Overcoming UC Performance Downtime + the Real Cost Of UC Downtime

5 min readOct 18, 2019

Have you experienced or are you currently battling a UC performance downtime? In a performance downtime, all UC channels are not up and running. Your Phones, emails, website, instant chat, video conferencing etcetera are not functional. Communication with customers is prevented and your team is restricted to face to face contact. Slack connection topics were a social media trend due to the halting effect of the downtime.

Global UC market in 2018 was valued at $56.33 billion and this figure is on the rise. The need for reliability, cost-effectiveness and efficiency of UC is much greater in current times. Imagine how productive your business will be if they don’t experience these downtimes. The good news is that you can easily overcome a UC downtime. The best part is that UC can be optimized and this disaster can be completely prevented.

How to Overcome A UC Performance Downtime

Many UC solutions are extremely difficult to troubleshoot at locations outside the head offices. In the past, remote offices operated through their corporate head office. With much more traffic these days, they now operate independently. Many web-based apps are reaching out to the internet directly, making central visibility and control difficult. Without visibility, the NetOps teams cannot troubleshoot connectivity problems.

Traditionally, troubleshooting these issues require sending an IT worker to remote sites. This is time-consuming and quite expensive. There is an option of using Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostic NPMD. It is however quite expensive to install in all branches or remote locations. This is not feasible considering Microsoft teams cost and other UC solutions maintenance.

There are currently more affordable monitoring products in the UC market. These products can be installed in remote offices and tracked on site. The IT manager at the Network Operation Center will monitor the network traffic. These remote offices will also send alerts to the NetOps centre to fix the problem. Some of these products allow for advanced troubleshooting by showing delays from remote servers.

Here are some approaches you can use to combat UC downtimes:

Network Probes; these are high-performance packet-capture appliances. They process media packet and indicatory generate metrics. When strategically deployed throughout the network, they can help to monitor performance. This way, downtimes can be detected rapidly and fixed.
Endpoint telemetry; this provides protection against vulnerabilities and secure remote access to services. The endpoints provide media reports to a central server about jitters, packet loses etc. These performance metrics reports are usually available at the end of a call. They are vital for monitoring and diagnostic operations.
Simple Network Management Protocol; this help to monitor the overall performance of the network such as routers, switches and gateways. They provide vital data that can be used to combat UC performance downtimes.

Performance monitoring and management tools are the infrastructures that every business needs to implement. There are currently many tools you can use to monitor and manage the performance of your UC solutions. They entail:

Reduced UC operational costs
Fewer downtime occurrences
Increased user experience
Improved customer experience
Rapid resolution of problems
Increase in the number of UC users due to increased efficiency
Increased revenue

Many IT personnel bypass third-party management and monitoring tools despite their benefits. The lengthy Mean Time to Repair in every downtime can be evaded by far. The time, financial and reputation repair expenses of traditional troubleshooting is not worth it. The cost of optimization and management is preferable to downtime costs.

How Much Does a UC Downtime Cost Your Business?

Slack connection topics arose during the course of the year making people question its status. This gave Slack competitors a bargaining leverage in the collaboration market. Slack downtime is over and it is back in business. It is anticipated that this would not recur as it has had its effects on collaboration. If downtimes become so regular, businesses have so much to lose. If you know how much downtimes cost, you won’t want to experience them.

The cost of downtime multidimensional; time, financial and reputational. It’s not enough to evaluate just Microsoft teams cost and that of other UC solutions. A UC performance downtime may be costing you so much more.

Time Costs

Time occupies a top spot in the list of the most valued assets of many businesses. An uptime entails that business moves rapidly and revenue is earned. A downtime is retrogressive in so many ways. First of all, it halts business transactions since communication is hindered. Secondly, it prevents teams from collaborating and making progressive decisions. It also means you would spend valuable time troubleshooting instead of profiting.

Reputation Costs

Regular downtimes are damaging to the reputation of a brand. Slack competitors would enjoy increased patronage if slack under-performs. Customers these days have a voice that can make or destroy brands. Customers can effortlessly complain on social media about the poor state of brands. If the issue persists, they stand a chance of losing many for a long time or forever. Reputations are expensive to build and much more to rebuild.

Financial Cost

According to a report, on the surface, the cost of downtime insignificant to many financial officers. Let’s do a little Mathematics for a business that boasts of a 99.9% UC uptime. This means they have a downtime of 0.1%. How valuable can 0.1% be?

Imagine a scenario where a firm has 10,000 employees and 4500 are affected by downtime annually. At 99.9%, their downtime equates about 525.6 minutes annually. The average income of these employees is about $70,000. The annual cost of the downtime is $301 per employee and for 4500 employees, $1, 352,894. Now you see how valuable this O.1% can be?

Final Thoughts

A UC downtime is obviously a situation no business should encounter in this century of digitalization. With more traffic in the UC market, performance downtimes are on the increase. Preventing a UC performance downtime is far less demanding than fixing it. It’s up to the IT teams to provide their companies with a flawless UC collaboration environment.

Originally published at https://nextplane.net on October 18, 2019.