Before we dive too deep, I’ll give you a bit of background information.

My wife and I are loving the transition to becoming “empty nesters”.

We recently decided we wanted to recapture some of our time by revisiting and expanding our writing skills.

So, every two weeks, we pick a random writing prompt and each wax poetically on the topic.

Spoiler alert: My wife is a MUCH better creative writer than I am.

As I return into the Nectar blog rotation, I thought I would challenge myself by applying the writing prompts to the world of Cloud UC Monitoring, reporting and diagnostics.

Prompt – Secret Between Two Characters That Could Be Detrimental

I will save you from my awkward attempts to use descriptive language to poorly paint a scene that draws you in, captures your heart, and surprises you with a twist, all within 500 words.

Instead, I will jump to the punchline.

The Dirty Secret Of Cloud UC – It’s Not THAT Cost-Effective

Most enterprises move their applications and platforms to the cloud because of the promise of tremendous cost savings.

Cloud UC vendors walk CIO’s down the logic path that if the enterprise moves all of its infrastructure to the cloud all (or at least a significant portion) of the management and operational costs are moved to the UC provider, saving the enterprise money and resources.

The reality is that moving to the cloud only really affects the platform operational costs, while the rest of the burden remains with the customer.

Microsoft buries the reality of this secret deep in their Quality of Experience Review Guide.

This secret is not unique to Microsoft, they were just transparent enough to publish the reality even if you have to scroll a while to get to it.

Figure 3 – Critical Categories for Teams and Skype for Business Online Deployment

If you try to recreate that graph, it appears that the hosted provider is responsible for around 10% of the effort and the customer is responsible for the other ~90%.  

How much of your UC operating costs are platform-related?

How much are endpoint and network related?

How much cost are you actually transferring to the hosted provider?

How much cost are you paying them to support those costs?

Is it in your favor?

Is it at least equivalent?

The Detriment Potential

This secret could be detrimental to the customer if they made the decision based on potential cost savings, planned and budgeted accordingly and now were having to figure how to cover both the operational and subscription costs for their collaboration infrastructure.

It could be detrimental to the provider because their customers have false expectations. If those expectations are not met, their dissatisfied customer could leave.

The challenge of SaaS is that your customers sign up for a set term (typically annually) and the hosted platform reduces switching costs.

Moving Forward 

In no way am I discouraging enterprises from moving forward with Cloud UC.

I am trying to reveal all the potential costs so you can make an informed choice about which users/use cases to move to the cloud with a full understanding of the costs you will likely incur.

Included in those costs are the monitoring, reporting, and diagnostics of the endpoint and network domains.

You may want to find yourself a good tool for that.

-Matt Christopher @mc_on_uc

Empowering Informed Business Decisions