If you're "sweating the assets" when it comes to TDM infrastructure, you could be holding back your enterprise's digital transformation, as discussed in this post brought to you by AT&T.
Despite the fact that companies have documented benefits from IP telephony for more than 20 years, most companies -- and particularly large enterprises -- continue to operate a mixed environment that includes TDM and IP.
Among those that use some IP telephony, 45% operate a mix of IP and TDM, and 31% have on-premises deployments that are fully IP, according to Nemertes Research. Among those with larger (5,000+ employees), more distributed, and more complex environments, 54% are running a mix of IP and TDM. Among that demographic, the estimated timeframe for full IP deployment for 24.4% is not expected to happen until 2017 to 2025. "We may or may not ever get there," says the IT director for a transportation company.
Though there are many reasons to move to an all-IP environment, most IT leaders say the catalysts for change so far have been very tactical: equipment end of life, consolidation of disparate equipment, or ease of maintenance and troubleshooting.
But increasingly, business unit leaders -- and their demands for digital transformation initiatives -- assume a modern, well-managed communications infrastructure that integrates with collaboration and enterprise apps. When TDM is part of that picture, such an assumption is incorrect.
Know Your Options
IT leaders have a bevy of options for upgrading their TDM infrastructure to IP, ranging from various on-premises solutions to public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid on-premises/public/private cloud solutions.
Research from Nemertes documents that companies experience significant success with a cohesive, integrated communications and collaboration strategy -- improved employee productivity, bolstered customer satisfaction, and reduced costs. All of these benefits help support digital transformation initiatives -- driven at most companies by C-level executives.
Unfortunately, despite these improvements, IT leaders still are challenged to get budget approval to upgrade the equipment. And in some cases, even if they get the budget approval, they have a long list of priorities and cannot start the upgrade project in a timely manner.
To address these challenges and leverage the benefits of a TDM upgrade, Nemertes recommends the following:
The issue of upgrading legacy systems to support digital transformation will be the subject of an Enterprise Connect/No Jitter webinar on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, featuring Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research. You can register here to attend the webinar or to hear the replay afterward.
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