The Top 5 Reasons for Running Your Business Phones on Cloud-Hosted VoIP

Every competitive business in today’s marketplace needs a reliable and professional phone system to conduct critical daily communications with customers and prospects. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has become the popular, cost-effective alternative to traditional phone service customarily purchased through the phone company at more expensive rates – especially as it relates to long distance charges.

These VoIP phone services are often obtained through the local cable provider, internet provider, or at electronics stores where service can be procured as a router designed to run on your existing internet connection. As internet speeds and bandwidth have vastly improved, so has the digital voice quality and reliability of VoIP phone service.

While VoIP certainly has a growing footprint on the American business market for cost-savings over traditional analog phone service, all solutions are not created equally. Even in situations where businesses utilize VoIP phones, service and technology, they also have to purchase and maintain costly on-site hardware to run the auto-attendant, voicemail servers, and administrative portal.

Enter Cloud-hosted VoIP phone systems — these systems take the on-site hardware, voicemail servers, auto-attendant and administrative OS to the cloud. In this equation, you are simply left with the phone itself, which talks through the internet to the cloud-hosted base. This eliminates an entire level of complexity with software and hardware in your telecommunications framework. For growing small to mid-size businesses, this investment can be immensely invaluable.

Here are the top 5 reasons for switching to Cloud-hosted VoIP today:

1. Cost Savings
   Whether you have traditional analog phone lines or VoIP phone service, your business still requires the on-site hardware and software to route calls to each of the phone handsets/extensions. This hardware can become faulty and obsolete over time, while the software needs constant upgrades to run optimally. This constant maintenance can become costly, time-consuming and ultimately irrelevant. Although VoIP phone service is more cost-effective than traditional analog lines when it comes to long distance charges, it still requires costly on-site equipment maintenance and administration.Cloud-hosted VoIP is the optimal solution for this problem. You realize both the cost-savings of VoIP long distance, and the freedom from expensive on-site equipment maintenance and administration. You are simply plugging a phone into the internet and paying a per-phone subscription charge. Each handset plugs right into the cloud-hosted mainframe via internet — no matter what location you are in — with redundant servers that are constantly up regardless of power or weather issues on-site.
2. Low Maintenance
   On-site equipment often requires rack servers, internet switches, auto-attendant modules, voicemail modules, firmware and software administration, and backup. In companies with 10+ employees, maintenance can require salaried IT staff to maintain, upgrade and administer these frameworks. The costs can quickly add up. Having Cloud-hosted VoIP eliminates this layer of administration, complexity and cost, while introducing a level of reliability and redundancy. In the hosted scenario, your entire phone system is duplicated across multiple servers in a secure cloud configuration. In the event your system goes down, the duplicate servers take over automatically. Upgrades to software and firmware happen invisibly to the customer and automatically behind the scenes. These upgrades are also distributed to the phone handsets over the same system. Cloud-hosted VoIP gives growing businesses the peace of mind and hassle-free experience of enterprise-level telecommunications at an affordable cost, and with greater reliability than ever before.
3. Scalability
   Cloud-hosted VoIP truly shines when it comes to scalability. Adding phones is as simple as ordering a handset, configuring it to the cloud mainframe and plugging it into your high-speed internet access point. There is no additional on-site equipment, maintenance or installation required. It doesn’t matter where you are. You can plug your handset into any high-speed internet connection in any location you decide to call your office.
4. Multi-Site & Mobile-Optimized
   Cloud-hosted VoIP is ideal for multi-site businesses and the mobile workforce. Satellite and branch offices are easily added with minimal setup time. Work-from-home employees, sales, and account representatives can be integrated into corporate headquarters or regional offices in a snap. Soft-phones (phone connections through your laptop with headset), wireless phones, and mobile-rollover configurations are also available so you never have to miss a beat. Whether your associates are in the car, at home, at their desk or in the coffee shop, they are connected to the office reliably and securely.
5. Business Continuity
   For many growing companies, the idea of risk management falls in the hands of capable IT staff. Expensive on-site equipment not only requires maintenance and administration, but also monitoring and contingency plans for weather, outages, power surges, fire and catastrophe. Cloud-hosted VoIP along with other cloud-hosted data solutions provide growing businesses and workforces with increased levels of security and business continuity. Cloud-hosted solutions are fast becoming the preferred choice for growing companies due to these multiple benefits with regard to cost, ease of maintenance, scalability and business continuity.