The communications and telephony landscapes are evolving. Currently, the global PBX market is still dominated by legacy, on-premises systems. Frost & Sullivan suggests the global installed base of on-premises PBX lines is estimated to be in the range of 300-400 million seats.
However, the market is shifting. Studies show the cloud telephony services market is growing at a CAGR of 9.7%, and is expected to reach a value of $57.6 billion by 2033. It’s not just the need for scalability and agility that’s driving this change, but the fundamental transformation of the telephony landscape.
Throughout the world, PSTN and ISDN lines are being switched off, forcing organizations of all sizes to rethink their approach to cloud transformation. The only problem? Migration to the cloud is extremely complex. It isn’t just finding the right service that causes challenges for today’s organizations, but figuring out how to transition all kinds of data, users, and features from one environment to another.
Ultimately, choosing the right migration partner is more important than ever.
The Shifting PBX Market and Cloud Telephony
Even with the PSTN/ISDN switch off looming closer, 30% of UK businesses still have 50% of their architecture or less in the cloud, and countless companies worldwide are still reliant on legacy systems. The global PBX market is still being dominated by various leading providers, such as:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM): Approx 30 to 40 million seats worldwide.
- Avaya Aura: An estimated 15 to 20 million seats worldwide.
- Mitel: Approximately 10 to 15 million seats deployed globally.
- NEC: NEC’s PBX solutions are widely used in Asia and other regions, with an estimated 8 to 12 million seats.
Over the last 20 years, the number of PBX vendor deployments in the field has ballooned to over 40 plus vendors with several vendors with deployed seats in 1 to 5 million seats.
However, all organizations are facing increased pressure to migrate. The need for agility, scalability, and robust cloud ecosystems is driving significant changes in the market. Companies are rapidly adopting cloud-based voice services like Microsoft Teams, and leaving on-premises PBX solutions behind.
UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) for instance, is currently growing at a CAGR of 14.5%, heading towards a projected value of $107.51 billion by 2032. Cloud-based contact center systems are seeing similar growth.
The Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market is growing at a CAGR of 19%, to a projected value of $24.45 billion by 2032. The issue is that migrating a full communications ecosystem into the cloud can be notoriously complex. Migrating from multiple vendor PBX systems to a cloud-based platform for voice requires a thorough understanding of the PBX systems, the telephone operator network requirements, and the unified communications cloud platform providers.
The Inherent Challenges of Cloud Telephony Migration
The transition to the cloud is a multi-faceted journey for many companies. Although organizations understand that the switch to the cloud can lead to significant cost savings, improved resiliency, and greater scalability, they often struggle to access the expertise required to make the migration.
In the past, studies have shown up to 32% of a company’s cloud budget has gone to waste, due to improper planning, support, and implementation.
Some of the key challenges businesses need to overcome include:
- Complexity: The complexity of business voice systems has increased tremendously in the last 20 years. A simple on-premises PBX deployment could be integrated to provisioning and management platforms like Nectar and IR, call recording systems from Nice or Verint, and various other solutions for emergency alerting, Workforce Management (WFM) and analytics.
- Carrier Trunking: Call routing and complex dial plans have over the years become a web of policies. To untangle the complexity of this environment, and remap features and capabilities to cloud-based policies, deep experience and knowledge is crucial.
- Feature creep: Feature creep in current PBXs has evolved to the extent that several enterprises don’t have documented which features are being used by the several teams within the organization. Performing a feature gap analysis, and ensuring companies can continue to access the functionality they need in the cloud is highly complex.
- Multi-vendor ecosystems: According to Metrigy, 18% of companies are using at least two calling platforms, and 38% are using multiple apps for meetings and collaboration. Several enterprises have a multi-vendor voice, SBCs and contact center solutions that they’ve carefully blended together over the last decade. Untangling and migrating that ecosystem to the cloud is a time-consuming project.
- Survivability: Maintaining resilience in the cloud, as well as compliance with e911 standards, and other mandates is extremely difficult, particularly in a global landscape. Companies need a migration partner that understands the voice compliance and survivability requirements of various regions and landscapes.
Selecting the Right Cloud Telephony Migration Partner
Building a team with the right resources, tools and skill set required to navigate this level of complexity is time consuming and can be very expensive. Many companies struggle to find a team that has both the expertise necessary to understand the PBX systems they’re already using, and the infrastructure required to configure and test cloud systems before migration.
In some cases, businesses can waste time and money working with various separate partners. The alternative is to find a right partner who bring instant access to all the resources required to be successful. To minimize costs and complexity, organizations should search for partners with:
- Expertise in multi-vendor integrations and interoperability: Given the nature of on-premise systems being multi-vendor deployments, its critical to select a partner who has experience in integrating multi-vendor voice deployments with speed and accuracy.
- Access to multi-vendor equipment: All migration projects can suffer from unexpected challenges. When issues arise, having access to a wide range of multiple vendor system becomes critical to quickly simulate any issue and find a work around. Selecting a vendor who has access to a large vendor system will become paramount.
- Strong partnerships: It’s important to select a partner who has the trust partnerships with a range of communication vendors. The right partnerships will ensure the migration partner can leverage expertise and insights from those vendors, to accelerate project timelines.
- Extensive experience: A long-standing background in the technology sector, and experience in conducting and navigating hundreds of migrations and integrations over the last decade will be essential. More experienced migration partners will ensure businesses can leverage the benefits of cloud telephony with minimal risk and complexity.
Simplify Cloud Telephony Migration with TekVizion
Migrating the business telephony stack into the cloud is no longer an option for most businesses, it’s a necessity. The cloud offers more than just resiliency in today’s changing world. It promises companies the scalability, agility, and cost savings they need to thrive in a dynamic landscape.
Unfortunately, any voice migration project can be complicated without the right support. Companies can attempt to take the journey alone, but this generally leads to additional costs, increased complexity, and a greater demand to learn and adapt throughout the project lifecycle.
Alternatively, selecting a partner like TekVizion, that can offer expertise in multi-vendor integrations and interoperability, access to multi-vendor equipment, strong partnership support, and world-leading experience, offers a simpler, more intuitive alternative.
TekVizion can help accelerate the process of migrating from on-premises communication solutions to cloud systems like Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex for businesses of any size, saving them time and money on the next step in their communications journey.
