CONVERSATIONS . UNBOUND
EBOOK: CONNECTING COLLABORATION PLATFORMS IN THE AGE OF SLACK
How To Connect Collaboration Platforms Inside and Outside The Enterprise for Truly Open Communication Executive Summary: The proliferation of new team collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams is leading to a fragmented marketplace of collaboration options and challenges. These platforms are not designed to interoperate with each other, requiring companies to find a solution that allows users to communicate with any team on any platform, anywhere.
This eBook is your guide for reigning in the collaboration chaos and setting up a successful collaboration strategy that benefits both IT and your end-users.
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The New Wave of Collaboration IT needs to walk a fine line between allowing workers to have some choice with their collaboration tools and Team Collaboration platforms (TC) are on track to managing company control, cost and security with dominate workplace collaboration, quickly outpacing these tools. In the same survey, 71 percent of IT profes- their legacy Unified Communication (UC) predecessors. sionals expressed concern around their own productiv- Slack, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex Teams, and ity in the process of managing too many collaboration Workplace by Facebook are just some of the new TC tools within a single enterprise. platforms that have taken the workplace communica- tions market by storm. The problem isn’t going away anytime soon. The lion’s share of the still-emerging team collaboration market With flexible collaboration features and a low barrier to belongs to leaders like Slack, Microsoft, Cisco and entry (e.g., enter your credit card and download the Facebook, and these leaders will continue to expand app) these new platforms have captured the loyalty of their user bases, while the nearly 100 other niche workers across industries for their ease of use and challengers compete for an increasingly small slice of a cutting-edge features. growing market. This means that until and unless one platform gains a monopoly (highly unlikely) there will Slack in particular has engendered deeper loyalty and be deep fragmentation in the market for years - if not engagement because of important integrations with decades - to come. business applications. According to CB Insights: “Today, Slack counts more than 1,800 integrations that allow And even if you identify a single collaboration platform users to collaborate with colleagues or improve work- for your company, that doesn’t mean that all of your flows. These integrations range from continuous code employees will use it or adhere to this mandate. A deployment tools used by engineers to email campaign 2017 survey demonstrated the early signs of disparate tools used by marketers.” platforms at play: nearly half of the survey respondents said their organization was using at least six collaboration Users are in love, and there’s no tools, and over one-sixth were using more than ten. turning back Many of these platforms have created fierce loyalty within the modern workforce, to the point where workers or teams may choose to use tools not sanc- tioned by IT. In our own research, we discovered that 82% of end-users are pushing back against manage- ment or IT when companies try to dictate which tools they should use.
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The collaboration problems facing IT Single Platform Mandate - One for All When multiple tools are in use within a company, data With so many different collaboration options, some and conversations become siloed and trapped within companies are choosing a single platform for the the tools - creating walled gardens and hampering whole company to use. While a single platform is productivity and open communication. tempting, being a “Microsoft shop” or a “Cisco shop” isn't the most realistic solution for workers with diverging You may think that even if there are multiple collaboration collaboration and workstream needs. platforms within the enterprise, your teams and workers can still communicate across different platforms. Many of Even if IT can get everyone on board, they cannot the new team collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams control which platforms outside partners like agencies or Slack include guest access, allowing anyone to invite an or consultants choose to use, making it difficult for outside user (outside of a team or an organization) to join workers to communicate outside the organization. the platform and collaborate via chat, join channels, share files, etc.
While these platforms provide some options for interop- erability, they are not truly open. And there are limitations, cost considerations and security risks in the current form of interoperability that these platforms provide.
Even if IT thinks it has control of this access within its own organization, the reality is that they are now adding more platforms and users to manage within the enterprise. This adds responsibility to IT’s already large pile of work, from end-user support to managing cost overruns. The problem is exacerbated outside the enterprise as most companies need to communicate and collaborate securely outside the company, with vendors, partners, and contractors. Outside of its own walls, IT has no control at all.
Every company has different challenges and needs, so let’s break down the three most common situations where IT needs an interoperability or federation solution.
PAGE 4 Coexistence Some companies take a mixed-platform approach, allowing disparate collaboration platforms - UC or TC - to co-exist within the enterprise. For example, the engineering department may be using Slack, while the manufactur- ing group uses Webex Teams and the HR group could be using an older platform like Jabber. While every team may get to use the platform of their choice, this approach creates walled gardens within the enterprise. Important information, files and conversation strings get lost in emails, which becomes the default, inter-company communi- cation platform.
Migration Given the high demand for better collaboration, many enterprises are migrating from legacy UC tools to new TC platforms. This process is cumbersome and takes months to complete (for example, it took Microsoft four months to fully migrate its workforce to its own platforms: Skype for Business to MS Teams).
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Did you know? 70 70 percent of teams will rely primarily on TC platforms by 2022 2022 If, for example, the engineering department is still operating on a UC platform like Cisco Jabber and needs to collaborate with the manufacturing team who has already migrated to Microsoft Teams, things can get complicated when they try to communicate on the disjointed platforms during this overlap. Both interoperability and federation solutions are required for a successful migration.
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Solutions for Opening up Collaboration Federation, an inter-company solution. and Communication Enterprises (think Global 5000 companies) need to connect disparate collaboration platforms not just within their own walls, but with the thousands of contractors, vendors, and partners every day outside the organization. A federation service acts as a secure, third-party communications hub that helps companies connect on their chosen platforms. Federation services can seamlessly connect UC and TC platforms so that end users are not even aware they collaborating with ENTERPRISE colleagues on different platforms. Messages, files and even emojis and other graphics all come through as if the users were on the same system.
Federation works by translating any and all collaboration functions across different communication standards like PARTNERS WORKERS SIP or XMPP based UC solutions, such as Cisco Jabber and Microsoft Skype for Business, and API-based TC platforms, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. What are the solutions available to IT today to break down these walled gardens of collaboration?
Interoperability, an intra-company solution. Interoperability, in this sense, refers to connecting two or more disparate collaboration platforms together (TC or UC) so they can be used by workers inside the same organization. Say, for example, your company’s finance department is still on a legacy UC system like Cisco Jabber while the marketing department operates on Microsoft Teams. With an interoperability solution, you could join the two platforms together so users could collaborate without leaving their preferred tool. Interoperability can be achieved by connecting the disparate platforms through a clearinghouse that can perform protocol, content and API translations between the platforms.
PAGE 6 Guest Accounts: a short-sighted Alternative to Interoperability IT organizations may utilize guest accounts to enable collaboration between different platforms. But there are limitations to productivity and scalability along with potential risks in this approach.
Security: After enabling guest access to external users, IT cannot control or dictate what security measures (such as password complexity, expiration, multi-factor authentication, etc.) external users will use to access their infrastructure. As a result, guest access could be risky to a company’s infrastructure.
Cost and Control: Most major TC platforms licenses include a limited pool of free guest accounts. However, there is no limitation or control on how many guest account invites any given users can send out as long as your company stays within its overall limit of the pool. This means IT will only find out when the guest access pool is exhausted when it is too late and costs start to rise.
Management: When multiple TC platforms are being used internally with guest accounts on each, then IT has to set up and manage different sets of guest accounts using different admin tools.
Redundancy: This means the potential proliferation of multiple UC and TC clients on users’ desktop and mobile devices, adding to the learning curve and creating redundancy in communi- cation tools.
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Achieve True Interoperability across UC and TC Platforms IT leaders need a solution that connects UC and TC platforms used by employees internally, as well as by partners and vendors externally. You need a universal hub that performs the necessary protocol translations and API conversions to ensure all chat, presence, group chat, channels, spaces, and file sharing features can be used seamlessly regardless of platform.
NextPlane ConverseCloud: Supported Platforms
Presence Chat Channels/Spaces Rich Text/Emojis File Sharing
Microsoft
Micrsoft Teams
Microsoft Skype for Business Online (O365)
Microsoft Skype for Business 2019
Microsoft Skype for Business 2016
Microsoft Lync 2013
Microsoft Lync 2010
Cisco
Cisco WebEx Teams
Cisco Jabber
Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM & Presence Service
Cisco WebEx Messenger
BroadSoft UC-One®
Slack
Slack
Google G-Suite Hangouts Chat
Zoom
Zoom Meetings & Chat
NextPlane ConverseCloud product availability: Generally Available Private Preview Coming Soon
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NextPlane ConverseCloud: Supported Platforms
Presence Chat Channels/Spaces Rich Text/Emojis File Sharing
FaceBook Workplace
IBM
IBM Sametime 8.5.x
IBM Sametime 9.x
IBM Sametime 10.0
Refinitiv
Eikon Messenger
Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Pivot
Symphony
Symphony Secure Collaboration
Unify
Unify Circuit
Unify OpenScape
Avaya
Avaya Aura
Fuze
Fuze
NextPlane ConverseCloud product availability: Generally Available Private Preview Coming Soon
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About Nextplane NextPlane, the leading provider of federation and interoperability services for collaboration platforms, helps enterprises seamlessly connect any internal or external team across UC and Team Collaboration platforms. NextPlane’s ConverseCloud service delivers interoperability and federation for over 20 different UC and Team Collaboration platforms, delivering seamless usability of chat, presence, file sharing, rich text, emojis, and other core collaboration functions. The service supports federation between major collaboration platforms, from legacy Unified Communications solutions like Skype for Business, Cisco Jabber to Team Collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Cisco WebEx Teams and others.
NextPlane seamlessly connects 750,000 enterprise users every day from thousands of Global 5000 companies, enabling real-time communication regardless of different internal or external collaboration platforms. The enterprise-class service connects over 500 million messages every day across large enterprises. NextPlane CEO Farzin Shahidi founded the company with the vision to forge truly productive communication in a modern business world by breaking down barriers to comprehensive collaboration. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California.
750,000 500,000,000 GLOBAL 5000 325,000 ENTERPRISE USERS MESSAGES COMPANIES FINANCIAL SERVICE A DAY A DAY PROVIDERS
To find out more information about these solutions, including NextPlane’s ConverseCloud service, please contact [email protected] and we’ll be happy to set up an introductory call.
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