Technical Posts Archives | Page 9 of 23

14 February 201915 February 2019

What You Should Know to Evaluate UC Platform

In this blog article I will describe some essential characteristics that should be taken into consideration to evaluate UC platform.

Backwards Compatibility

Some UC solutions are still developed and managed without foreseeing a need for backwards compatibility. So, after a major upgrade of the platform, features might be removed.

A product should strive to protect the investment made by those people using the product, especially to minimize the work needed to maintain the product. After any major or minor upgrade, the old features should remain functional.

This logic must also be extended to hardware components (such as phones). For example, when the UC server platform is upgraded, support for existing hardware should continue.

It is acceptable for any IT solution to put an end-of-life date on a part of the system, but this information must be clearly published.

Whether you want to build a UC platform or choose one, pay particular attention to backward compatibility.

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7 February 201924 January 2019

What are the Requirements for Unified Communications System

In the following article I will present a list of requirements that should help you in understanding which platform is better suited to an organization’s needs.

Number and Location of Sites

The quality of the connectivity is crucial for good voice and video service. Offices located in different countries or continents will most likely need separate local or managed UC servers.

Site Size

What’s the size of each site? If the site is large and most communications are done within the site, a local UC server is often the winning solution.

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31 January 20194 March 2024

Reviewing Deployment Scenarios of UC systems

A Unified Communication solution can be deployed either in an environment controlled by the customer, as a corporate data center, or in a third-party data center. Let’s review such deployment scenarios in more detail.

In most scenarios, a solution deployed in a cloud environment (such as Amazon AWS) offers the best overall conditions including easy redundancy, by relying on different physical data centers, and better connectivity, by providing worldwide data centers.

However, there are scenarios where an in-house UC platform can offer advantages over a cloud solution. When the UC services are accessed mostly by local users and using local PSTN trunking, a local deployment is the best solution. Another scenario might be a site with poor Internet connectivity where phone services must be provided.

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24 January 201912 September 2023

Analyzing Unified Communications Market

In this blog article we will analyze modern Unified Communications market trends in detail, and discuss how they actually compare with the UC solution features and the technical characteristics.

Hosted, Managed, or Cloud? Or Something Else?

Whether you are looking for a ready-to-buy UC solution or thinking about building one, the question of hosted, managed, or cloud is usually the first question that arises when a new service is added.

Let’s first review what each category means.

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17 January 201918 January 2019

Reviewing Security Concerns of UC solutions

VoIP communications are completely safe if implemented correctly. As with any other technologies, there are best practices which must be followed to achieve the best possible results.

You must address security concerns while developing or selecting your UC solution. While many vendors delegate security to separate entities, such as VPNs, this approach is not necessary nor recommended as a substitution to the security policies.

The system must protect itself from attacks that attempt to guess user and password combinations. This can be achieved by blocking repeated failed attempts. The IP address that is generating the attack must be added to a ban list for an ever-increasing period of time.

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