A trip to the “telephone closet” was always a time waster for the staffer in charge of managing our telephony equipment. Hours would be wasted on what should have been a simple operation.
Avoiding this waste of time is part of why companies of all sizes are embracing cloud-based phone services. There’s no hardware to maintain, and deployment is easier, even if the company decides to manage its own telephone hardware.
Cloud PBX (News - Alert) systems offer many benefits, including not just ease of management and quick deployment, but also mobility advantages. But cloud PBX systems don’t always go far enough.
What’s really needed is a cloud telephone management system (CTMS).
While a cloud PBX is an office telephone network in the cloud, a cloud telephone management system goes a step further by rolling every piece of the telephone equation into a cloud-managed solution. This includes the PBX, but also handsets and switching.
A CTMS is composed of three parts: a cloud telephony management center (CTMC), a cloud telephony node (CTN), and IP phones.
The CTMC is software for enterprise communication management that manages a telephone network. The CTN is the node of cloud telephony management system and handling the switch of telephony communication, such as a cloud PBX. And, of course, an IP phone is any handset that supports the SIP protocol.
The advantage of a CTMS is that it gives businesses total control of their business phone systems, whether those systems are in the building or at remote locations. While a cloud-based PBX is a good start for simple remote management of telephone service, a CTMS completes the circle and gives firms dashboard access to all elements of their telephone system.
For small businesses this might be overkill. But for larger firms, having a central management console and control of all telephone system elements can bring real employee time savings.
Currently there aren’t many examples of CTMS technology in the wild, but I expect that to change as businesses adopt cloud PBX systems and discover the additional need for a fuller telephone management solution.
Edited by Alisen Downey