BCM One Blog Managed Services

As companies expand across different buildings, geographies, and time zones, traditional enterprise phone systems no longer suffice. Today’s business leaders seek innovative solutions that offer flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration across their entire organization. Managed communication services (MCS) provide a comprehensive and cost-efficient approach to powering a company's communication infrastructure. These cloud-based solutions unify various applications, enabling streamlined collaboration across multiple offices and locations. By empowering workforces with enhanced connectivity…

Communications and infrastructure are rapidly moving to the cloud, reducing the need for a large onsite IT staff. In 2020, more than 90% of companies used connected cloud technologies. Organizations of all sizes are increasingly relying on a managed service provider (MSP) to assist with daily IT operations in the cloud and onsite. Many also look to an MSP to provide expertise for complex tasks like cloud migrations and cybersecurity. …

Is There a Difference Between SIP and VoIP? Business communications is a world of its own, full of acronyms and technical terms that can be overwhelming for anyone not in the communications industry. Take the differences between SIP and VoIP, for example. You may have seen or heard something about them, but what are they, when do you use them, and for what? We could write books on all of…

What Are Unified Communications Platforms? Unified communications platforms support the various ways modern businesses work, streamlining the network to seamlessly connect people through various channels and collaboration tools. With today’s workforce being so dispersed, unified communications is a must-have for any organization that wants to increase workforce productivity, reduce costs and enhance the user experience. Gartner says unified communications “provide and combine multiple enterprise communications channels, such as voice, video,…

The Common Pitfalls of SD-WAN Implementation Companies with an e-commerce platform often believe that internet availability issues are a relatively simple fix. Just add in a few new backup circuits and you’re done. Not exactly. Many internet issues are a sign of more complex network problems that require precise and customized SD-WAN implementation. SD-WAN uses software to control connectivity, management and services between data centers and remote branches or cloud…

The Need for Telecommunications Expense Management Today’s businesses heavily rely on technology to operate virtually every business function. Engineering, sales, business operations, DevOps, marketing, customer support, IT and security, finance, and HR all have their favorite and necessary technology and applications. Besides onsite software, technology equipment and maintenance contracts, the average company with 200 to 500 employees uses as many as 123 software-as-a-services (SaaS) applications with 19 unique billing owners…

SD-WAN as a Service: The Answer to a Changing Workforce? The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed virtually every aspect of our normal lives. Businesses and supply chains have been forced to adapt quickly if they want to remain afloat. While many organizations enabled a percentage of their workforce to work remotely before the pandemic, now the majority have had to adapt their operations to support a completely remote workforce.  The BBC…

From WAN to SD-WAN If you’re like increasingly more businesses these days, you’re realizing your WAN is no longer cutting it for your modern business. Today’s businesses have shifted to a more digital, cloud-based infrastructure that requires easier management of the many connection types across a traditional WAN. Enhancing multi-application performance, security and end-user experience is now the focus, and SD-WAN provides that capability. So many organizations are transitioning to…

If you are managing a growing business, you know the importance of providing a secure, connected communications platform to your employees, particularly if you have multiple locations, a distributed workforce, and multiple applications. Traditional PBX phone systems are no longer enough to support your dynamic and diverse application environment. What is the next level in communications and how do you provide the foundation your company’s employees require to efficiently and…

Unified communications systems can prove transformative to your business. However, finding the right tools for your specific needs and supporting the underlying technologies needed to put those solutions in place is a complex matter. The challenge is well worth tackling as a modern UC system can: Reduce travel costs by allowing for powerful videoconferencing capabilities. Keep employees engaged by creating more personal means for corporate communications. Foster collaboration as the ability…

Information and communications technologies are intersecting in new ways, giving enterprise employees opportunities to work and engage customers in more intuitive ways. IT systems have long played an instrumental role in working in the background behind communications systems. However, they haven't generally done much to make them better. Advanced network systems may allow for high-quality voice performance, but that is still a situation where IT is supporting good communications functions, not…

Author: Corinne Kerner Vice President, Technology Optimization Group at BCM One   For the last couple of decades, technology expense management (TEM) has been the way many organizations handle their billing. Paper billing has long gone the way of the dinosaur, thanks to the large expense involved in printing, shipping, storing and processing. When TEM first came on the scene, it saved organizations around the world tens or even hundreds of…

Holistic planning plays an integral role in finding success with collaboration in business settings. Browse a few studies and you'll find that plenty of companies are using social, mobile and video tools to bolster collaboration in the enterprise, but you'll also see an overarching theme that technology alone is not enough to transform the way an organization operates. Instead, cutting-edge solutions must be tightly integrated into everyday processes and procedures…

Balancing business flexibility with cybersecurity can be a somewhat overwhelming challenge, but it is increasingly important as IT and corporate leaders work in tandem to protect company data. The problem is that business and technology leaders have vastly different priorities when it comes to security, something that is underlined by a recent study from The Economist Intelligence Unit and VMware. "Business and technology leaders have vastly different priorities when it comes…

We recently discussed how transparency into relationships with managed services providers can pay dividends for businesses. Similarly, deepening insights into every detail of IT operations can fuel value creation. IT transparency and value creation are closely linked as having a clear understanding of the nuances of how IT systems operate can empower business and technology leaders to ensure investments deliver returns. The problem is that many IT departments are functionally siloed,…

Businesses have long depended on technology to get the job done. This reliance on technology has long fueled a relationship in which business and IT units have been segregated from one another. The enterprise operates to meet customer needs and drive profits, and IT exists to support those tasks. This longstanding relationship is changing, but how do you adjust your culture around a new world of responsive IT that is…

Vendor partnerships are a key strategic issue in the managed services provider sector. MSPs will partner with vendors to be certified as specialists with those technologies, giving them added clout when working with businesses that want specific solutions. If a company likes the Microsoft Cloud ecosystem, for example, an MSP that is a Microsoft partner will often be best positioned to meet those needs. However, this is the simplest explanation…

Virtualization has been transforming IT infrastructure strategies. It began with server virtualization. Establishing virtual machines within single systems allowed one server to host dozens of applications, changing the way data centers operate by allowing apps to use system resources on an as-needed basis. This process extended out to storage, network and desktop systems, creating software-defined data centers. Virtualization's rise has also led to more discussions around the idea of software-defined…

Big data is a major point of discussion when businesses explore digital transformation. In theory, gathering information from a wide range of unstructured and structured sources should help companies build efficient, streamlined operations using digital apps and services. Going digital makes it easier to gather data from diverse locations, and having apps and services in place to leverage that information enables companies to make both real-time and strategic decisions with…

Performing an all-purpose IT audit can be a great way to kick off a partnership with a managed services provider. An audit will help you and the MSP understand how technology is currently impacting your business and identify potential strategies for improvement moving forward. A good MSP doesn't just sell you technology and support it, it will also serve as a consultant that helps you maximize value creation through IT innovation. An…

The data center without walls movement has taken hold in the enterprise, creating a situation in which organizations can freely mix and match diverse technology services to drive value creation. In particular, being able to subscribe to cloud technologies, colocation services and similar hosted data center solutions lets companies move to an operating cost model for many of their IT systems. The result is a situation in which raising large…

Telecommunications expense management tools offer organizations visibility into how they use and pay for a variety of communications technologies, something that is increasingly valuable as technological models shift across the telecom services sector. Historically, enterprise communications investments have boiled down to purchasing phones, fax machines, internet services and the various network services that support them - such as a direct line for fax machines. Over time, this model became more…

Enterprise culture is changing as many businesses work to establish startup-like collaboration and flexibility to fuel innovation and gain a competitive edge. Advanced communication tools have become critical as this cultural shift has gained momentum, and Microsoft Skype for Business has emerged as an easy-to-use solution for the modern enterprise. The longstanding collaboration problem Creating genuine team environments in which people actually work together on projects instead of simply taking…