Toshiba Phone Systems and More

There is a lot of talk recently about how Hosted VoIP has come of age, and that it brings a lot of features to small and medium size businesses. It may be bias but for me being in the business of selling Premise based equipment I think that going hosted is not the only way to take advantage of the great features of VoIP!

Small and Medium size business want to have a competitive edge, they need to be concerned with costs, and most importantly they need have services that are reliable. VoIP brings a lot of those needs together but there are trade offs we done with a hosted solution. With a hosted solution all of your eggs are in one basket. If your broadband service that feeds the Hosted VoIP goes down you go down! Now before you say it let me say Yes you can have a back-up circuit but guess what that costs more money! If you share your broadband for VoIP with your Internet services then you have to worry about having enough band width! Another concern is cost, with hosted VoIP the services are paid for monthly and they never reduce or go away!Also you only have one choice in most cases for your LD carrier and that typically is the host!

Now let’s look at the argument for Premise based. First Premise based equipment can give you just as much VoIP features as a hosted solution can. There can be VoIP phones for users both local and remote, there can be VoIP carrier services from a variety for carriers. Features likefind me/follow me , voicemail as email, and remote worker support are all available from Premise based solutions. Additional features like external paging and desktop integration with your CRM package are also available. If your broadband goes down you can also have copper lines integrated as a fail over and not skip a beat making and taking calls from your VoIP phone on your desk! The cost of equipment can show a ROI in months , in many cases. After that you would only be paying for services rather than services plus features.

I’m not saying that hosted is bad, I’m saying take a good hard look at Premise based first, it can work. This post was inspired by a Q&A with Bruce Chatterley http://tinyurl.com/7don5w . Tell me what you think. Can there be a case made for both or is there one clear winner in the VoIP arena?