Amid the AI buzz across Asia Pacific, enterprise communications infrastructure is quietly becoming a boardroom-level discussion.

Yet modernisation in this region is rarely a straightforward cloud migration to UCaaS. On-prem UC remains prevalent among large enterprises in regulated and latency-sensitive sectors, and hybrid solutions have become the pragmatic default, allowing organisations to maintain control over compliance-sensitive data while extending capabilities through the cloud. The question APAC enterprises face is no longer whether to modernise, but how to do so without disrupting operations or abandoning existing investment. We discuss the challenges and possible solutions with Narasimha Murthy, Senior Solution Consultant, APAC, Alcatel-Lucent.

Why are legacy communications systems a cybersecurity risk issue, and not just a matter of IT refresh, in an age of hybrid work and AI?

Narasimha Murthy (NM): Legacy communications systems are no longer just “old phone systems”. They sit inside a much larger digital environment powering enterprise business communications and collaborations that now include remote workers, cloud applications, multichannel customer interactions data and AI-enabled workflows. That makes them part of the enterprise attack surface and if targeted, poses potential business loss and reputation damage.

The risk becomes more serious when systems reach end-of-life. Once official vendor support stops, organisations lose access to regular patches, updates and security fixes. Known vulnerabilities can remain exposed, while IT teams are left relying on workarounds, specialist support or costly third-party maintenance.

Hybrid work has also changed the risk profile. As ‘work from home’ becomes part of the HR policies, organisations’ network perimeters are being stretched and tested as never before as communications can be initiated and terminated from and to anywhere. A weakened, increased attack surface creates vulnerability for organisations and opportunity for those with a nefarious bent.

Today, cybercriminals are targeting the communications equipment of companies of all sizes, across all sectors, with a complete disregard for collateral damage along the way. When they block the entire communications infrastructure of a large organisation, the risk can be immense.

For enterprises in Asia Pacific, the issue is not only whether the system still works. It is whether it can be secured, monitored, updated and integrated into the wider digital environment. This is why modern communications infrastructure needs to be treated as part of cyber resilience and business continuity, not just as a utility.

What are the operational and financial risks of deferred communications infrastructure modernisation?

NM: Delaying modernisation rarely avoids cost. It usually shifts from predictable outflows with vendor insurance to higher costs and riskier areas such as ad hoc maintenance, forklift upgrades, workarounds, specialist support, custom integrations and emergency fixes.

Older systems bring the challenges of obsolescence and maintenance issues with limited vendor support, difficulty sourcing replacement parts, spiralling maintenance costs and challenges integrating with modern technologies.

In addition, organisations that defer communications modernisation have performance issues. Older systems can be harder to monitor, recover and secure. In customer-facing environments, poor call routing, missed interactions, unreliable conferencing or slow escalation can quickly affect service quality and customer confidence. Siloed business calls and Unified communications are the hurdles to achieve efficiency.

As mentioned earlier, cybersecurity is a massive operational risk as well. With certain organisations, blocking the entire communications infrastructure can lead to disruption of core business functions and operations, leading to a loss of productivity and trust from key external stakeholders. This risk is compounded when organisations handle sensitive customer data.

The longer enterprises wait, the more disruptive the eventual upgrade becomes. A forced migration after an outage, breach or support deadline gives the organisation much less control. A planned approach to upgrade or migrate an old legacy system to modernised communication can be phased around business needs, for operational continuity, future-ready scalability and cost predictability.

This is why modernisation should be approached as a controlled evolution, not a rip-and-replace exercise. Enterprises should keep what still works, upgrade what creates risk, and build a communications environment that is more secure, easier to manage and ready to support hybrid work, customer engagement and future AI-enabled capabilities.

How should CIOs be rethinking communications infrastructure as a strategic asset rather than a utility?

NM: CIOs should view communications infrastructure as part of the business critical IT infrastructure backbone. It directly affects how employees collaborate, how customers are served, how incidents are escalated, and how well the organisation can maintain continuity when disruption occurs.

The question is not whether an existing system can keep running for another year. It is whether it gives the organisation enough efficiency, security and flexibility to support where the business is heading.

Modern communications can improve employee productivity through secure work-from-anywhere capabilities, mobility, collaboration tools and AI-enabled features such as AI Voice agents, Chatbots, transcription, summaries and analytics. It can also improve customer experience by connecting voice, messaging, web chat, CRM and contact center workflows into a more unified service model.

For CIOs, this makes modernisation a business capability decision, not just an infrastructure refresh. The goal is to reduce risk, improve productivity, support compliance and give the enterprise more control.

How can APAC enterprises modernise communications without wholesale replacement of existing infrastructure?

NM: The first for APAC enterprises is to plan your transition to modern infrastructure to adapt holistic business communications that connect people, IOT devices and processes.

This means testing the right solution to commit to, preparing your teams and users for the transition and then deciding on the speed of the migration. Some businesses opt for a swift, disruptive migration to maximise benefits, others prefer a more gradual approach, moving workloads in phases to minimise operational impact.

Choosing which infrastructure organisations can keep vs replace has to come downstream as a function of what you want your technology and communication infrastructure to do for you. A key consideration is whether move your communications the cloud or stay with on-prem or hybrid models.

When organisations decide on their goals and migration approach, they can then decide which of their existing infrastructure is good to keep, and if they are better served in implementing fresh infrastructure instead which is often not just higher performance, but more scalable and future-proof.