{"id":16240,"date":"2024-01-30T09:33:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T08:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.voss-solutions.com\/?p=16240"},"modified":"2026-04-14T13:25:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:25:24","slug":"discover-the-hidden-costs-around-uc-cloud-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voss-solutions.com\/blog\/2024\/discover-the-hidden-costs-around-uc-cloud-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Discover the hidden costs around UC cloud systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Discover the hidden costs around UC cloud systems<\/p><\/h1><\/div>

Streamline license costs whilst delivering exceptional user experience with VOSS<\/p><\/h4><\/div>

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Author: Tim Jalland
\nSolution Manager, VOSS Solutions<\/h6>\n

Tuesday January 30, 2024<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Tackling the hidden cost burden around UC licensing<\/h4>\n

Investment in UC and collaboration systems continues unabated, enabling the productivity of flexible, remote, and agile workforces. The underlying systems such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and others, continue to advance in sophistication with new features, capabilities, and most recently AI. Alongside this, multiple levels and options for licensing make it difficult for organizations to track and tackle what is becoming an increasingly large monthly operating expense.<\/p>\n<\/div>

What costs are we talking about?<\/h4>\n

Licensing for a UC service delivering chat, a meeting, document sharing, compliance, and calling, comes in various shapes and sizes. Using Microsoft Teams as an example, the \u201cper user\u201d monthly charge can range anywhere between $20 and $100, and for many enterprise organizations, it sits at around $40. If you have a workforce of 10,000 users that\u2019s close to half a million dollars spent every month \u2013 so saving 15% (which isn\u2019t unreasonable) can deliver significant cost savings without impacting performance or user experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Where do licensing costs come from?<\/h4>\n

For many customers, the core functionality on Microsoft Teams is delivered from either an E3 or an E5 license, retailing at $23 and $38 per user per month respectively. Enterprise agreements and discounting will reduce this, but it\u2019ll still be a significant monthly cost.\u00a0Added to this are add-on applications and capability \u2013 for example the Teams Premium license, most recently Co-Pilot, and third-party applications to meet specific business needs. These range anywhere from $10 upwards (Co-Pilot retailing at $30).\u00a0A subset of users will require full calling onto the public telephone network. That draws in charges from a suitable operator ($5 – $10 for Operator Connect) or from Microsoft directly ($12 for domestic calling and $24 for International).\u00a0Finally, ad-hoc user offboarding or migration processes often mean that users are charged for the cloud but also retain licenses on existing telephony platforms, from the likes of Cisco and Avaya \u2013 pulling in unnecessary costs of $5 – $15 per user.<\/p>\n

At the extreme, that full license stack totals $104 per user per month. What\u2019s more, tracking license allocation against the various user personas and requirements, across the various components in the system, is an arduous task that isn\u2019t well supported by the native vendor tools. License costs grow and become a hidden cost and burden on every customer\u2019s operating budget.<\/p>\n<\/div>

What to expect<\/h4>\n

If you budget on average for $40 per user per month on UC licensing, that covers users on simpler plans ($20) all the way through to power users on the full stack at $100. With an investment in tooling, you should be able to trim back 15% on license charges, without impacting user experience or performance. For a 10,000 user organization that\u2019s $60,000 per month or $720,000 over the year – so significant.<\/p>\n