An acquisition brings another telephony platform into the business. Elsewhere, a regional team renews a local supplier contract because the global alternative does not meet its needs. Both decisions may be reasonable. Over time, though, they leave IT teams managing a communications estate that is increasingly difficult to change.

For large multinational organisations, this makes the next stage of unified communications particularly demanding. The business wants to introduce AI and improve the way employees work. IT must deliver those changes while keeping existing services running across countries with different requirements.

Cavell’s new whitepaper, sponsored by Tata Communications, examines how enterprises are approaching these decisions. Beyond the Platform: How Global Enterprises Are Rethinking Unified Communications draws on enterprise buyer research and interviews with senior IT and communications leaders to explore what is changing, and where progress is proving difficult.

One question runs through the research: how much can a new platform achieve if the wider environment remains fragmented?

That matters when an AI service needs information held across several systems, or when a customer enquiry has to pass between teams using different tools. It also matters when the same communications service must support an office employee and someone working in the field. These are practical problems that platform comparisons alone will struggle to answer.

The research looks at the choices behind them. How far should an enterprise standardise when local requirements differ? What does a realistic deployment model look like for a business operating across several jurisdictions? And how should buyers judge a partner’s ability to support the estate once the initial implementation is complete?

The interviews give those questions a useful grounding in day-to-day experience. They reveal the compromises behind enterprise communications decisions, including the gap between buying a capability and getting people to use it.

For anyone reviewing a global communications strategy, the paper offers a way to test the assumptions behind the next investment. It is particularly relevant if your organisation is planning an AI rollout or deciding how to bring a fragmented estate under better control.

To download the free whitepaper in full visit: Tata Communications