The low-down on Cloud-based telephony

2013 has been pegged as the year of Cloud collaboration. It is unsurprising then, that businesses moving their traditional, premise-based PBXs to the Cloud are becoming increasingly common. There are a number of benefits of Cloud-based VoIP, and these go much deeper than just the cost-centric. I am a huge proponent of Cloud-based telephony, and would urge skeptical IT directors to cast their eye over the run-down below if they would like to meet stringent budgets while doing more for less.

Before considering other benefits, most will be interested in cost saving potential, and it’s no secret that Cloud-based solutions can offer significant savings. But how does that break down? With no onsite PBX platform needed, a Cloud-based telephony service requires substantially less capex. As well as this, you are afforded complete budget transparency thanks to a predictable per-user-per-month charging model, that’s inclusive of maintenance and software upgrades. Contrastingly, traditional phone systems often give rise to unpredictable and unexpected costs.

With the Cloud also comes reliability. Services are delivered from a high-availability, resilient infrastructure within the provider’s Cloud, backed by robust SLAs. Using the Cloud also means your organisation is no longer dependent on any single site, improving business continuity through easy rerouting in the event of an incident, and integration of home and remote workers. And with the ability to add users quickly and easily, flexibility is provided as standard.

Cloud-based telephony helps you deploy productivity-enhancing features more easily and cost-effectively than with traditional phone systems. Features including Call Centre, Fixed Mobile Convergence, Call Recording and Unified Communications can be delivered where they’re needed, on a per-user basis. And not only is productivity improved, but the Cloud also helps reduce your environmental impact. With no PBX platform to power and cool in your server room, Cloud telephony services can reduce your carbon emissions by up to 45% compared with leading onsite PBXs.

As you can see, Cloud-based IP telephony offers a plethora of operational and cost benefits, but for risk-adverse IT directors, making the move to a Cloud telephone system will also require a great deal of trust in the provider. To help with that, Stefan Haase recently developed 5 key questions to ask a provider before taking Cloud services; choosing the right provider is essential and we’d strongly recommend being diligent in your choice.