Get leading edge technology and lower your telephone service costs. Sound too good to be true? Well, as so many businesses and institutions have come to realize, those are the key advantages gained when switching from a traditional PBX phone system to a hosted VoIP solution.
A hosted VoIP system gives your company the benefits of a PBX system plus a lot more, and does so without the investment in capital assets that quickly depreciate and are soon rendered obsolete by ever-advancing technologies. Furthermore, there is no need to put money into maintaining temperature-controlled phone and server rooms that require expensive wiring and air conditioning, and you will avoid having to deploy back-up systems and battery packs to protect against the dangers of equipment failures and power outages. Without all of that added equipment at your facility, you may also find that you’ll be paying lower insurance premiums and smaller utility bills.
Just as important, a hosted VoIP service, by utilizing your existing internet connection, will reduce monthly telephone bills.
For those new to the idea of a VoIP hosted service, installation is a simple matter. All that’s required are an internet connection capable of meeting your needs for voice and data transmission, a router and IP telephones. What is more, you can have your same business telephone numbers ported to the host provider. This is an important aspect, since most businesses have a vested interest in their existing phone numbers and wish to avoid the cost and inconvenience of re-printing business cards, letterhead and marketing materials and don’t want to go through the bother of notifying customers and business partners of phone number changes.
To keep your service on the leading edge of communications technology, the host will install software updates as they become available without interrupting your operation. This relieves you of the responsibility and costs of licensing fees and system maintenance. It is an important role of the host is to make sure that your system has the latest telephony features and is operating in the most secure environment.
However, this does not leave you completely reliant on the host for making routine system changes. An employee with administrative authority can access a service portal on the system and do such things as create extensions, change call forwarding options and delete voicemail boxes.
As a business-class telephone service over the internet, a hosted VoIP service includes such standard features as auto attendant with all of its various options, automated call distribution, call conferencing, voicemail, voicemail-to-email notification, music-on- hold, call paging, call blocking, management reporting, and the integration of mobile or remote employee devices (a hosted phone solution allows employees to connect remotely using a broadband internet port by way of an IP phone, a computer or a smart phone). What is not standard is the superior call quality that a hosted VoIP system offers.
You may also wish to consider adding SIP trunking to take full advantage of the business continuity and cost savings of VoIP. In that way you will have a single communication path that delivers voice and data on a converged line utilizing the speed and reliability of the internet.
You will find that host servicers provide 24-hour system monitoring and maintenance and operate compliant data centers with reliable capacity to accommodate the growth of your business without disrupting your operations.
For all of his you’ll pay a set monthly fee for only the services that you need, selecting them from a broad menu that the host can offer and with the flexibility to quickly add or remove services as circumstances change..
There is a matter of trust involved in all of this, since by employing a host service, the customer is relying on a third party in a remote location. So, it is critical that users have confidence in the host’s ability not only to deliver quality service at a reasonable price but to maintain a secure operating environment. Toward that end, the host service must satisfy customers that it has a set of security policies, layered technologies and controls to protect infrastructure and data from attack, to include provisions for system back-up and disaster recovery.
In summary, the key benefits of a hosted service are: (1) the cost savings it yields and (2) having access to the latest, most productive telecommunications technologies without the financial and operational risks of owning and maintaining them. Since providers share resources with many clients, the resulting economies of scale produce fees that obviate the need for a user to purchase, install and update hardware and software. And that frees up IT staff to devote their energies to the profit-generating aspects of your core business.
