Some Common Misconceptions of Moving Your Phone System to the Cloud
Today, organizations of all sizes are adopting cloud-based PBX systems. In fact, Research predicts the number of seats for hosted business VoIP and unified communications services is on track to more than double between 2012 and 2016. There are many benefits to a hosted system over a premise-based system, and companies are more educated on these features than they were when the technology first started to reach wide-acceptance.
However, there are still some common misconceptions that we service providers encounter when speaking with prospective customers.
As part of our ongoing educational efforts, we have rounded up explanations of five of the misconceptions we most commonly encounter:
1. You don’t have as much control over your PBX when it is hosted as you do when it is on premise.
It’s understandable that many people have the misconception that you lose administrative control of your PBX when it is not physically hosted in your own building. However, the reality is with an enterprise-grade PBX that is delivered from the cloud, you have remarkable control and greater flexibility. For example, if you want to make changes such as re-setting a voicemail password, or turning on your holiday schedule, you can do it with the click of a mouse.With a cloud-based IP phone system, customers enjoy unmatched control and point-and-click configuration over all services. Through the exclusive, award-winning web-based OSSmosis Portal, Evolve IP’s customers can control telephony features, moves/adds/ changes, conferencing, security, and email, plus they can get insight into network status, performance updates, and account/billing detail.
2. Sound quality is poor on hosted phone systems.
This is completely untrue. When properly architected, hosted voice for business on an enterprise-grade platform – such as the Broadsoft platform – has incredible quality. In fact, Evolve IP guarantees its SLAs. Through constant monitoring customers’ Mean Opinion Scores (MOS), Evolve IP is able to correct any potential issues before quality could ever be compromised. A decade ago poorly executed consumer-grade VoIP likely started this misconception.
3. Cloud is just a fad.That couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, according to a recent study, the desire to share content and to access it on multiple devices will motivate consumers to start storing a third of their digital content in the cloud by 2016. In a recent Microsoft surveys of businesses, 30 percent are already using paid cloud services and another 48 percent plans to move to the cloud model within the next 2-3 years.Although the term cloud is relatively new, the technology has been around and constantly advancing for many years, and more businesses adopt it each day.
4. Moving to the cloud means IT staff loses job security.
One fear that IT Directors have when moving to the cloud is that it will jeopardize their job security. In reality all companies will need professionals that understand evolving cloud and IaaS technologies. The best part of the equation is that the menial tasks that tie up too much of your time are eliminated and will allow you to engage in more strategic projects that provide opportunities to improve the business.
5. The cloud only benefits small businesses, not Enterprises.
Because of the per-user monthly fee and absence of expensive upfront equipment cost, cloud solutions have mistakenly been thought of as intended only for small business. It’s true that small businesses tend to adopt new technologies before Enterprises. But, cloud adoption is expanding rapidly across the Enterprise landscape, as Enterprises have begun to understand that the benefits are the same for organizations of all sizes
