Engineer’s Corner – Carrier Services
As the technology landscape continues to evolve, you might have several questions on the best consumption model for your business when it comes to phone services. With everything seemingly moving to the cloud, you might be considering using hosted based phone services where the entire service becomes a monthly fee versus a premise-based solution. Hosted systems offer some great benefits, and allow companies to add and grow on a per user basis. With many features bundled in, it often provides a better level of redundancy than an on-premise system. On the other hand, premise-based systems usually offer more customization. You should have a strong understanding of the features you’ll be using before committing to either. Little things like paging, door buzzing, faxing, call ques, and call coverage can cause big problems if they are not addressed upfront. Keep in mind that the more customized a system is, the more of a challenge it can be to maintain. An often overlooked fact is that in either case, someone needs to handle moves adds and changes, sometimes the interfaces are easier with a hosted system but still require the manpower to do it even if it sits in the cloud.
When doing a cost comparison, there are costs that often get overlooked like paying a hosted provider for storing spare DIDs or accounting for taxes, which can sometimes add as much as 20% to the overall monthly costs. Costs for items such as common phones, extra phone numbers, call queuing, and special features that may be required are all important to account for. The number of hosted providers has grown tremendously as more organizations have chosen to move their voice to the cloud. They are not all the same, some are better with international footprints, some allow more customization, some are better with simple voice, and others are better at integrating texting and cell phones into their platforms. Spend the time to understand the differences before you make the move, and reach out to us if you have any questions along the way.
–Peter Fischelis, Director of Carrier Services
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