Unified communications: a practical guide

Unified communications means putting voice, video, messaging and presence on one platform instead of four. The technology has been mature for a decade. Projects still go wrong, and they go wrong in a small number of predictable ways that have very little to do with the platform you pick.

What UC actually replaces

• The phone system. A PBX, whether on-premises or hosted.
• Conferencing. Usually a separate subscription nobody audits.
• Chat and presence. Often already in place through Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
• Contact centre, sometimes. A genuinely different problem with different requirements. Do not let it be bundled in casually.

The most common finding in a UC assessment is that an organisation is paying for two or three of these separately, with overlapping licences, and consolidating pays for a meaningful share of the project.

When a UC consultant is worth the money

For a straightforward migration — under fifty users, one site, no contact centre, no compliance recording requirement — your existing IT provider or the vendor’s onboarding team can usually handle it.

A consultant earns their fee when at least one of these is true:

• Multiple sites, especially with different carriers or existing infrastructure
• A contact centre with routing, queueing or reporting requirements
• Compliance recording obligations — finance, healthcare, public safety
• An existing on-premises investment with remaining useful life, where the question is hybrid rather than replace
• Analogue devices that cannot go away — lifts, alarm panels, fire systems, fax lines in clinical settings

That last one derails more projects than any technical factor. Somebody discovers three weeks before cutover that the elevator emergency phone is on a line nobody documented.

The network is the project

Voice is unforgiving in a way that other traffic is not. A network that handles file transfer and email perfectly can still make calls sound bad, because voice cares about jitter and packet loss rather than raw throughput.

Four prerequisites, in order:

1. Quality of service configured end to end, including across any site-to-site links.
2. Sufficient and stable upstream bandwidth, with headroom rather than a calculated minimum.
3. Wireless designed for voice, if handsets will be wireless. Coverage that works for laptops frequently does not work for roaming voice.
4. Power over Ethernet capacity on the switches, if you are deploying desk phones.

Fix these before migration, not after complaints start. Retrofitting quality of service across a live deployment is considerably harder than doing it first.

Questions to ask a provider

1. Will you audit our current spend first? A provider who skips this is not looking for savings.
2. How do you handle analogue devices? Lifts, alarms, fire panels, clinical fax.
3. What network work is required, and is it in scope? Frequently discovered mid-project and billed separately.
4. What happens to our numbers? Porting timelines are the most common cause of a delayed cutover.
5. Who supports it afterwards? The vendor, the provider, or you.

Where IP Consulting fits

Voice and network work sits inside Navigate managed network services and Navigate Infrastructure. If you are weighing a migration, an IT assessment will surface the spend audit and the network prerequisites in one pass.

Frequently asked questions

What is unified communications?

Unified communications puts voice, video, messaging and presence on a single platform rather than several separate systems. It typically replaces a phone system, a separate conferencing subscription, and sometimes a contact centre, consolidating licences that frequently overlap.

Do we need a unified communications consultant?

For a straightforward migration under fifty users on one site, your existing IT provider or the vendor's onboarding team can usually handle it. A consultant earns their fee when you have multiple sites, a contact centre, compliance recording obligations, an existing on-premises investment, or analogue devices that cannot be removed.

What network changes does unified communications require?

Four things, in order: quality of service configured end to end including site-to-site links, stable upstream bandwidth with headroom, wireless designed for roaming voice if handsets are wireless, and Power over Ethernet capacity on switches for desk phones. Configure these before migration rather than after complaints.

What usually goes wrong in a UC migration?

Undocumented analogue devices such as lift emergency phones, alarm panels, fire systems and clinical fax lines, discovered weeks before cutover. After that, number porting timelines and network work that was not in the original scope.

Keep exploring

• Managed network services
• Navigate Infrastructure
• What is an IT assessment?
• IT budgeting and planning