Unified Communications as a Service: Streamlining Business Collaboration

The way businesses communicate has been transformed in the last decade. Email, phone, video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing, and project collaboration tools have proliferated—but for many organisations, this proliferation has created fragmentation rather than productivity. Employees juggle five different communication tools, context switches between apps destroy focus, and IT manages a patchwork of licences and integrations. Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) addresses this by consolidating everything into a single, cloud-delivered platform.

What Is UCaaS?

UCaaS delivers a comprehensive suite of communication and collaboration capabilities from the cloud, typically on a per-user subscription model. A complete UCaaS platform includes:

• Voice / telephony: Business phone system, direct dial numbers, IVR/auto-attendant, call queuing
• Video conferencing: HD video meetings with screen sharing, recording, and transcription
• Team messaging: Persistent chat channels, direct messages, @mentions, searchable history
• File sharing and collaboration: Real-time document co-editing, shared file storage
• Presence and availability: Real-time status indicators (available, busy, in a meeting, away)
• Meetings management: Calendar integration, one-click join, meeting room hardware integration
• Contact centre (advanced): Agent routing, IVR, analytics, CRM integration

The Business Case for UCaaS

Replacing Legacy PBX

Traditional on-premises PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone systems are expensive to purchase, complex to maintain, and increasingly disconnected from how people actually work. When a PBX reaches end-of-life, UCaaS is the natural replacement:

• No upfront capital expenditure for new hardware
• No on-site maintenance or specialist PBX engineers required
• Instant scalability—add or remove users in minutes
• Built-in disaster recovery (calls reroute to mobile if the office is unavailable)

Cost Savings

UCaaS consolidates multiple vendor relationships and licences into one:

| Replaced Solution | Typical Annual Cost (50 users) |

|---|---|

| On-premises PBX maintenance | £8,000–£15,000 |

| ISDN/SIP trunk charges | £6,000–£12,000 |

| Video conferencing platform | £3,000–£8,000 |

| Team messaging tool | £2,000–£5,000 |

| Total legacy stack | £19,000–£40,000 |

| UCaaS (e.g., Teams Phone) | £6,000–£12,000 |

Savings of 40–70% are typical when consolidating from a fragmented legacy stack.

Remote and Hybrid Work Enablement

UCaaS is inherently location-agnostic. Employees in the office, at home, at a client site, or in a hotel have exactly the same communication experience on any device. Business phone calls ring on the desktop app, mobile app, and desk phone simultaneously—no call forwarding configuration required.

Productivity and Collaboration

The reduction in context switching between communication tools has measurable productivity benefits. Research by RingCentral found that employees switch between apps 10+ times per hour, with each switch costing 23 minutes of focus time. Consolidating into one platform significantly reduces this friction.

Leading UCaaS Platforms

Microsoft Teams (with Teams Phone)

The dominant UCaaS platform in enterprise, with 300+ million daily active users. Teams provides messaging, video, file collaboration, and—with Teams Phone add-on—full PSTN telephony.

Best for: Organisations already using Microsoft 365. Native integration with Outlook, SharePoint, and the entire M365 ecosystem is unmatched.

Teams Phone options:

• Microsoft Calling Plans: Microsoft provides the PSTN connectivity (available in 30+ countries)
• Direct Routing: Connect your existing SIP trunk or carrier to Teams via a Session Border Controller (SBC)—keeps existing carrier relationships and phone numbers

Zoom (Zoom Phone + Zoom Meetings)

Zoom dominates video conferencing and has expanded into telephony with Zoom Phone.

Best for: Organisations prioritising best-in-class video quality and ease of use. Strong for mixed-platform environments (not exclusively Microsoft).

RingCentral MVP

A pure-play UCaaS provider with deep telephony heritage and strong contact centre integration.

Best for: Organisations needing advanced call centre capabilities alongside standard UCaaS, or those requiring PSTN coverage in a very broad set of countries.

Cisco Webex Calling

Enterprise-grade UCaaS from Cisco with strong security credentials and deep hardware ecosystem.

Best for: Organisations with existing Cisco infrastructure investments (networking, hardware), or those in regulated industries requiring enterprise security controls.

8x8 XCaaS

Combined UCaaS and CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) on a single platform with strong international coverage.

Best for: Organisations needing to unify internal communications and customer-facing contact centre on a single platform.

Implementation Guide

Phase 1: Discovery and Planning

• Audit current state: Inventory all communication tools in use (sanctioned and shadow IT), user populations, call volumes, and existing hardware (desk phones, conference room systems)
• Define requirements: What features are non-negotiable? (Direct dial numbers, call recording, emergency calling, contact centre routing, CRM integration?)
• Number porting plan: Document all DDI (Direct Dial In) numbers to be ported; check porting eligibility with current carrier
• Network assessment: UCaaS is sensitive to network quality—assess bandwidth, latency, jitter, and packet loss on all sites; implement QoS for voice traffic

Phase 2: Pilot Deployment

• Deploy to a pilot group of 20–50 users across multiple departments and locations
• Include technically proficient users AND less technically confident users in the pilot
• Measure call quality (MOS scores), video quality, and user satisfaction
• Identify integration gaps (CRM, helpdesk, calendar) and resolve before broad rollout

Phase 3: Broad Rollout

• Deploy in waves by site or department
• Provide training tailored to role (basic user training, admin training, receptionist/operator console training)
• Run legacy and new systems in parallel for 2–4 weeks to allow adjustment
• Communicate clearly: what is changing, when, and what support is available

Phase 4: Optimisation

• Review call quality dashboards monthly; investigate sites or users with consistently poor MOS scores
• Audit feature adoption: which features are underutilised? Targeted training drives adoption
• Review licence utilisation monthly and reclaim licences from inactive users
• Integrate UCaaS with CRM (Salesforce, Dynamics 365) for call logging and click-to-dial

Network Readiness for UCaaS

Voice and video traffic is uniquely sensitive to network quality. Before deploying UCaaS:

• Bandwidth: 100 kbps per concurrent voice call; 2–4 Mbps per HD video conference
• QoS: Mark voice and video traffic with DSCP values (EF for voice, AF41 for video) and prioritise over data traffic
• Jitter: Target < 30 ms for acceptable voice quality
• Packet loss: Target < 0.1%; even 1% causes audible degradation
• WAN redundancy: Consider MPLS or SD-WAN with automatic failover for sites where voice is business-critical

For Microsoft Teams Phone specifically, Microsoft provides a Network Planner tool and Network Assessment Tool to validate readiness before deployment.

Measuring UCaaS Success

Post-deployment, track:

• MOS (Mean Opinion Score): Voice quality metric (target > 4.0)
• Video meeting adoption rate: % of meetings using video (target > 70%)
• Messaging activity: Active users per month (indicates platform adoption vs shadow IT persistence)
• PSTN call quality: Call setup success rate, call drop rate
• User satisfaction: Quarterly pulse survey on communication tool satisfaction

UCaaS is no longer a niche choice for technology-forward companies—it is the mainstream approach to enterprise communications. The organisations that implement it well gain simpler administration, lower costs, and a communication experience that genuinely enables modern, flexible work rather than fighting against it.