Crystal Cares: March 2019

Partner Spotlight: RingCentral Delivers UCaaS Benefits to Clients

We are living in a different era, and smart players in the voice and communications industry are recognizing how Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) benefits them — and their customers.

Welcome to the subscription economy. Clients increasingly choose recurring service payments over outright purchases.

“The Subscription Economy has increased the intimacy between SaaS companies (or software vendors) and their customers. In the Subscription Economy, every company must better manage a direct, complex, responsive, multi-channel relationship with its customers. Customers are absolutely key in this relationship and rather than putting the focus of the business on the ‘product’ or the ‘transaction,’ subscription economy companies live and die by their ability to focus on the customer. Now, the formula for growth is focused on monetizing long-term relationships rather than shipping products.”

— Kimberly Whittier, Forbes

The voice and communications industry provides a fantastic example of the shift in focus from shipping products (think servers or PBXs) to a subscription-based economic model. The transformation enables industry players to offer UCaaS benefits to their customers, developing long-term relationships and helping customers grow their core business.

What happened to Nortel? Avaya? ShoreTel? What is the future for Cisco Call Manager?

The race has been run — and UCaaS is the winner. Many successful and capable providers now offer UCaas benefits, but only a select few excel in providing the complex, responsive, value-driven client services needed to survive — and thrive — in the new subscription economy.

Some of Crystal’s most trusted partners — RingCentral, Fuze, 8×8, and Evolve IP — are recognized as leaders in the UCaaS marketplace. This month, we want to highlight RingCentral, a Gartner leader for several years running. They’ve enjoyed great success and continue to deliver UCaaS benefits to its customers. We are proud to work in partnership with RingCentral to provide UCaaS services to companies in the service, manufacturing, distribution, legal, and insurance industries.

Want to learn more about UCaaS benefits and how to migrate legacy voice systems to a subscription-based model? Contact Crystal today for a free evaluation.

Tech Topic: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) by TierPoint

Some 40% of businesses that suffer a disaster never reopen. Of those that do, one quarter fail within the first year. Data center downtime and unplanned disasters can cost organizations millions. Could your business recover?

International Data Corp estimates companies lose an average of $84,000 for every hour of downtime. Strategic Research places that number closer to $90,000 per hour. And according to a recent NFIB National Small Business Poll, man-made disasters affect one in ten small businesses, and natural disasters have affected more than a third of small businesses in the US. (Hurricanes are by far the most destructive, causing power outages, flooding, customer loss, and the closure of many businesses.)

Major disasters aren’t the only threat your business faces. Online risks are increasing at an alarming rate. Analysts at IDC say about 70% of all successful network attacks are carried out by staff or insiders.

Is your organization prepared to survive the following disasters?

• Major hardware failure in a critical system
• Software corruption
• Cyber attack or ransomware
• Power and telecommunications outages
• Natural and site-wide disasters

Do you have a plan? How often do you test it? Are you meeting your Restore Point and Restore Time Objectives (RPO and RTO)?

Does your plan involve the costly and time-consuming reconstruction of servers, reinstallation of applications and restoration of data from tape or other off-site media?

Do you have the hardware resources and facilities available to bring data back online if your primary data center suffers a disaster?

Server virtualization technology has provided ways to address many of the above questions, but it doesn’t offer a complete solution. Your company still needs the facility and hardware to restore snapshots and data. Procurement and provisioning hardware and maintaining a second site for DR can be a costly proposition. So much so that many companies choose to forgo these costs and live with additional risk.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) minimizes the additional costs associated with hardware and a second site by providing these resources as a service. For a minimal monthly charge, these resources can be turned up on demand via a web portal. This model means any size company — from SMB to large enterprise — can mitigate their DR risks with an economically feasible solution.

“Recent IDC research has found that 90% of organizations plan to utilize cloud as part of their data protection scheme within 12 months. This continued shift toward cloud-based storage solutions will be a major contributor to DRaaS market growth as customers become increasingly comfortable with cloud-based data management and secondary storage solutions.”

— Andrew Smith, senior analyst, IDC Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies

Crystal has successfully completed DR planning workshops, DR Business Impact and Risk Analysis Reviews, and DR Readiness Analyses for many clients. Contact us today to see if DRaaS could help your company survive a disaster. We’ll work with you to help define your business requirements and build a DR solution with our valued partners.

Download the DRaaS by Crystal Datasheet Here.

Download Datasheet

Fun Facts: Trivia to Expand Your Horizons

• According to Gartner, DRaaS now qualifies as a mainstream offering and is estimated to be a $2.4 billion global business. Experts predict it will reach $3.73 billion by 2021.
• The largest moon in our solar system — Jupiter’s Ganymede — is bigger than the planet Mercury.
• Collaboration will continue to be the battleground for UC applications as the category looks to establish a common capability across core and advanced UC features.
• The liver is the only human organ that naturally regenerates on its own.
• Is SD-WAN a misnomer? The Wide Area Network hasn’t changed, but the CPE and WAN-Edge Architecture are undergoing a revolution. SD-CPE or SD-WAN Edge might be more suitable names.

Upcoming Events: We Hope to See You Soon