1. Reliable connectivity is cheaper
The biggest barrier to cloud-based telephone systems has been broadband because voice traffic is intolerant to varying speeds and congestion. This issue, coupled with the ‘best-effort’ nature of broadband technologies, has given hosted voice a bad start and a bad name. Now that companies can buy fibre broadband and a dedicated 20Mb leased line for £199 per month they are starting to use it.
2. Better security
Early offerings based on freeware like Asterisk, threw up a new problem of telephone fraud. They were easy to hack into and customers found themselves with bills for thousands of pounds. The best propositions these days are based on robust carrier-class switches that sit within a private cloud behind industrial firewalls.
Home-grown systems were hard to partition for multiple tenants and new features were often developed in a haphazard way, making platforms prone to software issues and outages. Platforms like Broadsoft have proper development and release cycles minimising upgrade issues.
3. Prices have come down
When the cost of extensions, new handsets, a host of optional features and call charges were taken into account the savings with hosted telephony were often marginal. Only companies that needed the flexibility of the cloud found real value in changing their business communication solution. These days a single monthly fee often includes all the standard features, equipment and call charges.
4. Number porting is easier
Customers often want to retain their telephone numbers and this has not always been guaranteed or straightforward. Nowadays we have mature porting arrangements, similar to the PAC process in mobile.
5. New regulations
In some industry sectors, governing bodies now insist upon calls being recorded and if your business involves credit cards you face steep fines if you are not PCI compliant. Adding these features to traditional phone systems is expensive, especially if only a few people in the company need them. With hosted telephony features like call recording and PCI compliance are often inexpensive and can be added per extension and per month.
6. Changing business behaviours
Nowadays it seems everyone works away from the office sometime and this is perfectly acceptable as a business communication solution. Traditional telephone systems are not good at this, nor are they ideal for companies with several offices or flexible office needs. A hosted solution allows employees to work remotely as if they are in the office and locations are simple to bring on and close down with no capital risk.
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