A Host of Reasons to Go With Hosted VoIP

I recently read a question posted on an expert’s forum that asked, “Why WOULDN'T a business ALWAYS go with a hosted phone system?"

I felt obligated to post an answer.

A properly run business will certainly look at all options when making decisions about the future of the company. Communications decisions (inclusive of not only PBX, but also e-mail, unified communications, fax, etc.) should not be any different. In fact, I would argue that making the correct communications solutions decisions are critical for the success of your business. Think about it. Your business runs and lives on its communications capabilities. Without core communications capabilities you wouldn't have a business to run. You maintain and enhance your relationships with your customers, partners and vendors by communicating. The plain truth is that hosted or cloud-based systems provide businesses with the greatest level of protection, redundancy, capabilities and efficiencies of any solution on the market today.

Without a TREMENDOUS investment, you cannot implement a premise-based PBX solution that has a primary PBX in one city and a secondary or backup PBX in another city, both with redundant carrier connections and dynamic routing to allow for inbound and outbound call failover between the two locations.

A common misconception about hosted or cloud-based systems is that they do not have much in the way of customization capabilities. Premise-based manufacturers have been promoting this point as a weakness of a cloud-based systems and it is simply not true. Hosted IP PBXs like Alteva's are built on widely accepted open API standards. With scripting capabilities like VoiceXML, CCXML and a very simple restful HTTP API interface, customers can easily integrate their CRM, workflow, document management systems or any other business with their telephony, mail, unified communications or any other communications component.

In fact, cloud-based systems will get customers integrated much more quickly than premise-based solutions will. When trying to integrate a premise-based PBX, a customer starts from ground zero every time. The development effort starts from scratch every time, wasting time and money. Choosing a seasoned cloud or hosted solution will give the customer access to a tremendous amount of development components that have already been completed. These pre-developed components can be easily adapted to work with any business process to get businesses integrated and realizing efficiencies in a fraction of the time and expense of what a premise-based solution costs. Why re-create the wheel when someone else will let you drive their Ferrari?

Then there’s the cost savings element. Premise-based manufacturers often propagate misleading information about the cost of hosted solutions. The truth is that feature-for-feature, capability-for-capability, hosted solutions always cost less. When buying a premise-based solution, there are many different cost components: installation, configuration, hardware, maintenance agreements, software upgrades, site visits, additional ports, voice circuits, data circuits, carrier fees and so on — the list is endless. If you buy a premise-based solution you will be getting invoices from all over the place. With a hosted solution, you get one provider and one bill. There will be no one pointing fingers at the one other if something goes wrong. Only one company is involved, so it’s a one company solution, simple and more cost efficient. Not to mention a hosted solution will cost you 80 percent less upfront than a comparable premise-based solution. Why spend $50,000 to get into a non-redundant PBX solution with little integration capabilities (out of the box) that will take you months to get it where you need it to be when you can get all of the redundancy, flexibility, and integration capabilities for $10,000?

So I suggest that the real question is, “Why would a small to mid-size businesses EVER go with a premise phone solution?”

Just my 2 cents...

William R. Bumbernick is president and CEO of Alteva LLC. He has more than 10 years of senior management and entrepreneurial experience in telecom, IT and managed services. Since 1994, William has been involved in executive levels of leadership within the technology and telecommunications sectors.