Optimizing UC: How VOSS helped a global enterprise streamline Cisco and Microsoft Teams
Author: VOSS Team
Tuesday September 10, 2024
Last month, a multinational enterprise relying on both Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Teams to ensure seamless communication across multiple platforms, devices, and geographies, approached VOSS for help.
Their setup included Cisco for their backend infrastructure and WebEx as their preferred platform for meeting management, but Microsoft Teams was the tool of choice for video conferencing. Despite having robust platforms in place, they faced several operational challenges, particularly in the areas of monitoring, incident management, and process automation.
The challenge: Managing a complex, multi-vendor UC stack
The customer’s communication ecosystem was both expansive and complex. With approximately 250 meeting rooms equipped with Cisco devices across multiple continents, maintaining operational efficiency was a daunting task. Although their backend technology was anchored in Cisco WebEx, the predominance of Teams for video conferencing created a fragmented monitoring landscape. Specifically, they faced:
Limited monitoring and control for Teams Meetings
While their WebEx environment was well-monitored through the Cisco Control Hub, visibility into Teams meetings was lacking. This disparity left a critical gap in their ability to manage and optimize their unified UC infrastructure.
Global voice services integration
The company relied on AudioCodes’ One Voice Operations Center to manage global voice services, but the solution fell short in providing the level of integration and clarity needed. Additionally, some critical voice services, such as voice recording, were not adequately monitored.
Reactive incident management
The company struggled with identifying and resolving incidents before they impacted users, relying too heavily on end-user reports for issue detection. This reactive approach led to delays in service restoration and impacted overall communication reliability.
Manual meeting room creation
The process of setting up new meeting rooms was cumbersome, involving manual coordination between Active Directory and ServiceNow. The company recognized the need for automation to streamline these processes and reduce administrative overhead.
The solution: VOSS single-pane-of-glass insight
Understanding the complexity of the customer’s environment, VOSS proposed a solution designed to unify monitoring, management, and automation across their multi-vendor landscape. Here’s how VOSS addressed their key challenges:
Enhanced monitoring and control for Teams Meetings
VOSS provided a centralized management platform that offered comprehensive monitoring and control across both Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Teams environments. This single-pane-of-glass approach allowed the customer to view and manage all video conferencing activities from a unified dashboard. This not only bridged the gap between WebEx and Teams monitoring but also provided deeper insights into the performance and utilization of their communications tools, enabling proactive management and optimization.
Seamless integration and monitoring of global voice services
VOSS extended its monitoring capabilities to include the customer’s global voice services managed by AudioCodes. By integrating with their existing infrastructure, VOSS offered a more holistic view of their voice service operations, including previously unmonitored critical services like voice recording. This integration facilitated better oversight and control, ensuring that all aspects of their voice communications were consistently managed and maintained.
Automated incident identification and resolution
To address the customer’s need for more proactive incident management, VOSS implemented automated incident detection and alerting mechanisms. These tools were designed to identify and flag potential issues in the video conferencing and voice service environments before they escalated, allowing IT teams to take corrective action quickly. This automation significantly reduced the dependency on end-user reports, improving overall service reliability and reducing downtime.
Streamlined meeting room creation processes
VOSS introduced automation into the customer’s meeting room creation processes, which had previously been manual and time-consuming. By integrating with Active Directory and ServiceNow, VOSS automated the provisioning of new meeting rooms, reducing setup time and minimizing the potential for human error. This not only improved efficiency but also ensured consistency across all meeting rooms globally.
Delivering value through UC optimization
For the customer, VOSS’s technology delivered significant value by addressing key pain points in their UC stack. The implementation of a single-pane-of-glass solution for monitoring and management enabled better visibility and control across their multi-vendor setup, while automated processes and proactive incident management enhanced operational efficiency and service reliability.
By partnering with VOSS, the customer was able to optimize their existing communications infrastructure, ensuring that both Cisco and Microsoft Teams environments were fully integrated, monitored, and managed effectively. This not only improved the end-user experience but also empowered their IT teams to deliver a more reliable and scalable communication service across their global operations.
In a world where effective communication is critical to business success, VOSS provided the tools and expertise needed to streamline and enhance the customer’s UC strategy, delivering a solution that was tailored to meet the demands of their complex, multi-vendor environment.
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