The world has changed…
…And doing nothing about it is costing
you money
Siemens Enterprise Communications
Siemens Enterprise Communications
www.siemens-enterprise.com
1. Executive summary
A time for making the right decisions...
Right now every CIO in every business across the
planet is about to face their biggest challenge
(and opportunity) in over two decades.
It’s not a milestone invention like ARPNET’s launch of
email in the 1970’s. Nor is it a ‘first’ like the Mosaic
‘consumer’ web browser ten years later. It’s not a
single evolutionary step forward like the move from
mainframe to distributed computing. In fact, it isn’t
even a single defining event at all.
It’s the convergence of five megatrends
forcing organisations to choose their next move
very carefully.
2
This is so significant because, according to research
consultancy Loudhouse, it’s the reason why almost
9 out of 10 enterprises surveyed are investing in
their communications infrastructure in the next
twelve months. Not 18 months, or two years,
or five. But right now.
So what is the future of enterprise communications,
and what does it mean for your organization?
Will you be one of the 89 percent of firms taking
the easiest path to this new and exciting unified
communications future - and in doing so gain a
competitive edge?
2. The world is changing
The forces of consumerization, social communication
and mobility have merged with advances in security
and flexible deployment models to forever change
the way businesses access information, collaborate
with colleagues and build customer relationships.
Figure 1: Changing deployment models.
(Source Loudhouse Reseach)
Today premises-based models dominate
57%
51%
27%
27%
Hybrid
Public
cloud
It’s not until you step back and look at the world
in total that this becomes evident. But when it does,
realization soon dawns that the sum of all these trends
is so much greater than its parts. And it means you
need to act now. This is exactly what has happened
to nearly all the IT leaders polled by the research
house Loudhouse.
This new generation of enterprise communications
will quite simply redefine ‘ normal ’ in infrastructure
terms. It will deliver architectural transformation
towards fully open environments and forever change
the economics of the IT landscape.
The dominance of the premises-based management
and deployment model will, for example, be
completely turned on its head. And this will happen
within the next 24 months....not three to five years.
As Figure 1 suggests, CIOs believe the next wave in
enterprise communications to be so influential that in
just two years time Private Cloud and Hybrid operating
models will have eclipsed premises-only solutions as
the dominant models.
Premises based
system
Private cloud
In two years cloud and hybrid models will dominate
Public
Cloud
17%
Hybrid
31%
Premisesbased
18%
Private
Cloud
34%
This will have an incredible impact on the IT
and communications cost base of organizations.
Those who adopt new open standards and
deployments models will see their TCO fall
considerably. Those who stick with their increasingly
obsolete premise-based systems will see costs rise.
So in this new world order, doing nothing will cost
you money.
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3. Doing nothing is
costing you money
Ongoing pressures to contain cost while assuring
service continuity in a fast changing communications
landscape undoubtedly make it tempting to maintain
the status quo and simply ‘bolt on’ those ‘must have’
services in a limited way.
Yet from a cost and productivity perspective,
this approach makes little sense. Doing nothing is
likely to mean spending an increasing proportion
of your already over-committed IT budget on
supporting ageing communications technologies.
But organizations doing something, (i.e. those who
have taken proactive action) are able to instantly:
■■
leverage new cost saving technologies like SIP
Trunking and least cost routing
■■
reduce legacy maintenance and upgrade charges
■■
enjoy pay-as-you go utility pricing models
(in the cloud)
■■
deliver agile new services that allow users,
customers and suppliers to work and collaborate
socially – wherever and whenever they are – and
on their favored devices.
Making them more efficient, more competitive and
more likely to lead their markets.
And if that wasn’t enough, the older the system is
the more limited the ability for it to address new
user demands like mobility. Yet each new proprietary
solution or point product represents an additional
layer of cost to the business. And because it’s old,
one day it just might expire.
The risks of doing nothing
This patchwork quilt approach to maintaining an
aging communications infrastructure has yet wider
implications. These include exposing the business to
the network vulnerability that results from a lack of
geographic and system redundancy. To say nothing
of the potential for security breaches this creates.
And then there’s the ‘knee jerk’ and expensive
investment decisions that are frequently made
following a system failure.
Worse still, the inability to leverage new
communications channels quickly and with ease
puts organizations on the back foot when it comes
to competitive advantage - from constraining the
productivity and performance of employees to
failing to deliver the social media and collaboration
tools customers expect.
Clearly, the cost of doing nothing represents a
missed opportunity – both in terms of competitive
advantage and cost savings.
Maintaining the Status Quo
Organizations that remain static (i.e. those wrestling
with the realities of supporting a complex, expensive
legacy communications infrastructure), will soon be
struggling to compete at all.
For example, interconnecting platforms and
equipment from multiple vendors, and maintaining
disparate voice and data networks, requires
substantial expertise and resources that bite deep
into already stretched budgets. Added to which,
there’s those ever escalating network, hardware,
maintenance and upgrade charges to consider.
4
50 percent of major disruptions
in business are caused by
hardware or network failure
Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal, 2007
Businesses collectively lose more
than 127 million man-hours a year
due to IT issues
ComputerWeekly, May 2011
4. Customer advantage
Realizing the opportunities of changing social and
working practices demands a flexible, scalable and
open architecture; not least because in today’s
challenging economic environment, where IT
departments are being asked to do more with less,
the need to maximize existing investments remains
fundamental.
According to CIOs, while cost reduction (79 percent)
and technology simplification (65 percent) are key
drivers for communications change, 72 percent need
any new communications service to integrate with their
legacy systems (Source: Loudhouse, September 2011).
50 percent say competitors
are adopting collaborative
technologies and services faster
than they are
68 percent say customers are
demanding companies react
faster to their enquiries
So clearly, for many CIOs, doing nothing is no
longer an option. And not just for operational
expenditure reasons.
Indeed, half the respondents to the Loudhouse survey
said their competitors were adopting collaborative
technologies and services faster than they were.
That means 50 percent of the poll were giving away
competitive advantage.
And when we look at the fact that 68 percent
believed customers want improved accessibility and
communications with their suppliers, not giving it
to them will send them elsewhere. And that’s a cost
everyone in the business is going to understand.
So what to do?
5
5. How to move to Unified
Communications and
Collaboration
The beauty of two of the major trends facing
enterprise communications – flexible deployment and
new generation security and reliability – mean that
doing something is actually quite easy.
The kind of open, software-based (and totally secure)
architectures found in cloud communications are
designed specifically to allow ease of migration.
They offer the full range of deployment options,
through private and public cloud to hybrid
models (see Figure 2) and allow for upgrade
at an organization’s pace and budget.
This means organizations can instantly realize major
cost savings and gain by easily implementing the
productivity enhancing unified communication
applications their businesses need to compete
in today’s fast changing commercial landscape.
Figure 2: A new range
of deployment models
Flexible deployment and
consumption options
6
Premise-based and
private Cloud options
Hybrid options
Public Cloud options
Ownership
Flexibility
Pay-as-you-go
6. How can
Siemens Enterprise
Communications help?
We recognize that no two businesses are alike.
Which is why we are committed to delivering the
easiest path to unified communications for each
and every one of our customers.
We are the only vendor to provide the complete
range of Voice, UC and Contact Center solutions across
premise, private cloud, hybrid and public
cloud services.
And uniquely this enables us to make a totally
objective recommendation about what is right for
your business.
But a truly unified communications environment
goes way beyond deployment models to become
part of the fabric of the business its self.
So if your company is looking to address its business
challenges, and simultaneously achieve a world
leading total cost of ownership, here’s just some of
ways Siemens Enterprise Communications can help:
1. C
utting call charges through centralized SIP
trunking and IP least cost routing
2. D
elivering instant reductions to third party audio
and web conferencing costs
3. R
educing travel costs through, for example,
OpenScape Web Collaboration
4. D
elivering multi-vendor support services to reduce
inhouse resource costs
5. P
roviding seamless mobility to increase productivity
and reduce cost
6. D
ramatically reducing hardware, maintenance and
administration costs by centralizing applications
7. O
verlaying OpenScape Voice and UCC rather than
legacy ‘rip and replace’ strategies
8. A
dding new capabilities while phasing out
outdated, disparate PBXs
9. E
liminating the need to stockpile end-of-life components
10. S
aving money through reduced power
consumption and real estate requirements.
7. Five reasons to act now
1. Your competitors are unifying their communications
environments
4. They are future-proofing their voice infrastructure
on open, public/private clouds
2. They are integrating tablets and smartphones into
their daily working lives
5. And they’re achieving world class TCO today
3. They are creating virtual organizations and
connected teams across the world
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Siemens Enterprise Communications is a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications solutions that use open, standards-based
architectures to unify communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience. This award-winning “Open Communications”
approach enables organizations to improve productivity and reduce costs through easy-to-deploy solutions that work within existing IT environments,
delivering operational efficiencies. It is the foundation for the company’s OpenPath commitment that enables customers to mitigate risk and costeffectively adopt unified communications.
This promise is underwritten through our service portfolio, which includes international, managed and outsource capability.
Siemens Enterprise Communications is owned by a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG. The joint venture also encompasses
Enterasys Networks, which provides network infrastructure and security systems, delivering a perfect basis for joint communications solutions.
© 2012 Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG.
Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG is a Trademark Licensee of Siemens AG.
Hofmannstr. 51, D-80200 Munich.
The information provided in this brochure contains merely general descriptions or characteristics of performance which in case of actual use do
not always apply as described or which may change as a result of further development of the products. An obligation to provide the respective
characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the terms of contract. Availability and technical specifications are subject to change without notice.
OpenScape, OpenStage and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG. All other company, brand,
product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Siemens Enterprise Communications
www.siemens-enterprise.com