Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The case for a hosted phone system

As a former "Authorized Dealer" for one of the top business telephone system manufacturers for many years, I have seen my fair share of systems that greatly exceeded the generally accepted life expectancy for a PBX. Seven to 10 years is fairly common, and I have even seen some of the larger systems approach 20 years.

Eventually the day does come when the system is just too much of a risk and has to be dealt with. In spite of the many ways there are to communicate these days, for most organizations a sustained outage of the telephone system is simply unacceptable. So what should you do?

You could continue to tempt fate, and hope that your vendor can put together the required hardware and software of your obsolete system when the inevitable failure occurs. Or you can do the prudent thing, and start the process of evaluating various systems and services, so you have at least some idea of what you will be up against in terms of dollars and implementation. How soon can you get systems and services provisioned and deployed? Two weeks? Two months? Reality is probably somewhere in between, IF you've already done your homework.

One option I suggest you consider is a Hosted IP phone system. There are a multitude of players in the space, so pricing is competitive, and there is no longer a significant gap in features. As a matter of fact, Hosted offers some real elasticity that is much more difficult to achieve in a purchased or leased on-premise hardware/software solution. Hosted systems can easily grow (or contract) with your organization.

Other advantages to the Hosted or "Cloud Phone" systems include easy deployment of remote or home users, low start-up costs and the virtual elimination of your outbound calling costs. Most providers in this space include domestic calls at no additional charge. International and 800 inbound calls are billed over and above your flat monthly fee. Very often, the amount you are paying currently for a combination of analog trunks and/or a PRI T1 is MORE than you might pay for the flat monthly fee of a Hosted System.

Contact me directly at LineSpeed: LineSpeed for more information: 201-596-4000, x103

smelillo@inclink.net