Adoption of Microsoft Skype for Business in the Enterprise as Part of Digital Transformation Initiatives Drives IR Partnerships

IR, the leading global provider of experience management solutions for unified communications and contact centers, today announced that 64 Microsoft certified partners worldwide have now joined the IR global partner program. These included 39 newly signed partnerships over the past year which are being propelled by the increase in the adoption of Microsoft Skype for Business as a part of digital transformation initiatives in the enterprise.

A recent Nemertes Research issue paper1 shows that companies with successful digital transformation initiatives are investing 72 percent more in unified communications (UC). Over the past two years, as Skype for Business has grown to become a major UC provider, many organizations are either evaluating or deploying it to accelerate productivity and to support their digital transformation efforts. Nemertes Research has also seen that digital transformation success is driven by optimized UC performance, which must be done with the right performance management solutions.

“For UC to operate at maximum efficiency, IT leaders should leverage performance management tools,” said Robin Gareiss, President at Nemertes. “Many organizations’ employees, customers and partners rely on UC to communicate and collaborate, so any outages, downtime, or poor user experience affects productivity, operational costs, and user adoption. Performance management solutions not only reduce UC quality issues, but they also decrease UC operating expenses by 50 percent, and increase user adoption by 31 percent.”

The adoption of Skype for Business in the enterprise comes with high expectations of quality in service in the collaboration solution. Therefore, it is up to the partner to ensure that Skype for Business implementations are successful, which means employing the right performance management solutions to monitor and troubleshoot issues before they become widespread. Though, many partners do not include this in their customer proposals or they remove it in contract negotiations. While this may seem cost efficient at first, it ultimately affects user adoption and increases the ongoing customer operating expenses to manage the solution.

“As we partner with our customers to help drive digital transformation within their organizations, they are looking to us to not only provide them innovative and forward-looking solutions such as Skype for Business Online, but to do so in a way that provides them a smooth transition and an exceptional user experience,” said Jim Banach at New Signature. “If you take shortcuts in the planning, build, or operation of modern UC solutions, the overall experience and user adoption will slow and hinder those digital transformation initiatives. To help ensure success, we have partnered with IR and use Prognosis UC Assessor for pre-deployment and Prognosis for UC for ongoing operational monitoring. As Microsoft Skype Operations Framework certified partners, New Signature and IR are able to provide the solutions needed to make sure that our customers have the best possible outcomes."

“Because of its superior Prognosis UC Assessor solution for pre-deployment and Prognosis for UC for monitoring and troubleshooting, IR has been trusted by many partners to be successful in their implementation of UC solutions,” said Kevin Ryder, Chief Marketing Officer at IR. “As a certified Microsoft IT Pro Tools Partner and the first to support Skype for Business Online Network Readiness in the new Microsoft Skype Operations Framework (SOF), Prognosis gives them the essential tools to deliver the best possible outcomes for their customers.”

IR will be exhibiting its performance management solutions at booth #833 at Microsoft Inspire at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., July 9-13, 2017.

About IR

IR is the corporate brand name of Integrated Research Limited (ASX:IRI), the leading global provider of experience management solutions for critical IT infrastructure, payments and communications ecosystems. More than 1000 organizations in over 60 countries—including some of the world’s largest banks, airlines and telecommunication companies rely on IR Prognosis to provide business critical insights and ensure continuity-critical systems deliver high availability and performance for millions of their customers across the globe. For further information on IR, visit www.ir.com.

1 “Optimal UCC Performance Vital to Digital Transformation Success”, May 2017

Contacts for IR:IRKevin Ryder, +61 2 9966 1066media@ir.comOrFinn Partners for IRMichelle Sieling, +1 415 541 0750irteam@finnpartners.com

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