Security
What are the security requirements of your organization? I know in all cases the desire is a high level of security. But in some cases there is sensitive data or even legal requirements for security. Being aware of what requirements your organization may have for keeping its intellectual property secure is important. In certain cases security requirements may force a company to have a private cloud versus a hybrid or public cloud application if a cloud operation is the choice. If you need to secure all of the hardware for the UC offering onsite, then you will approach a different set of vendors than if you are looking to virtualize or fully embrace cloud.
Workforce Distribution
Where do your employees reside? Are they all stateside in offices or are they global? Do they often work from home? This affects a few of the topics above including bandwidth and BYOD. For UC deployment, you must consider who is operating on minimal requirements. Can the person in your organization with the oldest machine and the lowest available bandwidth make use of what you are looking to implement?
Another substantial consideration is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) expense. (SIP, is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. Basically SIP is the signal that allows calls over IP to be connected.) These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution and multimedia conferences.
In cases where a company does business globally, SIP origination can greatly impact communication costs. Your organization may need to set up various trunks to allow for call origination across different geographic locations. (A Trunk is the termination point that has associated call paths (SIP Channels) You need a call path for every in and outbound call.)
Mobility
What are the requirements for mobility in your workplace? In a world quickly moving beyond the Virtual Private Network (VPN), how can your workers access everything they need from anywhere they are? (In this case your voice client or your unified messaging.) Mobile tools are becoming increasingly a requirement for businesses and should be a core consideration for any successful UC deployment.
Technology Partners
Since UC has such a massive technology umbrella, there are a very large number of UC providers out there. Undoubtedly there are the market leaders such as Microsoft, Cisco and IBM, but there are many other smaller and often more flexible/affordable solutions out there for consideration. What is important is that you make sure to consider the entire need based on a number of the factors above and that you seek out a technology partner that meets the requirements for both technology and budget. Many providers will want you to turnkey (end to end) with just their products. That may be beneficial for their marketing, but it doesn’t mean it is the best for you. There are many best of breed manufacturers in Route/Switch or Security that may make more sense to align with than the company that tries to be everything to everyone.
