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Communications Firm Sails through Hurricane Sandy with VoIP Softphones

TMCnews Featured Article


March 21, 2013

Communications Firm Sails through Hurricane Sandy with VoIP Softphones

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor


We knew that Hurricane Sandy was coming, but few of us prepared as well as PCR (News - Alert) Educator, based in the DC metro suburb of Rockville, Maryland. PCR Educator, which provides cloud communications for schools, recognized that telecommunications services could be disrupted by the storm, and it was likely that not all of the company’s 13 employees would be able to make it into the office during the disaster.


True to the prediction, the next week the storm hit, employees were not able to make it into work, and businesses with copper wire-based phone systems were crippled in many cases. PCR Educator was not affected by the storm, however.

That’s because the company, knowing that the storm was coming, switched from a cumbersome, maintenance-heavy on-premises PBX (News - Alert) to a cloud-based solution offered by 8x8. It took only a day for the company to convert the services, set up passwords and forwarding, and download 8×8’s Virtual Office on desktops and mobile devices.

A video by 8x8 highlights exactly how easy it is to switch phone systems to a cloud-based offering.

Setting up a softphone with 8x8 (News - Alert) is as easy as unpacking the softphone, plugging the handset into the base, plugging the base into an electrical outlet, and attaching an Ethernet cable to the base (the Ethernet cable replacing what in pre-VoIP days would be a telephone cable). The softphone then automatically initializes the way a new cable modem does when it is first attached to the network.

Once the softphone has initialized itself, 8x8 customers just need to enter an activation code and calling can begin. Some could argue that softphones are easier to set up than new telephone lines.

PCR Educator’s new softphone system came in hand during the storm, as predicted.

Employees were not able to make it into the office, but because the phone system was now based in the cloud they were able to keep working by leveraging the 8x8 Virtual Office app. They connected with the office phone system using their iPhones, Android (News - Alert) phones and tablets, according to an article about the phone migration in Smallbiz Technology.

Even though the storm affected infrastructure on the East Coast, PCR Educator was covered because 8x8 has data centers on either coast. So the company’s phone system was untouched.

Having the telephone infrastructure in the cloud, and thereby in more than one geographical location, meant that PCR Educator’s data was kept secure with total redundancy and 100 percent of data in more than one location in case the storm did knock out local infrastructure.

While the migration to a cloud-based telephone system was easy, keeping their business running without phones definitely would not have been as simple.




Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli







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