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The Most Common Telecom Service Provider Issues

Posted on by Bluewave

In our experience, most telecom service provider issues boil down to three core problems in the industry, and they all have something to do with what’s missing from the telecom service experience.

The Root of Most Telecom Service Provider Issues

Running into problems in the telecom world is nothing new. While the driving technology has evolved over the years, the way telecom service providers go about selling and managing those services hasn’t always kept pace with advances in the technology, leaving many of us wondering, “What happened to the telecom experience?”

While the problem was once that you had too many people in the room, today’s most common telecommunication challenges often center around the fact that there aren’t enough in the room. As a result, you run into three core issues when you don’t have the right people sitting on your side of the table:

  1. A lack of consistency
  2. A lack of process
  3. A lack of billing transparency

Here’s what each of those issues looks like individually.

The Three Core Telecommunication Challenges

Issue 1: Consistency

Who’s really responsible for owning the relationship between a customer and a telecom service provider? When it comes to the issue of customer ownership, your guess is as good as ours. We’ve seen accounts handed off from team to team time and time again, and the result is that you end up spending more time explaining what you have and what you’re trying to accomplish than you do receiving the support you need.

When you’d expect your service provider to take ownership of your account with a dedicated account team who knows your system better than you do, it’s often on your team to shoulder that responsibility. If the provider does offer support, expectations and goals are often inconsistent, leaving your team trying to continually realign the provider’s priorities with your own.

Issue 2: Process

Does your enterprise follow a standardized onboarding process to educate new clients on your services and set the foundation for a successful partnership? If so, you know how integral that process is to delivering a seamless experience that sets realistic customer expectations and then meets or exceeds them. From there, you may even follow a general process to guide the partnership toward ongoing prosperity.

But when was the last time you saw a process page on a telecom service provider’s website? If those pages are out there, they’re few and far between, primarily because most providers don’t follow a process. When you’d expect them to educate you on their services and the technology you’re deploying, you more often discover that you have to become your own teacher. Can’t figure it out? See issue one above.

At Bluewave, we follow a process designed to translate telecom chaos into streamlined efficiency. It starts with a Telecom Assessment.

Issue 3: Telecom Billing

When you’re trying to understand how telecom billing systems work, you’d think the first place to start is by taking a deep dive into your invoices, right? Unfortunately, telecom invoices are designed to tell you the amount you owe, now why you owe it. They don’t break down each component being billed and the underlying rating, fees, discounts, and service changes, so if you’re looking for answers, your invoice isn’t the place to start.

Where should you start then? Your account team? See issue 1. Your internal team? See issue 2. The real answer starts with telecom reporting, but even that is a responsibility you’re often forced to shoulder. While providers may offer basic reporting services, those reports rarely provide the level of transparency you need to identify redundant services, billing errors, or even inventory all devices connected to your account.

If you’re trying to gain a macro-level perspective of billing, things only get more complicated. Even among companies that offer reporting capabilities, no two providers provide the same type of reports. In order to gain actionable insights, you often have to download multiple reports from multiple providers, then combine and manipulate those reports, but that takes time and money every time you go to create a combined report (since it’s a manual process that’s difficult to automate on your own). If you expect the reporting capabilities providers offer to make your life easier, you’re going to be disappointed in terms of clarity, consistency, and process.

Translate Telecom Issues Into Opportunity

If you’ve read this far, we bet you’ve run into a telecom expense management (TEM) problem related to one of the three core industry-wide issues above. If you haven’t, your experience is an anomaly, but if you’re like the rest of us, Bluewave is here to help. We make it easy to start by scheduling a Telecom Assessment so you can reinvest that money in technology that drives success.

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Single-Sourcing Benefits Businesses And Their IT Executives

Posted on by Bluewave

Given technology’s breadth and pace of change, implementing IT and communications solutions for a business – and especially a multi-location business – can be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without any edge pieces. Working with a supplier-neutral consultant makes that job easier by piecing together the right solutions to meet the company’s objectives. Let’s take a look a single-sourcing benefits.

As you know, recent innovations in cloud computing, managed services, security, networking and unified communications (UC) and collaboration are game changers for businesses – but there are a number of real challenges IT organizations face:

  • Increasing pressure to grow the business
  • Fewer resources available to manage complex, modern IT and communications solutions
  • Transforming their IT departments from cost center to business enabler
  • Expanding user access to services and apps
  • Defending against cyberattacks
  • Ensuring systems are fast and responsive to users’ needs
  • A growing gap in the supply of qualified IT pros and the necessary IT skills

If that isn’t enough, these complicated market forces are challenging today’s businesses at the exact same time that technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed and grow in complexity. Historically, the best remedy for businesses has been to simplify matters by working with technology suppliers that can deliver comprehensive answers to an ever-expanding range of needs.

We’ve been through this many times before. Innovation leads to new entrants operating in silos until their products are market tested and become more mainstream. These newer products eventually are integrated or bundled with others to deliver more value and simplify the purchasing and managing process for businesses. If you think about it, it just makes sense: Fewer vendors means a more integrated and streamlined experience, and less finger-pointing if something goes wrong.

As a supplier-neutral consultant, our job at Bluewave is to help IT executives efficiently sift through the choices, manage the time-consuming procurement process and ultimately make a well-informed purchasing decision. Please reach out for your free consultation and see how single-sourcing can help you manage your IT.

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How to Leverage Microsoft Teams as a UCaaS Platform

Posted on by Bluewave

It’s no secret that the current state of Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) is about as unified as the European Union, but that doesn’t mean a UC platform isn’t worth working toward. For many organizations, Microsoft Teams Voice integration offers one of the most straightforward routes to implementing UCaaS, yet even that comes with its own challenges. Here’s how to get there and what to look out for.

Can Microsoft Teams Be a UCaaS Solution?

The operative word in UCaaS is unified. However, organizations don’t necessarily need to pursue UCaaS solely for the sake of technology unity. While unity is a great goal to have in mind, it isn’t a business driver in and of itself. Instead, what really drives business to implement UC is the benefits that unity can bring about, including:

  • Improved efficiency: By consolidating the technology tools a team relies on to communicate, enterprises can leverage UCaaS to reduce the amount of time employees spend switching between applications simply to stay on the same page. It is easier to drive adoption of a single platform, versus multiple platforms.
  • Reduced overhead: When reducing the number of tools and services employees rely on, many enterprises end up spending less while improving communication across the company.
  • Increased security: Fewer services and endpoints means fewer security vulnerabilities and more centralized controls and policies.
  • Better visibility: Last but not least, you can’t understand, optimize, or secure what you can’t see. UC provides organizations with the much-needed visibility they need to accomplish all three across the most widely used tools in their employees’ workflow.

If any of the above sounds like reasons for your business to move toward UCaaS, Microsoft Teams can help you achieve those goals, especially if your organization is already using the tool to some degree.

Microsoft Teams Voice Integration

More businesses than ever before are already using Microsoft Teams as a persistent chat, video conferencing, collaboration, and file-sharing tool. That already covers the UC needs of most organizations, but the one element most often missed (generally because it’s the trickiest to get right) is voice communication.

Microsoft Teams is not only capable of integrating voice capabilities while keeping the same phone numbers you already have—it also offers the opportunity to move away from physical phone systems altogether, but you have to be strategic when deciding the best way to accomplish this.

You can buy from Microsoft directly but expect little to no support, with most of the integration planning and project management falling on your shoulders. You can also purchase through a third-party provider that may offer more hands-on support but may also lack the know-how and oversight to help you achieve the objectives outlined above.

Unified Messaging, Video Conferencing, and File Sharing

While voice integration is the most challenging aspect of a Teams integration, the platform does streamline many of the core elements fundamental to the fabric of any UCaaS platform, including:

  • Persistent chat and messaging
  • Group chats and private communication channels
  • File sharing and productivity tools
  • Internal and external user access
  • Video conferencing and virtual meetings

So while it may take a little extra work to get voice capabilities where they need to be, Microsoft Teams make the core UCaaS implementation process relatively simple when compared to most other options available on the market today.

Bluewave specializes in helping enterprises understand the nuances of a Unified Communications marketplace that isn’t always unified.

Microsoft Teams UCaaS Project Checklist

When planning a Microsoft Team UCaaS deployment, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Identify what you’re trying to achieve and why those objectives are worth the time and energy.
  2. Determine which communication tools your team is already using, the ones you need to start using, and what you need to unify.
  3. Decide if your team has the capability to implement a Microsoft Teams UCaaS solution in-house by purchasing through Microsoft or if a third-party vendor can better serve your needs.
  4. Navigate the sales and contracting process to ensure you’re getting the best deal for your existing user base and future growth goals.
  5. Design and execute an implementation plan that ensures your team doesn’t lose productivity due to downtime or lack of adoption.
  6. Ensure that all services are migrated and appropriately terminated, so you don’t end up double-paying for anything you don’t use or need.

If you’re already accounting for each of these factors as you explore the possibilities for leveraging Microsoft Teams as a UCaaS platform, you’re off to the right start. If not, Bluewave is here to help you simplify any or all of the above.

What Else Do You Need Microsoft Teams to Accomplish?

What are you trying to accomplish with Microsoft Teams? Bluewave starts with simple questions like these to understand underlying business drivers and identify the right technology solutions for your enterprise’s goals.

Whether Microsoft Teams can help you achieve those goals or not, our experts specialize in providing the technology visibility you need to make a smart choice. Schedule a Technology Assessment or reach out to our team today to get started.

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5 Reasons to Leverage the Cloud for your Contact Center

Posted on by Bluewave

49% growth in one year. Contact centers are moving to the cloud.
The number of cloud-based contact center infrastructure seats rose 49.9% within one year, from 1,302,788 to 1,953,249. This increase shows a pattern of steady and strong growth that is expected to continue over the next five years and beyond. Worldwide adoption of cloud-based contact center infrastructure has risen rapidly as companies move their contact centers to the cloud to realize the flexibility, agility, scalability, and cost benefits of this implementation model.

Why cloud is the ideal contact center solution

#1 – The ability to scale quickly
Unlike legacy solutions that require voice modules, expansion I/O cards, additional software licenses, or other add-ons, cloud solutions allow instant scale workforce teams to meet the ebb and flow of customer demand. With the cloud, a company only pays for what it uses.

#2 – Faster deployment of new capabilities
One can add new sales tools on the fly.

#3 – Match an agent’s skills to the customer’s needs
Customers now have the choice to communicate in many ways – including web, mobile, chat, voice, IVR, email, and social channels. This provides access to huge pools of data that can reveal actionable insights for companies. Cloud contact centers can use behavioral, demographic, and location-based customer information to properly match the right agent to the right customer.

#4 – Superior disaster recovery and business continuity
By housing infrastructure and critical data in a remote data center – situated far from potential disruptions – a properly architected cloud contact center provides superior business continuity. In the event of a disaster, one can instantly fail over to mobile devices or softphones on their home computers or at temporary work quarters.

#5 – The new “connected” agent
A cloud platform synthesizes all information into a single screen, creating a new breed of “connected agent” that can deliver the kind of competent support that resonates with customers.

The stats show that the cloud is winning the battle against legacy premise-based contact center solutions. Companies clearly value the flexibility, agility, scalability and cost benefits of cloud solutions and we don’t expect this trend to change in the future.

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What Is SASE?

Posted on by Bluewave

If 2020 was the year of SD-WAN, as enterprises had to deal with rapidly evolving network architectures, 2021 is looking to be the year of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). What do you need to know to be successful with a SASE framework, and why do we think it’s poised to overtake SD-WAN?

What Is SASE Network Security?

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE, pronounced sassy) is an emerging enterprise IT framework that combines the network agility of SD-WAN with focused security services to deliver a unified end-user experience independent of location without jeopardizing a business’s security posture. There are four key elements on top of SD-WAN technology that make up the SASE framework:

  1. Secure Web Gateway (SWG)
  2. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
  3. Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS)
  4. Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

Why Did SASE Emerge?

Over the last decade, business has increasingly been done in more locations and on more types of endpoints than ever before. People work from home, offices, coffee shops, airplanes, and even tents inside National Parks, and they do so from tablets, laptops, virtual desktops, and mobile phones. Additionally, IT workloads have equally been diffused out of server rooms and into the cloud. These factors have created two daunting challenges for IT professionals: First, how do you deliver a quality, ubiquitous, end-user experience across all these locations and all endpoints, and secondly, how do you do so without becoming insecure?

While SD-WAN can help you achieve the former, it can’t help with the latter, but SASE can. Because SD-WAN frameworks focus on network optimization, security services are prone to becoming secondary and often have to be patched together around specific vulnerabilities. These “secondary” security strategies still leave three glaring inefficiencies that have become all the more prominent as enterprises require more mobile capabilities than ever before:

Remote Access Solutions

With a more mobile workforce, enterprises need to ensure secure channels for employees to connect to internal networks, but SD-WAN doesn’t facilitate VPN access. Legacy remote access solutions like SSL or IPSEC VPN can extend your premier to include remote users, but that requires additional scaling of your infrastructure, and even in the best implementations, the end-user experience suffers.

Firewall-as-a-Service and Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Enterprises are unable to enforce company security policies and filter internet traffic with an SD-WAN alone, and when you zoom out and look at how users access company data from outside your facilities, it gets even more challenging.

Cloud Access Management

As companies shift to leveraging SaaS-based applications such as Office365, Salesforce, Workday, and GSuite, company data is accessible in more locations than ever before, and ensuring that the right people have proper access permissions becomes an increasing challenge. But even leveraging usernames, strong passwords, and multi-factor authentication doesn’t provide the level of security you need because it doesn’t take into account endpoints. Employees can access SaaS applications from virtually any device at almost any location, and that opens up a huge risk of data leakage. SASE emerged because it overcomes these challenges and more by integrating advanced security tools that SD-WAN technology lacks, including VPNs, firewalls, web gateways, and cloud access management, but even that isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Is network transformation on your enterprise’s list of priorities? Bluewave helps you understand where you stand today to make smart decisions about where to go tomorrow.

How Unified Is SASE?

If you aren’t actively striving to unify the technology your enterprise relies on, you’re going to run into problems that revolve around a lack of visibility and the need for a coherent framework to guide decisions. While SASE is more unified than SD-WAN on a strategic level, it still isn’t a one-size-fits-all type solution. As a result, you may need to leverage several security providers to succeed with a SASE framework. If you’ve been disappointed by a lack of coherent security strategies with SD-WAN, SASE is certainly worth exploring. However, it’s critical to understand that you can still end up with a fragmented security framework if you don’t first outline an overarching strategy and the underlying business drivers.

Who’s the Best SASE Provider?

As an independent technology consultant, many of our partners have already come to us asking who’s the best SASE provider, but that’s akin to asking who’s the best gasoline provider. It all depends on what you’re driving and how you’re trying to get there, but the most crucial thing to remember is that SASE isn’t about a single product. It’s about unifying the right blend of services for your enterprise. Already, SASE providers are touting their solution as the end all be all, but SASE isn’t as simple as deploying a single product, so it’s impossible to say one provider is better than another. What’s more important is understanding what each provider brings to the table and how closely they align with your specific goals.

Will SASE Replace SD-WAN?

From our perspective, SASE is poised to overtake SD-WAN in 2021 and beyond. While SD-WAN previously offered an excellent starting point for enterprises that needed to unify technology and optimize network performance across multiple physical locations, it also has some glaring inefficiencies that have become too obvious to ignore, particularly as they relate to security and mobility. However, there are a couple of things to look out for as you explore the possibilities of a SASE solution, and they revolve around business drivers.

Many organizations adopt SD-WAN thinking that the primary business driver is cost savings. In reality, the underlying drivers relate more closely to network optimization with improved performance that often results in cost savings. Similarly, some enterprises may be looking into SASE to reduce costs, and while it may help you achieve that in the long run, the primary drivers are improved security and a more unified, coherent technology architecture.

Is SASE Right for Your Organization?

While SASE looks to overtake SD-WAN in popularity and market share, implementing SASE isn’t as simple as finding one provider to achieve cost savings. Instead, you need a technology partner to understand your IT stack and the nuances that make each provider slightly different from the rest to determine which best aligns with your business drivers and broader technology goals.

If you need guidance navigating the uncharted territory of SASE, Bluewave is here to help. Get started by reaching out today, and we’ll help you achieve immediate cost savings with a Telecom Assessment so you can reinvest that money in a SASE solution.

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Colocation vs. Cloud: What’s best for your business?

Posted on by Bluewave

Yankees or Red Sox, Linux or Windows, Star Wars or Star Trek: There’s no shortage of choices life asks us to make. When it comes to cloud versus colocation, it may be tempting to see it as just another either-or decision. But the question you should be asking isn’t “colo or cloud”—it’s “what’s the right mix for my applications?”

Colo is sometimes forgotten because of its more popular, younger and shinier cousin the cloud, but there are use cases for both, and your particular mix will depend on your applications. For example, a financial services company that wants to leverage cloud to gain cost efficiency might use a public cloud for its end-of-day or end-of-month batch processing, while also using colocation or hosted private cloud for its mission-critical databases and supporting applications. This configuration would provide the cost efficiency of public cloud for short-term workloads while also utilizing a dedicated, secure platform optimized for applications that are always on.

Regardless of your situation, developing a comprehensive cloud strategy will help you avoid lock-in, providing flexibility, adaptability and room to grow as your needs evolve. And that multi-cloud strategy just might include some smart usage of colocation if, for example, you have a need for specific hardware or want a network presence in certain locations. Here’s a primer for understanding the big pieces of cloud, colo and anything in between.

The Hidden Cost of On-Premise Solutions

For any organization facing the decision to “build” or “buy” their infrastructure, “buying”—whether bringing your hardware and renting space in a colocation facility or shifting entirely to the cloud—is a simple step that is guaranteed to level up your IT. Yet the conversation about colo and cloud is usually focused on dollars spent and saved. This is understandable, especially since on-premise data centers are often expensive to secure and maintain, and going off-premise can have a clear impact on cost savings. But what could the conversation be if CAPEX or OPEX weren’t the primary drivers of your IT infrastructure decisions?

Now don’t get me wrong—I know keeping costs reasonable is important—but I also think it might be helpful to think about your choice in terms of a different resource: time. The math is simple: If you can offload certain tasks to a service provider, that’s time you get back. Every minute not spent handling maintenance and administration is a minute you now have free to focus on your actual applications. With that being said, here are the ways colo and cloud can make your life better.

Security and Compliance

With a colo or cloud service provider, all the work of physical data center security and maintenance is no longer part of your to-do list—and a lot of compliance too, depending on your provider. With a managed service provider, they can take care of your routine data security and compliance tasks or even help you architect your infrastructure to fit the specific compliance needs of your applications.

Connectivity

A big part of the decision to move off-premise may be a simple need for connectivity. Your on-premise solution might lack certain connectivity altogether or you may have trouble with reliability or latency. Colocation can solve these issues, whether you need to connect to certain geographies, carriers or third-party clouds like AWS or Azure. Managed services from your provider can give you an edge here too, ensuring dependable connectivity and minimizing latency even in spread-out networks.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

A huge upside to partnering with a comprehensive service provider is that regardless of your infrastructure solution, backup and DR services can be easily implemented. Whether using a colocation facility or a hosted private cloud, both are effective, efficient ways to build redundancy into your systems—without having to build and operate your own second site.

The Biggest Difference-Maker: A Trusted Service Provider

When choosing the right mix, it’s a good idea to start by asking a few questions:

  • Where do you see your IT infrastructure and operations strategy in three to five years?
  • What do you predict your service needs will be then?
  • And most importantly: Are you working with a provider that gives you the capability to do the things you need to do today and won’t hinder you from doing what you need to do in the future?

Choosing the right provider can determine whether you have the flexibility and freedom to meet your future needs. They can be an invaluable partner in helping you to rightsize for today without limiting your options for the future. So pick one with a wide range of infrastructure solutions and managed services and one that is skilled, knowledgeable and experienced in multiple competencies, whether colo or cloud.

Applications that are not a good fit for a legacy infrastructure model can be easily migrated with the help of a service provider, while maintaining a single partner that knows you and your business. The right solution will depend on your applications, and that will inevitably evolve over time. Rather than pitting colo against cloud, start from what your applications require, then find the right mix that makes sense for you.

At Bluewave, we work with leading cloud and colo providers so we can help match you with the best provider to meet your specific needs. Try the Bluewave Approach now.

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