For those who already utilize tracking, monitoring and control solutions for IM and UC infrastructure, it can be a real blow when you find out that your solution isn’t keeping current, or doesn’t plan to in the future.
In this real-time world, ensuring that your solution maintains the security, management and compliance of these real-time solutions is key to ensuring the future of your business. So what happens when your selected solution doesn’t?
Take the announcement from Quest that Policy Authority for UC has come to end of life and end of support at the end of last year. The hard part for customers is going to be pulling the pieces back together. No doubt you’ve transitioned your entire organization onto a specific platform, now only to find that it’s not keeping up to date with industry changes, or your vendor plans to stop development.
What should you do in that situation?
First, you should identify the timing of the change. Do you have three months or 12 months? Understanding your timeline can help you prioritize your next steps.
The next step is identifying a new partner that you can work with. Here are a few things to look for:
- Customer churn: How many customers have recently left them to work with a different vendor? This can also be indicative of the type of support you may receive
- Product roadmap: Has it been a while since they’ve deployed a new version of their solution? Do they support capabilities like Group Chat? Are they compliant with Live Meeting? Do they support the new Microsoft Lync Server? What about IBM Sametime Advanced? Skype?
- Company’s primary focus: Is security merely a component of their product offerings? Or, is security, management and compliance for the new Internet their primary focus?
- Social media capabilities: Do they support the big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)? What are the specific features for each they offer?
- Partners: Who do they work with to get their updates? Are they members of industry organizations? Do they partner with platforms so they are the most up to date with new product and feature rollouts?
Why not – if this affects you, join us on one of our webinars, and look at just how easy it is to move!
If there are any doubts in your mind or issues that arise, it’s important to take a closer look at your relationship with this partner and reconsider the engagement.
In this day and age, it’s too easy to miss one update and find your network compromised. It’s critical to partner with a company who will be dedicated to your organization’s safety and success in real time communications – and who makes it their entire business, so that you don’t have to.
