Here’s a common scenario: You know your communications system is way past its prime, but economic pressures have caused you to delay its much-needed upgrade or replacement.
There comes a point in time when it no longer makes sense to put off replacing your communications assets from both a financial perspective and a business/productivity perspective. Retaining outdated equipment can actually increase your IT costs and prohibit your team from utilizing communications tools that promote business efficiency.
In a presentation on Sept. 7, 2017 at the Convention Center in Washington, DC, Dr. David A. Bray discussed his personal experience with this matter as Chief Information Officer for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). When he arrived as the new CIO in late 2013 (the FCC previously had 9 CIOs in 8 years), greater than 85% of IT budget spend was on legacy IT. In two years, they moved everything to the cloud, and by late 2015, they were spending less than 50%. He went on to describe the perceived security threat of cloud and debunked this with various examples of security breaches that happened only on premise-based systems.
Another great risk of hanging on to outdated technology too long; if your communications go down, so goes your business. Such a situation can lead to huge losses including customer dissatisfaction and disengagement (decreased revenue), reputation damage and costs related to restoring your reputation. Phone systems are one of the assets that many companies take for granted and as long as they have dial-tone, they don’t think much about it. As a result, many organizations are sitting on archaic, or end-of-life equipment that is no longer successfully supporting their business. It could, in fact, pose a risk to the organization.
Take Verizon for example. They have started “decommissioning” their Copper services such as POTS, DSL, and EOC (Ethernet over Copper). They asked the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to allow them to stop investing and providing resources, so they can spend more money on upgrading everything to a fiber based service platform. The PUC gave them the ok, but it comes with an elongated timeframe. So what does Verizon do? They started to raise the prices for POTS lines almost every three months to “encourage” people to move off copper and to fiber. Basically, forcing a quicker exit essentially due to price gouging. But that’s not all, they are also intentionally not responding to service calls promptly. We have seen customers not wait two weeks or longer for outage technicians.
Don’t be the person who said, “It’s not broken, so I don’t care to plan for what’s to come.” You will be sorry. The reality is that Copper services and premise-based systems are becoming obsolete. You’ll be forced to change soon enough, and that force will come with pain. Choose to be proactive. There are easy options for you to take right now.
You cannot afford to be afraid of new technology. Technology is your friend. .” We know it can feel like your frenemy, but if you stick with outdated technology, it is sure to become your enemy.
If you have outdated telecommunications technology, call P2CM at 703-391-2172 or email us at sales@p2cm.com, and we will turn your enemy into a friend.