The advent of VoIP and cloud services have had a major democratizing force in the communications technology market, leveling the playing field and giving small businesses access to sophisticated features previously unaffordable yet needed to be competitive in the long term.
Yep, you’ve heard all that before. But what if a purely cloud/hosted telephony solution isn’t the right choice for your small business?
With a cloud-based solution, the PBX (News - Alert) is managed offsite by a service provider, and only the endpoints (e.g. SIP phones) reside on your company’s premises. While this approach has many advantages, most notably less investment needed in hardware and lower ongoing maintenance/support costs, it certainly doesn’t work for every company.
Security is one concern with cloud-based VoIP systems. Not all hosting providers offer the level of security needed to keep your valuable company information safe. And, in any case, that information is now outside your direct control. You also have limited ability to monitor the system’s performance.
And, speaking for performance, there is the issue of software revisions and system updates. While it might sound nice to have maintenance handled by someone else, anyone who has ever had experienced a forced computer reboot to load updates or suddenly had a feature disappear from a program after a new version is installed knows how disruptive automatic updates can be.
The same goes for VoIP; mandatory changes can result in features you rely on being changed or removed without your go-ahead. There’s nothing wrong with updates; you just need control over when they happen.
Lack of redundancy can also be a problem, especially for businesses with multiple sites. If the hosted platform or network connections fail, communications are lost at all of your branches.
Finally, cloud-based VoIP systems are not necessarily less expensive than their premise-based counterparts. Over a three-to-five year period, monthly per-user charges associated with cloud services cost more than maintaining a premise system.
Yet, most small businesses think they can’t get what they need in a VoIP system—reliability, accommodating of current workflows, expandable with company growth, flexible features—at an affordable price without going all-cloud.
That’s untrue.
A hybrid architecture delivers the best of both worlds: cloud and premise-based telephony. This type of setup addresses all the concerns noted above, and overcomes typical difficulties small businesses experience when installing a communications system.
ZYCOO’s CTMS VoIP system, for example, allows all remote branches to use a single solution, but also offers benefits only a premise system is capable of.
With CTMS, you have a fail-safe option to use the PSTN if internet connectivity is lost. Each site features a local system so internal branches calls can be passed across high-speed networks. Across the whole organization, there is no single point of failure.
The system also gives you full administrative access to monitor and manage availability and performance. Further, the system at each branch can be customized to meet its specific requirements.
Plus, this hybrid architecture provides better support for legacy devices like fax machines.
While cloud-based VoIP systems have their merits, they’re not perfect. Luckily, with a hybrid solution like ZYCOO’s CTMS, it’s possible to get sophisticated telephony at an affordable price without losing the benefits of on-premises solutions.
Edited by Alisen Downey