The latest report by MarketsandMarkets expects the unified communications (UC) and general collaboration market to reach an impressive $6.2bn by 2022, it is therefore no wonder that resellers are focusing their efforts towards helping organizations to implement these productivity and revenue enhancing tools. But even with great industry interest in the capabilities this equipment enables, the question remains — where is the right place to host such voice platforms?
Making a poor choice of data center partner can lead to poor connectivity, restrictive infrastructure, or limited future opportunities for growth, leaving resellers left behind by rivals. As such, here are some top considerations to bear in mind when looking to select a multi-service data center partner.
1. Reputation
There are some obvious initial points to consider when looking for a data center provider. Firstly, it goes without saying they should have a good reputation within the industry, and a proven track record in deploying data and voice solutions successfully. Every company is unique in its approach, so it’s also important to get a holistic view of its capabilities including the grade of SIP and connectivity infrastructure and Tier of data center they offer, so you know how reliable the architecture is.
It doesn’t hurt to communicate with their existing customer base, either. This will help to corroborate the company’s reputation and its capabilities, strengthening your overall perception.
2. End-to-end stack ownership
Channel partners should look for a company that has invested in its own infrastructure, data centers and connectivity capabilities, which are essential for high quality voice and collaboration tool deployments. More often than not, channel partners invest in a solution that involves multiple providers, which just adds to the complexity and cost.
Having one provider that owns the full stack from data center, through to communication and to endpoint, will offer greater efficiencies. This is because they can exercise more control over all aspects of quality and delivery, which subsequently results in the ability of a reseller to offer a cast-iron Service Level Agreement, which the customer can then benefit from.
3. Technical prowess
There are also a number of key technical capabilities that channel partners should look for in a data center provider, such as the ability to provide a comprehensive security overlay which allows them to create layers of network abstraction that can be used to run multiple separate solutions on top of the physical network to enhance security.
Furthermore, chosen partners should have wholly-owned, managed, and supported carrier grade SIP, connectivity and clusters of Session Border Controls (SBCs), which provide the highest levels of bandwidth, call quality, scalability, and minimize network and service disruption. They should also have a robust Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) infrastructure for Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity, which will guarantee that your data center provider can take, utilize, and benefit from the latest technologies and handle connectivity across multiple communicating mediums, including video and voice.
4. Resilience to change
As market consolidation is rife, channel partners also don’t want to be in the position where customers are left in the lurch when companies have been acquired or even discontinued completely. As such, service resellers need to look to vendors that offer data centers and a full suite of products that are resilient in any circumstance, with hybrid solutions, high level disaster recovery strategies, and the flexibility to layer services as and when required.
Additionally, it is important to assess whether there is risk of the vendor in question being bought out or merged, in what is a rapidly evolving marketplace. The provider should be financially secure, both to mitigate the possibility of financial risk and to guarantee a continued investment in R&D in the product and the surrounding infrastructure.
In summary, a partner that can handle everything from development through to implementation, training, and hosting, enables channel partners to future-proof their business, as there is no need to have multiple vendors that create complexities and there is a huge opportunity to cross-sell services. While at the same time customers are guaranteed a better deal, with greater efficiencies, service delivery and support, migration, and renewals.
Rik Williams is head of data center operations at Node4