Converged Communication Systems: A Process-Driven Approach to Fully Managed Services

Steve Melchiorre, CEO

With its 15th anniversary in March, Converged Communication Systems (CCS) has come a long way in terms of its offerings. The technologies have changed over the years, and the "change" is what we need to offer. Our fully managed services and Avaya solutions have evolved in the last couple of years and so have we to meet changing client demands,” says Steve Melchiorre, CEO of CCS. In an interview with CIO Applications, he talks about the factors that differentiate the company and the portfolio of services that it provides.

Evolution of CCS: Perceiving client needs and the changing Avaya landscape

Back in 2003, when CCS was founded, the cloud was just a concept, and organizations had an in-house resource (a telephony guy or phone guy) to manage the phone system. At that time, CCS provided hardware replacement and maintenance support services. With new solutions springing up, technologies like voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and cloud came into being, and clients started opting for the cloud and fully managed solutions. Today, companies do not prefer to handle phone systems themselves any more; they look for other organizations to manage the responsibility. That's why CCS' offerings have evolved to include fully managed support services for phone systems, whether they’re on-premise or cloud-based (public, private or hybrid). CCS started out exclusively as an Avaya partner and continues to provide Avaya services and fully managed support services.

Stumbling blocks in the industry: Providing Avaya services

The challenges faced by existing Avaya clients differ from the problems encountered by new Avaya users. When it comes to existing clients, they try to reuse their old solutions. The challenge for them lies in finding the right Avaya partner who provides well-developed and mature Avaya services. CCS solves these problems by providing them with the comprehensive support services they need.

On the other hand, the stumbling blocks for new Avaya prospects involve navigating all of the options for the solutions.

CCS' primary goal is to be an extraordinary innovation accomplice, enabling its clients to concentrate on their business

They want a thorough understanding of Avaya, from the company’s philosophy to its cloud strategy. CCS guides such businesses in different ways to deploy the solutions. Based on the client's future plans, CCS offers them guidance and advisory services from Avaya perspective. Moreover, the company's technology advisors help the clients in understanding and adopting the latest technology—providing them with appropriate information and statistics.

Portfolio of services in the Avaya space

The firm prefers staying agnostic, flexible, and agile with its portfolio of Avaya solutions. CCS offers best-in-class Avaya IP telephony and unified communications (UC) solutions and provides proactive support services for organizations of all sizes. The broad spectrum of Avaya solutions includes Avaya Aura, an enterprise platform, and Avaya IP Office, an SMB platform. Apart from these two platforms, CCS is also a proponent of Avaya contact center solutions and provides cloud solutions like Avaya Oceana and Avaya Equinox, a new UC tool. In addition to fully managed telephony support services, CCS also offers professional, implementation, and design and consulting services to its clients.

The approach and client success

CCS’ primary goal is to be an extraordinary and innovative partner, enabling its clients to concentrate on their business. For instance, for organizations that are not cloud-driven or have few cloud applications, CCS can study their applications and learn how and why they use them. With its process-driven approach, the firm’s team of technical experts, engineers, and consultants provides education to clients on infrastructure deployments. The education is centered on market trends, the state of the industry, and the solutions CCS plans to provide.

The firm has a history of providing comprehensive telephony and UC solutions to its clients. One client that benefitted from CCS's services was Trilogy, a non-profit organization that was setting up new offices in different locations and wanted a centralized network to communicate with its employees. CCS upgraded the client’s existing Avaya platform and offered IP Office Virtual Server Edition, which allowed increased scalability to add multiple sites and users to the network. The CCS team also deployed smart community networking (SCN), allowing each site to have its own gateway and providing a centralized network for phone systems. The UC and telephony solutions provided by CCS were affordable, simple to set up, and allowed users operating in different locations to be on one network.

Vision and days ahead

In the days to come, CCS envisions moderate and stable growth, with a focus on cloud solutions, AWS Azure, and appropriate strategies to deploy telephony infrastructure. Perceiving that security is a crucial aspect of telephony solutions, the company is incorporating Avaya session border controller (SBC) to address voice network security.