Intelligent Communications

As the demands of today’s fast-paced technological environment increases, enterprises must ensure the adoption of workplace applications is managed in the most effective way. As one of the most important aspects of a company’s infrastructure, it is imperative that its communications systems can support employees in their day-to-day activities. Legacy communication systems and PBX equipment no longer support today’s growing need for a simple, flexible and mobile end-user communications experience. Additionally, many people struggle from email overload that inhibits productivity.

The convergence of telephony, mobile, Big Data, and the Cloud is setting the stage for a new way of working, collaborating and leveraging business information. Unified Communications (UC), or Intelligent Communications (IC), are the terms used to describe this new wave of enterprise communication capabilities.

Tools such as instant messaging (chat), Voice over IP, web & audio conferencing, and desktop sharing are linked with productivity gains and should be accessed in a simple way to provide a seamless user experience.

Unified communications (UC) products — equipment, software and services — provide and combine multiple enterprise communications channels, such as voice, video, personal and team messaging, voicemail, and content sharing. This can include control, management and integration of these channels. UC products and services can also be integrated with networks and systems, IT business applications and, in some cases, consumer applications and devices.

Read more in our ‘What is Unified Communications?’ introductory guide…

Intelligent Communications brings together productivity applications and enterprise communication, closely integrated to deliver everything colleagues need to collaborate and work efficiently, with minimal switching between applications or tasks.

By closely linking desktop applications with productivity apps, directory services and communications, it’s quick and easy to contact colleagues and follow up on actions – for example clicking on a comment in a document and getting a range of options for contacting that person – instant message, email or call. In meetings, information and relevant colleagues are easily accessible and on calls it’s easy to find meeting minutes or key documents without having to switch between applications.

Businesses benefits of Intelligent Communications:

• Flexible costs for your productivity applications and enterprise communication infrastructure thanks to cloud based “as a Service” model
• Increased productivity thanks to mobility and seamless user experience across all devices and geographies
• Simplified procurement by having one supplier providing applications, connectivity, hardware and support
• Enhanced business continuity by relying on Colt first in class, predictable connectivity and higher resiliency provided by premium service quality

With staff increasingly working from home and needing a degree of flexibility to their working, a new trend is emerging, a move to Intelligent Communications (IC). IC offers significant productivity improvements and a simplified procurement and management process. At the heart of Intelligent Communications is Microsoft Teams – which brings together conversations, meetings, files, Office apps and third-party integrations—to provide a single hub for teamwork in Office 365.

A successful upgrade begins by bringing the right team together in the Project Stakeholder stage, then moving to Project Definition where the scope, goals, and timeline are solidified. This helps create a solid foundation for your upgrade journey. It’s then critical to prepare for both the Technical Readiness and User Readiness stages, before moving on to Deployment and Implementation. Plan for a pilot to validate readiness before a broad rollout and, for maximum benefit during the Operational Excellence stage, establish a plan that monitors for quality and accelerates user adoption.

Key considerations

High-quality Internet access
Office 365 is designed to enable customers all over the world to connect using a standard internet connection. For enterprise class deployments, reliable and appropriately sized internet connectivity is a critical part of enabling Office 365 features and scenarios. This keeps things simple and cost effective, while enabling businesses to share the same connection used for all other internet traffic.

Cloud Prioritisation on IP Access
Colt’s Cloud Prioritisation feature on IP Access integrates with Microsoft Azure Peering service to provide an elevated customer experience by ensuring that Teams and Office 365 flows are optimised end-to-end including the last mile. This means users will benefit from trusted, high-performance connectivity with SLA guaranteed latencies. Colt also guarantees that no data will go through any third-party IP network, other than Colt’s and Microsoft’s, which helps ensure the offering is secure.

Download our comprehensive guide to migrating to Microsoft Teams

• Enterprise productivity and unified communications applications using Microsoft Office 365
• High bandwidth on wholly owned fibre connectivity
• Enterprise-grade voice services
• Professional Services for transition and deployment, combined with handset and headset delivery

To provide you with the best customer experience, Colt delivers end-to-end support, offering one single point of contract and contact across 13 countries, covering applications, connectivity and hardware.