Cloud Hosted Phone Systems are controlled "in the Cloud"
Cloud Computing applied to Voice Technology
Hosted phone services are controlled “off premise” where the VoIP equipment, servers and services are “hosted”, or controlled, by the VoIP provider, which manages calls and routes them to and from the subscriber's existing ‘on premise” telephones and network equipment. Hosted VoIP is also frequently referred to as managed VoIP and a big plus is that it can save companies from the potentially expensive costs of having to invest capital in digital or VoIp phone equipment and manage the system themselves. As with all VoIP (or Internet telephony) solutions, hosted VoIP services use packet-switched telephony to transmit calls over the Internet as opposed to the circuit-switched telephony used by the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), although in some hosted VoIP cases calls from the subscriber are routed over the traditional PSTN to the hosted VoIP PBX system. With all this in mind, It’s obvious once again that now we have multiple points of failure not experienced in the past while using traditional POTS lines and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). If a decision has been made to go with VoIP to replace a digital key system, Legacy Telecom highly recommends that a certified licensed contractor is hired to perform an inspection and audit of the current cabling. We are seeing a big up-tick in Hosted and VoIp systems being sold blindly by sales organizations and phone service providers without an inspection and audit of the structured cabling network. It’s not unusual for problems to arise, forcing the fully committed customer either upgrade some or all of the structured cabling network, or in some cases to back-track and install instead, a phone system that works properly with the current network. We’ve replaced more than one new Hosted VoIP system, and one is too many.
Keep in mind that VoIP and Hosted are the future of Unified Communications, but still may not always be the best choice, all things considered . As the CEO of Fort Myers Business Telephone and Communications, I was at VoiceCon 2000 in Washington DC, it’s been 19 years and Digital and Analog Telephony STILL comprise a very large segment of the Telecommunications footprint. Many devices utilized regularly in everyday business are devices that interconnect, Like paging, overhead music, door bells, the list goes on. Not all of these integral functions of business are Ethernet based, so they cannot just be “plugged in” to a network rack patch panel or switch, they must be wired in by knowledgeable professionals.
Many business are a great fit for “Hosted” voice communications and it is being used by millions worldwide. Small and large corporations are tapping into the technology and realizing substantial savings, along with the fact that when it comes to “scalability”, Hosted VoIp is unequaled.