Cisco’s upcoming licensing changes may be a challenge for many businesses, but they’re also an opportunity to take stock ahead of the hybrid working transformation. 

Cisco has recently announced end-of-sale and end-of-life dates for on-premises perpetual licences for Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) 

The dates (all of which can be found on Cisco’s website) culminate in the end of software support in January 2024, but businesses are being urged to migrate their services well ahead of this time. 

Andy Nolan, EMEA Sales VP at Cisco partner Intrado, said that businesses should view the changes as a chance to take stock of their estate and plan for a working culture that has been changed by the pandemic. 

“There are a lot of moving parts here that have probably got more complicated since COVID,” he said. 

“But it actually creates an opportunity for them to look at their businesses and get everything in one place. 

“The best thing for customers to do is not bury their head in the sand and look at the benefits of moving to the cloud or taking a hybrid approach.” 

Nolan said that, while moving to cloud services is a great option for many, there are still a lot of businesses not ready to make the move just yet. 

These businesses need to think carefully about how they approach the end of support dates from Cisco,  

The challenge comes in deciding the best approach while working through a period of disruption, which is why many businesses opt for a managed approach via a partner. 

“Most people are focused on keeping the lights on and ensuring workers can carry on working,” Nolan said. 

“You get lots of benefits from moving to the cloud, but the reality is customers see it as a challenge because the workforce is distributed, so they’re not really focused on this at the moment. 

“If customers could leave this for a few more months or a year they probably will, but we’re trying to make it painless for customers.” 

Nolan said that Intrado’s approach is to help customers make the transition to whatever model they choose on a step-by-step basis. 

An important part of this, he added, is helping customers establish how they can continue to use their older technology by linking it together with the collaboration platforms they’ve started using throughout of the pandemic. 

“Some customers might look at what they’ve got in the office and ask if they need it or some might want to repurpose it,” he said. 

“Others are going to have to work out how they use their old devices with the new collaboration tools they’ve adopted. 

“That’s the discussion; there’s no bad option if they take that approach, but a bad option would be throwing away the investments they’ve already made and spending more money. They don’t need to do that.”  

Because of this, many businesses will require interoperability solutions to link these older systems to new tools such as Teams, which has seen spectacular growth throughout the pandemic. 

Ultimately, the priority is to make sure that customers have plenty of options and flexibility. 

Nolan said that Intrado provides this via a mix-and-match of UCaaS products and the option to manage these on a customer’s behalf. 

“We can take the IT load from them, so they’re focused on strategy, not break-fix,” he explained. 

“Our recommendation is to go office–by–office or region–by–region to help them move on the right path. There is rarely an advantage to a big-bang approach, so we create a roadmap with them”

“What we’re doing is giving customers options and flexibility to ultimately save money.” 

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/3tTUcKf