What is Cisco UCaaS Extension Mobility, and how can you make this feature user-friendly? This is a relevant question for the UCaaS service providers and their end-users. This blog will first give a UCaaS definition and then zoom into the extension mobility feature.
It’s a frequently asked question: What is UCaaS? UCaaS stands for Unified Communications as a Service, a cloud service offered to organizations and their end-users. It extends the more traditional hosted VoIP or cloud VoIP services. Unified Communications is not limited to telephony but extends to communication domains like video, chat and collaboration.
UCaaS perfectly fits the global trend towards complete end-to-end business solutions offered from the cloud. The customers don’t have to invest in their own IT infrastructure, applications and maintenance. There is a usage-based license model, typically with a monthly or yearly fee per user. In traditional telephony, the in-house PBX was the perfect solution for large companies to save on external PSTN phone lines. In the current IP-based economy, this works the other way around. The service provider model is increasingly popular as a feature-rich, easy-to-use and cost-saving alternative to in-house solutions. UCaaS is beneficial not only for small companies but also for large multinationals and governmental organizations.
As a market leader (Cisco is for example listed as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for unified communications), Cisco offers multiple UCaaS solutions based on their CUCM, Jabber and Webex offerings. Powered by the Cisco UCM Cloud solution, Cisco delivers its own UCaaS proposition to end customers. At the same time, certified Cisco Cloud and Managed Services program partners can also offer a Cisco-based UCaaS service via, e.g. the Hosted Communication Service (HCS) solution. If organizations have an on-premises Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) based collaboration solution or ageing premises communications equipment, HCS provides a clear migration path to cloud-based collaboration.
Although it is only a part of a Cisco UCaaS service, business telephony remains essential. Some use a mix of online collaboration tools and smartphones, but many organizations still at least partially rely on desktop telephones. At the same time, however, these professionals are less and less fixed to a single office or desk. Flex-desking, hoteling, whatever we call it, people are getting used to working from different desks during the week. It puts new requirements on desktop telephony. A vital feature nowadays is extension mobility. With UCaaS Extension Mobility, end-users can register on any telephone in the organization with their own extension number, data and settings. By deploying UCaaS Extension Mobility, end-users can access their communication features from any desk and telephone.
However, UCaaS service providers may recognize this challenge: UCaaS Extension Mobility users must log in using a username – often their e-mail address – and a PIN. This is cumbersome on a telephone keypad, every day or even multiple times daily. It stimulates unwanted user behaviour where users ‘forget’ to log in (and cannot be reached) or ‘forget’ to log out (causing security and privacy breaches). Sometimes, users are even facilitated by their IT department with workarounds like a very basic UserID (only the extension number) and a company-wide ‘000’ PIN. People prefer ease of use over security.
Fortunately, RSconnect provides multiple solutions for this:
Regardless of the solution used, our software makes sure that an employee can immediately and automatically use the associated desk phone and is be reached via his personal extension number. Employees can also use their own features – like voicemail – and have access to their own contact lists. At the end of each session, the telephone is automatically logged off as well. We offer a Cisco UCaaS solution which is not user friendly or secure, but user friendly and secure.
Try the service yourself today. Here you can find our solution video and the free trial download, so you can experience the benefits yourself.
If you want more information about our ALM solution or like to discuss the possibilities to integrate ALM into your Cisco UCaaS offering (like HCS), please contact our sales & business development team via the contact page. We are happy to answer all your questions and discuss the potential benefits of a co-operation.
