VOSS - Discover more from UC experts

Hear how IT teams typically discover communications problems through frustrated user calls rather than proactive monitoring. Using a case study of a global financial services firm that experienced multiple Microsoft Teams outages, Jamie Litherland explains how traditional monitoring tools provide fragmented views of the environment. The firm implemented VOSS UC monitoring to gain unified visibility into voice quality, call records, and operational metrics. This enabled them to detect service degradation 20-35 minutes before major outages occurred. And, within three months, they reduced MTTR by 40% and eliminated user-reported outages by shifting to proactive issue identification and automated workflows.

Tim Jalland from VOSS Solutions discusses the growing complexity of Microsoft licensing for enterprises as organizations expand their use of Microsoft 365, Teams, Copilot, and advanced security services. He explains how traditional broad licensing approaches are insufficient for diverse workforces and emphasizes the need for persona-based license management that aligns with organizational hierarchies. The presentation covers challenges including lack of visibility into license utilization, the shift toward consumption-based charging models, and upcoming pricing changes. Jaland advocates for third-party license management platforms that provide continuous visibility, automated provisioning, and detailed reporting across business units to enable effective governance and cost attribution in modern Microsoft environments.

Hear how a mid-sized organization using Genesys Cloud experienced declining customer satisfaction despite having healthy technical metrics. The problem was traced to environmental noise affecting agents' concentration, and not audio quality issues that customers could hear. Using VOSS digital experience monitoring, they discovered that while Jabra headsets successfully blocked background noise for customers, agents were still distracted by their open-plan office environment. This cognitive load led to conversational issues like interruptions and longer pauses. By identifying and addressing these environmental factors through targeted coaching and workspace adjustments, the organization achieved measurable customer experience improvements within eight weeks, demonstrating the importance of monitoring the complete agent experience beyond just platform performance.

Brett Johnson, General Manager APAC for VOSS, discusses how organizations across the Asia-Pacific region are shifting their focus from managing digital workplace complexity to maintaining operational consistency and control. He explains that while enterprises manage distributed workforces and multiple technology providers, the real challenge lies in avoiding operational fragmentation. Using a major Asia-Pacific university as a case study, Johnson demonstrates how VOSS UC automation has provided consistency through a decade of changes in service providers and operational models, supporting 53,000 students and 13,000 staff. The university maintains centralized management through automated provisioning, role-based access control, and unified administration despite provider transitions. Johnson argues that successful digital workplace transformation in APAC requires building operational resilience and consistency across change, rather than simply adopting more technology. He emphasizes that while managed service providers remain important, organizations increasingly want direct operational ownership with consistent automation and governance layers that can adapt to evolving workplace strategies.

Keith Bareham from VOSS explains how organizations using Cisco Webex Contact Center face operational challenges despite the platform's powerful capabilities. He identifies key pain points including time-consuming agent onboarding processes, complex integrations, licensing inefficiencies from poor offboarding, and centralized admin bottlenecks that limit local control. The presentation demonstrates how these manual processes create friction and consume IT resources, particularly in high-churn environments. Bareham then introduces VOSS as a solution that provides a unified operational layer to automate agent lifecycle management, simplify integrations, enable data segmentation for local administrators, and connect Webex Contact Center to broader business workflows. The solution promises to transform manual, centralized processes into automated, scalable operations that unlock the full value of Webex Contact Center deployments.

Discussing the operational challenges organizations face when deploying Webex Calling and other cloud communication platforms - While cloud calling promises simplicity by removing infrastructure management burdens, it creates a new visibility gap where IT teams struggle to monitor end-to-end user experience across networks, devices, and distributed workforces. Native vendor tools often fail to provide comprehensive operational visibility, leading to reactive troubleshooting and fragmented management across multiple platforms. VOSS addresses these challenges by providing unified monitoring, analytics, and automation capabilities that extend beyond native platform tools, enabling organizations to maintain operational consistency during migrations and truly operationalize cloud communications at enterprise scale.

Modernizing a contact center is a complex process, especially in health care where every call must be routed correctly. One major health care organization transitioned from a legacy Avaya system to Genesys Cloud CX, facing challenges due to customized routing logic and a lack of clarity on critical processes. To mitigate risks and reduce migration time, they employed an automated discovery system that provided clear visual call flows and usage analytics. This allowed them to streamline operations by removing redundant logic and efficiently redesigning their platform architecture. Ultimately, the migration was completed in just eight weeks instead of the projected 28 weeks, significantly improving operational efficiency while ensuring patient services remained uninterrupted.

Explore how Unified Communications (UC) has evolved into a powerful data engine, generating insights that drive business success. Learn why analytics is the missing link for interpreting communication data and how VOSS bridges the gap between insight and action. By embedding analytics into UC operations, VOSS enables real-time solutions like reducing meeting overload, optimizing contact center performance, and improving licensing efficiency. Discover how AI-powered analytics transforms data into measurable outcomes, boosting productivity, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Addressing a critical gap in how organizations monitor their unified communications (UC) environments like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex. While most companies track uptime and basic system health, they lack true operational intelligence that connects UC performance to business value and ROI. Jamie Litherland explains how this visibility gap leads to significant issues like license waste, poor adoption tracking, and inability to measure actual business outcomes. It positions UC analytics as the missing layer that transforms reactive IT management into proactive, data-driven optimization. VOSS UC Analytics is the solution that unifies operational data, usage insights, and cost intelligence, enabling organizations to manage UC as a measurable business asset rather than just maintaining technical infrastructure.

See how unified communications platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex are evolving beyond simple productivity tools into powerful data engines. Jamie Litherland explains that UC platforms continuously generate valuable business intelligence through calls, meetings, and messaging, but most organizations fail to exploit this data effectively. This blog highlights the challenge of fragmented insights and reactive IT support, emphasizing the need for real-time UC analytics. VOSS UC Analytics is positioned as the solution that provides a unified view across platforms, enabling proactive support and informed decision-making. Jamie concludes by encouraging prospects to transform their UC environments into sources of real-time intelligence, rather than just communication platforms.

Discover how to address the growing challenge organizations face as their digital workplace platforms expand. While tools like Microsoft Teams and Webex provide more choice and flexibility than ever, many companies are building communications environments organically, resulting in fragmented systems that lack cohesion. This patchwork approach leads to operational complexity, duplicated effort across multiple control panels, inconsistent user experiences, and degraded visibility across platforms, and without unified management, organizations struggle with cost optimization, governance enforcement, and strategic planning. VOSS customers are shifting toward a centralized management and automation layer that standardizes provisioning, enforces policies consistently, and provides unified visibility and control. This approach transforms the digital workplace from a collection of isolated tools into a cohesive, intelligently managed ecosystem that integrates with broader business processes, ultimately driving productivity, collaboration, and innovation.

Address the hidden costs and inefficiencies in digital workplace platforms that many organizations tolerate. Learn how basic functionality in voice, video, and chat systems masks deeper problems including manual administration overhead, fragmented communication environments with mixed platforms like Teams and Webex, and shadow IT risks. These issues lead to wasted resources, reduced productivity, and missed business opportunities. Discover how VOSS provides intelligent automation, management, and analytics solutions that transform digital workplace platforms from basic utilities into strategic business assets, offering real-time insights, predictive monitoring, and consistent governance to improve operational efficiency and business outcomes.

Explore how AI is rapidly commoditizing across industries, making unique operational data the new competitive advantage. Drawing on insights from technology investor Marc Andreessen, it discusses how AI's widespread accessibility shifts competitive advantage from technology capabilities to proprietary data and operational intelligence. The content focuses specifically on digital workplace environments, where collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams generate vast amounts of operational data that remains fragmented across systems. VOSS centralizes and correlates this telemetry data, enabling organizations to move from reactive to proactive service management. The key argument is that while AI models become universally available, organizations that combine these capabilities with deep operational intelligence from their own environments will gain the greatest advantage.

Tim Jalland from VOSS explains that E7 integrates AI assistance into everyday tools like Teams, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint to help employees summarize meetings, draft documents, and automate tasks. But rather than upgrading all employees, Jalland advocates for precision licensing - strategically assigning E7 to knowledge workers like executives, project managers, and analysts who will benefit most from AI productivity tools. He emphasizes that frontline staff and operational roles may see less value from these premium features. The presentation highlights how the VOSS platform helps organizations optimize Microsoft licensing through usage tracking, governance controls, and monitoring of licensing changes to ensure intelligent deployment of AI capabilities while controlling costs.

Bill Dellara, Chief Product Officer at VOSS, discusses the critical distinction between data sovereignty and operational governance in response to Europe's reassessment of its relationship with global technology providers. While European organizations are increasingly focusing on sovereign cloud initiatives with local data centers for regulatory compliance, Dellara argues that geographic location alone doesn't create true digital sovereignty. The presentation explains how hosting data locally doesn't automatically ensure proper governance, prevent configuration drift, or maintain operational consistency. He emphasizes that the rise of AI in contact centers and collaboration platforms makes governance even more critical, as these systems evolve into cognitive platforms that analyze and automate decisions in real-time. Dellara concludes that true digital sovereignty requires both sovereign infrastructure and sovereign operations - a governance layer that enforces policy consistency, manages AI enablement, and provides cross-platform oversight while maintaining regional data boundaries.

See how Microsoft Teams calling issues create hidden costs for organizations through lost productivity, unreported problems, and IT support overhead. Tim Jalland explains a three-level maturity model for Teams calling management, progressing from basic Microsoft tools to reactive monitoring to proactive monitoring with synthetic testing. The presentation introduces the Trouble Ticket Tamer model developed by Kevin Kieller from enableUC, which quantifies the true financial impact of calling issues and demonstrates the ROI of proactive monitoring. VOSS offers this as an interactive calculator to help organizations assess their potential savings and build business cases for improved monitoring solutions.

Learn critical lessons from a Microsoft Security Copilot implementation, using a real-world case study where improper deployment led to thousands of dollars in unexpected charges within a month. Outlining three essential principles for successful AI adoption in enterprise environments: implementing cost governance first to manage consumption-based billing, ensuring operational readiness through proper telemetry and mature security processes, and defining clear workflows before enablement. The presentation emphasizes that AI tools like Security Copilot require careful preparation and governance to deliver meaningful business value rather than becoming costly experiments, and positions VOSS as a partner to help enterprises navigate AI adoption responsibly.

Hear how voice communication is experiencing a strategic resurgence as an intelligent interface powered by AI. Bill Dellara, Chief Product Officer at VOSS, explains that while digital channels have dominated customer experience innovation for years, AI is now transforming voice from a legacy channel into a data-rich, analyzable medium. The contact center is leading this transformation where AI handles routine queries, augments agents with real-time insights, and feeds analytics engines. However, Dellara emphasizes that this AI-driven transformation depends critically on high-quality voice infrastructure, as poor call quality corrupts the data that AI systems rely on. VOSS provides solutions for monitoring voice performance, automating provisioning, and ensuring operational visibility across CX platforms and voice infrastructure, positioning organizations to capitalize on intelligent voice innovation and turn conversations into measurable business value.

Christopher Martini from VOSS Solutions presents a case study of a successful global Microsoft Teams phone migration that transitioned nearly 60,000 users across four regions in under seven months with zero business disruption. The project achieved over $2M in cost savings while demonstrating that large-scale cloud voice transformations can be executed seamlessly when built on proper methodology. Martini outlines the hidden complexities of global migrations, including coordinating distributed environments, managing multiple stakeholders, and maintaining operations across different time zones and regulatory requirements. He presents VOS Solutions' blueprint for success, which includes a global migration framework with local precision, structured after-hours cutover waves, deep collaboration across all teams, and automation built into delivery processes. The presentation serves as both a success story and a guide for organizations planning their own voice transformation projects, emphasizing that speed doesn't require shortcuts when quality is engineered into every step of the process.

In this insightful blog, Jamie Litherland, Solutions Owner at VOSS, discusses the automation advantage in reducing workplace costs and complexities through intelligent license management. The talk is part of a series exploring how organizations can effectively manage their Microsoft 365 environments. Addressing the issues of license sprawl and operational complexities caused by traditional management methods, and highlighting how automation connects licensing to real-time workforce changes. By reclaiming and repurposing unused licenses and providing granular insights into license usage, organizations can achieve proactive decision-making, ensuring compliance and optimizing costs. Litherland advocates for a governance framework that combines visibility and control for successful digital workplace management, positing that organizations embracing these strategies will drive efficiency and maximize the return on technology investments in the coming year.

See how organizations can strengthen governance in their Microsoft 365 and Teams environments through security by design principles, and smart access controls. The blog addresses the common challenge of access control sprawl that accumulates over time, creating security risks through too many administrators, insufficient guardrails, and inconsistent permissions that don't align with business needs. Rather than treating security as an afterthought, forward-thinking organizations are embedding permission management directly into their operational framework. VOSS offers a solution through tenant-wide role-based access control (RBAC) that maps roles directly to organizational structures, allowing regional administrators to work autonomously while maintaining global policy consistency. This approach ensures accountability, reduces overprivileged accounts, provides clear audit trails, and supports regulatory compliance while enabling teams to operate efficiently and focus on strategic initiatives rather than incident response.

Hear how enterprises with strong Microsoft 365 monitoring capabilities are still missing a critical component: governance. While monitoring tools effectively show what's happening in digital workplace environments, they can't prevent issues from occurring or address root causes. This gap is particularly pronounced in global organizations where fragmented environments lead to inconsistent configurations, unclear ownership, and rising costs. VOSS bridges this gap by providing a governance framework that includes policy-driven automation, delegated administration, and hierarchy modeling. This approach transforms IT operations from reactive monitoring to proactive management, resulting in more predictable costs, reduced compliance risk, and consistent user experiences across the organization.

Bill Dellara, Chief Product Officer at VOSS, presents the company's strategic approach to AI integration in their platform for Microsoft 365 and cloud-based UC environments. He explains how VOSS differentiates itself from vendors who simply add AI as a marketing label by embedding AI as an intelligence layer built into their core platform. The presentation covers five core AI principles: insights and guidance, productivity and efficiency, predictive analytics, proactive monitoring, and agentic automation. Dellara highlights the major enhancements in VOSS 25.3, particularly the evolution of Wingman, their AI assistant for administrators, which now offers fully agentic capabilities with conversation history, context understanding, expanded action recommendations, deeper platform data access, and guided troubleshooting for user experience issues. He concludes by outlining the roadmap for 2026, focusing on deeper automation and richer insights, while inviting customer feedback to shape future development.

Discussing the evolution of digital workplace priorities as we approach 2026, Bill Dellara explains how 2025 marked a turning point where enterprises shifted focus from collaboration features to deeper concerns about governance, risk management, and data ownership. This blogcast covers how AI capabilities have become table stakes, while governance and compliance have emerged as primary buying drivers. Dellara highlights how regulated industries are leading this transformation, and emphasizes that digital workplace decisions now involve cross-functional teams beyond IT. He concludes with recommendations for enterprise leaders to prioritize governance, automation, and insights over incremental functionality as they prepare for 2026.

VOSS shares insights from Microsoft Ignite, highlighting how AI, automation, and UC operations are converging to shape the future of digital workplaces. The event reinforced that organizations are moving toward an automation-first mindset, seeking to simplify operations and automate at scale. Microsoft's roadmap emphasizes AI-powered operations and cross-platform governance, areas where VOSS extends native Microsoft capabilities by providing automation maturity, visibility, and performance optimization. VOSS delivers an automation fabric that spans applications and systems, offering lifecycle automation, policy enforcement, and cross-platform orchestration. The platform provides AI-driven insights, end-to-end monitoring, and deep business analytics that help organizations optimize licensing, capacity, and costs while supporting their transition to AI-centered digital workplace models.

Exploring the evolution of the digital workplace in response to hybrid work, multi-vendor collaboration, and the rapid rise of generative AI. VOSS explains how traditional standardization approaches are no longer sufficient for today's fluid work environment, where agility has become a baseline requirement rather than an aspirational goal. Highlighting the increasing complexity organizations face with diverse technology stacks, remote work demands, and the need for continuous adaptation. See how VOSS enables organizations to move from rigid, reactive systems to intelligent, adaptive ones that can evolve with business needs, integrate AI capabilities, and support better employee experiences while maintaining governance and control.

Tim Jalland presents resources developed in partnership with Microsoft analyst Kevin Keeler to help organizations optimize their Microsoft 365 licensing strategy. The presentation addresses the growing complexity of Microsoft licensing, including overlapping entitlements, unused licenses, and inconsistent governance that lead to wasted spending and missed opportunities. The featured resources include Kevin's white paper 'Driving Business Value Through Smarter Microsoft Licensing,' which provides a strategic framework and licensing effectiveness model, a two-part LinkedIn live series covering licensing changes and ROI maximization strategies, and an article about the 'one hundred billion dollar blind spot' in Microsoft license value realization. These tools aim to transform license management from a reactive administrative task into a strategic advantage that balances financial accountability with operational agility.

See the importance of transforming collaboration platforms into foundations for AI-powered productivity. Highlighting the challenges IT leaders face due to limited visibility into usage, performance, and costs, which can lead to wasted resources and hinder AI readiness. But, by introducing an enterprise-owned visibility and automation layer, organizations can optimize their collaboration environments, reduce dependence on external providers, and enhance agility.

Tim Jalland, a Solutions and Product Manager at VOSS, discusses the importance of role-based access control (RBAC) in managing Microsoft licenses effectively. He highlights the complexities of license governance in global organizations and emphasizes the need for a hierarchical approach to RBAC. Automation plays a crucial role in streamlining license assignment and cancellation, reducing manual effort while ensuring transparency and accountability. VOSS enhances this process by integrating RBAC hierarchy and automation, allowing enterprises to manage licenses confidently and efficiently. Ultimately, VOSS provides a framework that balances security, simplicity, and scalability in license management.

Derek Lipscomb opened the UCX event by discussing the importance of realistic, ethical, and inclusive AI. The event highlighted the shift from AI experimentation to practical applications, emphasizing measurable outcomes and responsible adoption. Key themes included the need for transparency, data sovereignty, and the risks of AI being misused politically. The discussion also addressed the impact of automation on jobs and the necessity for technology to empower all individuals. Overall, the event called for accountability and inclusivity in the deployment of AI solutions.

This episode focuses on the challenges enterprises face in bridging the gap between license assignment and actual usage, highlighting the risks of underutilized features and wasted spending. It emphasizes the importance of license adoption insights to track activation and maximize business impact, moving beyond mere compliance. The discussion includes the need for real-time analytics to provide visibility into license activation and identify inactive licenses. By auditing current license usage and investing in analytics, organizations can align their license investments to enhance adoption and efficiency, ultimately maximizing ROI.

In a cloud-first world, Microsoft licensing has become increasingly complex, with enterprises spending over eight billion dollars monthly. Poor management often results in overpurchasing and underutilized services, highlighting the need for better license intelligence. By understanding license usage, organizations can make informed decisions, streamline processes, and maximize ROI. Implementing proactive governance and centralized platforms can transform license management into a strategic advantage. An audit and sustainable practices are essential for unlocking cost savings and agility.

At DSEI 2025 in London, the focus was on the rapid pace of digital transformation in the defense sector, highlighting the importance of AI and quantum computing as enablers of innovation. The event showcased real-world applications of emerging technologies and emphasized the necessity of collaboration across various sectors to build resilient ecosystems. Cybersecurity remained a dominant theme, with evolving access management models and a push for vendor-agnostic solutions. Attendees recognized that simply adopting technology isn't enough; organizations must embed and scale innovations effectively. The future of defense will hinge on balancing innovation with resilience, a challenge that will shape the industry's next era.

Listen as Jamie Litherland, the Solutions Manager at VOSS, discussing the importance of the human factor in technology services. Jamie emphasizes that even the best platforms require strong support to ensure a seamless digital workplace. And, unlike legacy UC tool providers, VOSS takes a proactive approach, adapting its solutions to fit the unique needs of each business. This commitment to service transforms technology into real business value, providing clients with peace of mind and a true partnership. VOSS invites those facing challenges with their current vendors to reach out for a conversation.

Hear about the significant hidden costs associated with legacy unified communications (UC) tools, which can drain budgets and frustrate IT teams. It highlights the inefficiencies caused by multiple platforms, reactive vendor support, and the risks of dependency on a single vendor. Legacy tools not only incur high operational expenses but also create compliance gaps and security vulnerabilities. Hear why enterprises should consider modern solutions like VOSS, which offer automation, real-time insights, and improved agility, ultimately driving better ROI and reducing operational overhead.

At the Nexus Live event, Rob Moore, the Chief Customer Officer at VOSS, highlighted the company's leadership in AI-driven IT transformation. The event focused on the shift from reactive to proactive IT operations, emphasizing the importance of AI, automation, and observability. VOSS leverages real-time analytics and predictive modelling to anticipate issues and enhance operational efficiency, particularly through its integration with ServiceNow. By enabling zero-touch provisioning and centralized control, VOSS empowers organizations to modernize their IT operations and reduce service disruptions. Ultimately, VOSS is paving the way for IT leaders to harness the full potential of their operations.