Top 5 Reasons or Motivations for choosing Microsoft Unified Communications

In no particular order…

Conferencing

• The company wishes to save monthly costs for third-party audio (i.e. Telus or Bell) and web (i.e. WebEx) conferencing
• The company wishes to reduce travel, but is concerned about sacrificing the quality of in-person meetings
• The company wants to empower their users to collaborate more effectively by removing barriers, and providing an easy-to-use and robust collaboration infrastructure

Remote Access

• The company has a lot of remote users and they need access to communications tools while outside the office and away from their desk, including full telephony, without the need for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection

Presence

• The company is challenged with inefficient communications and the inability to reach the right person at the right time
• Providing access to a person’s willingness and availability to communicate overcomes these challenges and increases the efficiency of communications in the organization

Extend the life of existing PBX

• The company needs to add some phones, but the cost of doing so is prohibitive (new line cards, sets, licenses, etc.)
• The company instead can tie into an OCS deployment via SIP or TDM and a gateway, and light up phone users off the new OCS platform
• This could serve as a slow transition to an eventual full OCS telephony deployment, but it doesn’t need to – this company is by this point enjoying Instant Messaging, Presence, and Conferencing from OCS!

Exchange Voicemail

• The company is paying high maintenance costs for its legacy voicemail system which requires separate management skills to administer and support it
• The company is already enjoying email in Exchange Server
• The company can decommission its legacy voicemail system and enjoy Unified Messaging for all users, with a single directory, management, and security infrastructure!