Hosting Telephony in the Cloud
Whenever cloud and enterprise-class applications are mentioned together, the popular perception is of complex software. Various models such as PaaS, IaaS and SaaS may be used to describe the service being used, but cloud-hosted telephony is another service with rich dividends.
When cloud-based telephony began, many questions were raised. Legacy telephone equipment had served companies well for decades. Why was there a need to change?
Doing Better than Legacy Systems
Cloud-hosted VoIP telephony makes a number of improvements to traditional telephony. A business forced to change locations can really appreciate cloud-based telephony. Simply plug your IP phones into a LAN port and get back the entire range of communication capabilities – no matter how many times or how frequently you shift base.
There are obvious cost benefits as well, especially if your work makes you talk to clients and coworkers overseas. Many users of cloud based telephony have discovered that the service is far more robust compared to traditional phone systems. If there is a natural calamity, land line phones go down. However, cloud-based IP telephones will work so long as they get a connection to the Internet (Ethernet, fiber, wireless or cellular-phone based).
In most cases, enterprise phone systems grow as the company grows. There are ad hoc fixes, multiple vendors and multiple carriers. This makes the system more complex and difficult to manage. There are different billing cycles and maintenance issues. With a cloud-based telephony system, growth is simple and easy. There is no requirement for ad hoc systems and the entire telephone system continues to be managed better with a single bill to clear.
Going Beyond Legacy Systems
Besides, simply doing the same things better, cloud-based telephony carries additional benefits. Telephones do not exist in a silo. Cloud based VoIP has now begun to integrate business processes with business communication. Since voice is packaged, you can interface it with voice-to-text, text-to-voice, email, chat, presentations and video. Hosted telephony service providers provide information about your telephone usage that legacy equipment is simply not capable of. You can generate business intelligence and connect to functions like sales and CRM to get value that legacy phones would simply not provide.
VoIP systems, particularly cloud-based ones, can also provide better security to every connection without any additional effort or equipment.
Is it your core competency?
Most companies do not have core competency in managing telephone systems. However, it is the chief business of cloud-based telephone service providers. Therefore, there is no doubt that these companies would be able to give you far better service and capabilities.
Is cost the primary consideration?
Most experts say that if cost is the primary consideration, hosted telephony is not the best option. There are a number of free VoIP solutions possible, but these do not provide you carrier-grade quality. If your business is going to rely on cloud-based telephony, you need to factor in quality of service issues and build your network accordingly. Based on the service level agreement with your service provider, there will be requirements of network optimization, last mile connectivity and bandwidth. These will determine how good your experience with cloud based telephony is.
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About the Guest Author:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
