How to Use IQAs

Gather project information, qualify opportunities, or submit requests for review. Share an IQA link to collect structured information and provide a seamless experience for your customers.

Backup & Disaster Recovery

Backup as a Service (BaaS) protects the data, and typically allows for recovery of a file or server back to the customer's on-prem environment. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) protects the business, and allows for recovery of the entire IT environment (servers, storage, networking, apps, data) in the cloud.

Colocation

Colocation provides a secure data center environment for your IT infrastructure. The provider takes care of power, cooling, rack space, and bandwidth.

Connectivity Lite

Connectivity encompasses wide area network (WAN), internet, point-to-point, voice, and more. It includes services from both traditional telecom and regional fiber providers.

This lightweight version of the Connectivity IQA captures only the most essential fields needed to obtain pricing. For a more detailed assessment, consider completing the full Connectivity IQA.

Connectivity

Connectivity encompasses wide area network (WAN), internet, point-to-point, voice, and more. It includes services from both traditional telecom and regional fiber providers.

Contact Center as a Service

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that replaces traditional brick-and-mortar call centers platforms, allowing agents to work from any location. Additional benefits include built-in redundancy, flexibility, and scalability.

CX Journey

Customer Experience (CX) Artificial Intelligence (AI) software augments contact center environments by providing advanced self-service options for customers, virtual assistants for human agents, and the ability to derive business insights from recorded customer conversation transcripts.

The ROI of CX AI is derived from benefits such as self-service containment of repeatable interactions, lower customer wait times, lower interaction Average Handle Time (AHT), improved agent productivity (and satisfaction), and increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promotor Score (NPS) results.

At the end of this discovery form will be an optional self-assessment, which we encourage you to complete to help us understand your strengths, weaknesses, and priorities. Each step has a set of questions that should help you formulate your CX improvement journey.

Discovery

Use the Discovery assessment to take stock of a customer's current state and identify possible opportunities. NOTE: output does not flow to the engineering team; review with your channel manager to determine next steps (such as completing a technology-specific IQA).

Desktop as a Service

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) provides virtual desktops to end users, allowing them to use any device (laptop, tablet, phone, thin client). It differs from VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) in that the provider hosts and manages the desktop virtualization platform.

Email & Productivity

Email & Productivity is a managed SaaS solution providing hosted email, web & desktop applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, etc.), file storage, and optionally voice. Popular solutions include Microsoft 365 (FKA Office 365) and Google Workspace.

General Inquiry

This Interactive Quick Assessment (IQA) is for general engineering inquiries. Perhaps they don't fit a specific product IQA, or perhaps they are too short or broad for an in-depth IQA.

Hosted Fax

Hosted Fax or eFax is a scalable, highly available Internet service that replaces fax machines and fax servers. Users are able to securely send and receive documents using their phones or laptops.

Help Desk

Help Desk Services consist of outsourced help desk staffing, and do not typically include ticketing software. They can replace an internal help desk entirely, or provide augmentation during peak hours. Help Desk Services can reduce overhead, improve service, and increase productivity.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtual or physical servers on demand. The servers, storage, and network hardware are located in the provider's data center and abstracted from the customer.

Managed Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the top three public cloud platforms. When building and maintaining a public cloud environment, businesses often turn to Managed Services Providers (MSPs), for help with initial assessments and migrations, to ongoing security, compliance, backup, and DevOps, and all things in between.

Managed Services

Managed Services are generally remote, 24x7 services for IT infrastructure. They include proactive monitoring and alerting, patch management, engineering support, reporting and metrics, help desk for end users, and related maintenance and support. Managed Services support various IT environments, including on-premises, colocation, private cloud, and public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google, etc.).

Mobility

Mobility is an approach to work in which employees can do their jobs from anywhere using a variety of devices (i.e. smartphones, tablets) for business purposes. Broadly, Mobility may include cellular voice & data plans, mobile telecom expense management (TEM), mobile device management (MDM) software, and mobility services (device ordering, kitting, repairs, reporting, inventory mgmt., etc.).

Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing is a simulated cyberattack on a system to find and exploit security weaknesses. It helps organizations see how hackers might break in, so identified issues can be fixed to improve security. This IQA will help customers define the scope of testing required to evaluate their environment.

SD-WAN & SASE

SD-WAN is an evolutionary approach to the WAN that offers simplified management, quick turn-up, better application performance, improved resiliency, and cost savings when compared to traditional approaches. It can replace or work with MPLS, and is delivered directly, via carriers, or via managed service providers.

SASE, or Secure Access Service Edge, represents the convergence of networking and security functionality. It seeks to eliminate point solutions, providing holistic visibility into and management of security policies. No matter where the user or application lives, SASE is designed to secure and optimize that traffic.

Security

Security covers a broad range of services, from managed firewalls and IDPS to DDoS Mitigation and SIEM. Leading solutions analyze behavior to detect ever-changing threats, communicate with multiple systems to provide a comprehensive view into the environment, and include 24/7/365 Security Operations Center (SOC) support for event notification and remediation.

SIP Trunking

SIP Trunking is a method of delivering voice over the Internet (VoIP), replacing legacy solutions such as analog lines (POTS) and digital PRIs. SIP Trunks are delivered to a PBX over dedicated circuits or existing public/private connectivity.

Telecom Management

Telecom Expense Management (TEM) involves the analysis of telecom service orders, inventory, bills and disputes, in order to reduce telecom spend. It includes bill auditing and consolidation, for increased visibility (typically in a portal) and contract negotiations. Clients who implement TEM solutions usually save 20-35% annually.

Telecom Management includes a la carte outsourced services across a business's entire telecom lifecycle, from initial orders to ongoing management to contract terms. It applies to circuits, mobile lines, and even cloud services. Telecom Management can include auditing, inventory creation, project management, trouble ticket management, and escalation management.

UCaaS

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a managed PBX environment in the cloud that provides phone services to end users. It replaces on-prem PBXs as well as SIP, PRIs, and POTS lines.

UCaaS: Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a workstream collaboration tool bundled with Microsoft/Office 365 licensing. Its features include persistent individual/group instant messaging, presence, audio/web/video meetings, file sharing, and (optionally) Cloud PBX to replace or augment an existing phone system. Microsoft partners with a large ecosystem of service providers who offer multiple ways to enable PSTN dialing, as alternatives to the basic Calling Plans available directly from Microsoft.

VMware

VMware is the most widely used hypervisor to virtualize workloads in data centers and private cloud environments. Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware in November 2023, massive changes to the partner program and licensing model rolled out in 2024. Many customers and service providers have been negatively impacted, often in the form of price increases, and want to understand their options.

Physical Security

Physical security services protect people, property, and assets. Solutions include access control systems, video surveillance, intrusion detection, perimeter security, and security personnel to monitor and respond to risks. The Physical Security IQA helps guide evaluation of vulnerabilities and needs in the physical environment.

Wireless & IoT

Wireless and IoT services offer adaptable connectivity options, traditionally used as backups, but increasingly serving as primary connections where landline access is limited or a wireless-first approach is preferred. With IoT integration, they enable real-time monitoring and enhanced network resilience. This IQA will help facilitate identifying the best solution(s) for various use cases.