Collaboration

On-Premises Vs. Hosted Unified Communications

Find out which model works best for your organization.

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Lenny is a freelance journalist who specializes in business technology. He is a contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines.

Unified communications makes it easy for people to collaborate using voice, email, chat, video conferencing, whiteboards and other tools. As a result, users can be more productive and can more effectively share knowledge anywhere, anytime.

But organizations seeking to take advantage of UC’s compelling value proposition face a decision: Make the capital investment necessary to implement UC on-premises, where they can directly control its functionality and performance? Or opt for the convenience and fast, capital-free implementation offered by a hosted solution?

Adding to the complexity of this decision, UC solutions come in more than just two flavors. For example, Cisco offers both multitenant and single-tenant hosted models, and enterprises deploying Microsoft Lync on-premises can still use Skype to gain cloud-like capabilities.

For those who face a UC implementation decision, the following graphic can help pinpoint the most appropriate decision for the organization. The good news is that today’s UC solutions don’t permanently lock an IT department into one choice or the other.