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Enterprise adoption of cloud Unified Communications (UC) has largely been driven by small to medium enterprises (SMEs) because their perceived resistance to the transition process has been relatively low. Conversely the immediate cost savings of a cloud UC deployment can be substantial when it is compared to a traditional on premise solution.

However, as the market for cloud UC continues to mature the industry is seeing more and more investment from both mid-sized and large enterprises looking to adopt and deploy cloud UC in controlled environments. So why is there a shift towards the cloud?

Traditional on premise UC solutions offer seamless integration and excellent voice and video features as well as collaboration applications including presence and live chat. However the reality is that these applications and their features often fail to interconnect and then fall short in providing the expected benefit and investment return. Despite the much-touted advantages of moving to cloud UC the technology still struggles in being accepted; a view driven by lingering misconceptions around transition/migration, costs, reliability and of course, security.

INTEGRATION DOESN'T HAVE TO BE HARD
It's a myth that cloud UC is either insecure or unreliable and the majority of UC cloud providers base their platforms on the Session Initiation Protocol, (SIP) just like most on premise systems. SIP is a broad and flexible standard that can be implemented in a number of ways, possibly leading to incompatibilities between vendor systems, and it is here that the Session Border Controller (SBC) has an important role to play.

A SBC at the border of the enterprise's own network translates the different SIP dialects in both directions, allowing on premise systems to interoperate seamlessly with cloud UC platforms. At the same time it also acts as a policeman at the border of the enterprise network, ensuring that only legitimate traffic passes between the enterprise and the cloud platform, ensuring that it is secure and reliable.

ENSURING EASY MIGRATION
With both systems communicating, the remaining issue centres on determining how each user is reached. Do they continue to use the on premise system or migrate to the cloud? As a call arrives, it is critical that the system identifies the user and the call is correctly routed. A users' identity is usually a Direct Dial or extension number. The numbers can be distributed across both on premise and cloud UC platforms and this ensures that users can be reached seamlessly. A SBC that receives the inbound call will refer the number to a database and route the call onwards. Migrating users can be as simple as changing the routing database and pointing a user to the new system. The database can be resident on the SBC or the SBC can perform a lookup on a directory such as Microsoft Active Directory.

RESERVATIONS OVER DUAL DEPLOYMENT?
For larger enterprises moving from on premise to cloud UC, there will always be the need to perform user migrations, provide training and iron out issues. New user functionality is vital to be able to label a deployment a success and many organisations will run a dual deployment as part of the transition.

Many businesses labour under the misapprehension that they'll generally get the best of both worlds if they combine cloud and on premise UC. Keeping the customer's best interest in mind, running hybrid UC platforms will not be as cost-effective long-term as a single solution, but it is helpful whilst converting from premise to cloud, so in that sense it can serve the business well. On the whole I would tend to recommend the complete migration from one system to the other as the best way to proceed. NC