Caspar Herzberg |
Nowadays enterprises and other organisations are being pushed to move to the cloud for faster, easier and more involved communication and collaboration.
In this environment, Microsoft is one of the most relevant actors and actively promotes its ‘Intelligent Communication’ (aka unified communication) platforms: the well-known Skype for Business and the recently presented Teams.
Even though these two platforms may appear as very similar, the truth is there are some relevant differences which make them suitable for different needs.
Microsoft itself highlights the similarity between them, underlining there is actually a push to move to the fully cloud-based option of the two: Teams.
In a scenario like this, with a cloud-oriented market, why is it so important for Microsoft to maintain Skype for Business, the on-premises/hybrid-oriented platform? The answer is simple: there are millions of users worldwide that are still using it and not all organisations are able to move to the new platform in the short/medium term, both for economic or geographical reasons. Think about all the small to medium sized enterprises that invested on Skype for Business for their communications, or the companies operating in areas with low network coverage quality. There’s also those that, for various reasons, need to manage calls locally.
It is important to say that there is not any deadline by which all of these customers have to move to Teams, but they are likely to do so sooner or later.
And what will happen to all those systems connected to the existing networks once the time for migration arrives? Think about financial and trading agencies: they need to record all communications for international regulations. What about their recording systems?
Here comes MidaRec.
MidaRec is a recording system provided by Mida Solutions that can easily record both Skype for Business and Teams communications as well as a variety of other technologies. It has become well-established both in the critical communication and in the financial world, where recording systems are challenged with maximum quality and reliability requirements.
The solution is based on a single platform supporting all relevant communication technologies, thanks to its ‘umbrella approach’, while the extremely flexible architecture allows users to deploy MidaRec on-premises, in the cloud, or even in a hybrid environment. This means MidaRec ensures deep and complete compatibility during all phases of migration from Skype for Business to Teams, without any need to opt for new recorders or to move recordings to new platforms.
MidaRec is composed by two different modules: the recording module (MidaRec Gateway) and the archiving module (Mida Archiver).
The recording module is dedicated to interfacing with the various environments, collecting information (both audio track and metadata) and sharing them with the centralised archiving system. By its nature, it is a distributed element, deployed where calls need to be recorded (both on-premises or in a service provider’s datacentre).
Mida Archiver is where recordings are stored for long-term retention and can be easily accessed by authorised people. This module provides many advanced features, enabling it to cope with the most restrictive international regulations like MiFID I, MiFID II and GDPR. The most relevant ones are: anti-tampering protection (with notifications for system access, file opening and/or downloading), AES file encryption up to 256bit and file compression.
Included in the Mida Archiver module, there is even a complete yet simple to use playback station, accessible almost from anywhere and from any device, as the system web portal is completely web based. Through this, it is possible to view, listen, mark, and comment on audio files, as well as complete advanced call scenario reconstruction for analysis.
Looking to record the future of your communications? MidaRec is already doing it.
Andrea Sorze is in the business development support team at Mida Solutions.