of those on-premises now plan to stay that way. 

When evaluating the right go-forward approach, it’s essential to consider the capabilities and partnerships of your UC vendor, not just today but in the future. The ideal provider won’t force you to UCaaS if it doesn’t meet your needs or offer clear benefits today. Still, it will provide a simple pathway to cloud should that addresses your business needs and ultimately become advantageous for you in the future. This is where Mitel ticks all the boxes of being a preferred vendor. 

Mitel’s portfolio of flexible modern options is available in any way that customers prefer to buy them: CapEx, subscription, and a complete range of private, hybrid, and on-premises deployment options.