While cloud has been a compelling reason to modernize communications infrastructure, today, due to the maturity of cloud technology, there are more ways to deploy unified communications and collaboration platforms than just public cloud. Hybrid cloud, which includes public cloud connected with on-premise private cloud deployments, offers new secure options to enterprises without sacrificing the benefits of cloud. This Research Note reviews the emergence of hybrid cloud for UCC.

Introduction

Many new organizations who have aging PBXs have been naturally drawn to public clouds by the lure of pay-as-you-go operating costs, seemingly limitless elasticity, significantly less up-front capital costs, reduced operational complexity, and most importantly, levels of security that are exceedingly difficult to achieve in most self-managed on-premise deployments. However, despite the success of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) there are still large numbers of on-premise users of communications—in fact, estimates go as high as 884 Million users in 2021.