Voss upgrades migration to unified communications software

Voss Solutions has launched Voss M2UC, the latest generation of its unified communications software for migrating legacy telephony systems to UC platforms.

Voss M2UC was built with a migration engine that was designed to find, extract, transform, validate and load large volumes of users, devices and UC services. According to Voss, this unified communications software enables organizations to carry out migration and consolidation projects more quickly.

Key features of M2UC include the following:

• Project containers that are designed to enable teams to manage multiple migration projects at once.
• Data schema designs that use PostgreSQL version 10 plus JSONB database in an effort to provide faster data searching and processing, improved storage efficiency and a blend of SQL and schema management.
• The ability to let users map and transform fields as part of the migration process, which provides more automation.
• The capability to diagnose issues and pause the process if needed, which Voss claims improves the scheduling and rollout of new UC platforms.

M2UC also includes deep data analysis and quality review of source systems and aims to provide flexibility to cater to a wider range of customer-specific needs. 

According to Irwin Lazar, a vice president and service director at Nemertes Research, while this industry has not seen the emergence of many new unified communications software vendors, existing vendors such as Voss, Kurmi and Unimax have continued to broaden existing administrative management tools to enable this migration.

"We're also seeing SIP trunking providers like Bandwidth improving their capabilities to port numbers between services to enable a smoother transition to cloud-based platforms," he said.

Nemertes Research has found tremendous growth in cloud-based communications platform adoption, according to Lazar, who said he expects the tools to continue to evolve to support those transitions.

"The most important factor is minimizing disruption," he said. "Customers require a solution that allows them to migrate while minimizing potential downtime."

In general, the biggest factors in making the move to a UC platform are less cost and more features.

"They have access to new integrated features such as mobile messaging, as well as team collaboration tools that integrate calling, meeting and messaging capabilities into contextual workspaces," Lazar said. "And they can integrate contact center features for intelligent call routing and customer service. We see cost savings and access to new features as the primary drivers for moving to a new communications platform."