Shawn and I got back from our semi-annual trade show in New Orleans last week and I found a few things interesting that I would like to share with all of you.
First, hosted/cloud PBX looks like it is here to stay. I stayed away from it for a while simply because I started my career in telecom selling phone systems. The thought of putting it in the cloud and not having control caused me some pain. However, I have seen the light and it really is an excellent solution. In the early days these systems simply did not work. I think the major problem was the company that provided the PBX in the cloud. They were small and underfunded. They were not in secure data centers and the features were not as plentiful as they are today.
Recently, I compared two different on site PBX solutions to a Cloud PBX solution. The feature set on the Cloud product blew the two systems away. One of the biggest costs of owning your own equipment is maintenance. When you put something in the Cloud that cost goes away. If you need a software upgrade or patch you have to not only pay for it, but you have to pay someone to come out and install it. A Cloud PBX makes those costs go away. I have finally come around to believe that the Cloud is a much better place for a PBX than on your premise.
I am concerned there are too many players in the Cloud PBX world. I would say every third booth at the show was a Cloud PBX provider. Be careful out there; because at least half of them will not be at the show come spring in Vegas. We have worked with three or four vendors and I think we finally found the one that works best for us.
The other main component of the show was disaster recovery. I think that every business small or large should be backing their data up in the cloud. A small company could pay $100 per month for the peace of mind that their data is safe. I heard an interesting story at the show that I would like to share with all of you. A travel agent who had two offices had all of her computers hacked. The culprit emailed her and said if you give me $15,000.00 I will give you your data back. She called in the FBI and after a few days, she realized that it was going to take a long time for the Feds to actually do anything. She had to pay the ransom because without her data she was out of business. If she had spent as little as $100.00 per month none of this would have happened.
If you don’t have a disaster recovery process in place you need to start working on it yesterday. Every day we read about people hacking banks, large businesses, and even personal bank accounts. The fact that they would go after a small travel agency means they could come after you. Plus, who wants to keep servers on site and pay IT people thousands of dollars per year to maintain them?
The Cloud is here people; we all need to get on the train! Give TelecomMedic a call today for a complementary analysis of your Cloud needs.