Business owners or IT directors looking to migrate a business to VoIP are always faced with the question: a hosted or a premises-based system?
Here at 500 we offer both solutions and this article will try and explain some of the differences between the two systems rather than listing the many similarities. At the end of this article you’ll be informed well enough to be able to better assess the needs of your business.
First things first…
Even before discussing the functionality, number or users or locations, there are two basic questions that a business needs to carefully consider:
- How much initial capital outlay vs. ongoing costs does your business want to spend; i.e. what is your business cost model?
- How big is your IT department and are they capable of supporting a premises-based IP PBX system?
Functionality…
With regards to functionality both solutions have many similar features, offering a rich business grade level of functionality to their end users (if business grade equipment is utilised).
It is often a case of ‘horses for courses’ and your needs will determine the correct solution for your business. However, in a direct like-for-like comparison our premises-based system (manufactured by Zultys) does have the edge over our hosted solution, (manufactured by Broadsoft). These marginal differences are highlighted below and predominantly focus on the sharp end of telephony usage, the desktop client application: ‘MXIE’ on our premises based system, ‘Unity’ on our hosted system. Both MXIE and Unity are excellent desktop clients – but it is MXIE that has the richer feature set.
- ‘Find Me, Follow Me’ – Both clients offer this functionality, but Zultys can offer this on up to 16 different devices.
- Softphone – Both systems permit soft-phone integration MXIE has an integrated PC softphone.
- Call Attached Data – MXIE allows a user to make and track annotated notes on a call.
- Exchange / Outlook Integration – Both MXIE and Unity offer this functionality. A user can see all contacts within their client applications. However, the integration on the Zultys system is synchronised: deleting a voicemail that you have listened to via an attachment to an email will also delete the voicemail on the system itself.
- ‘Screen dial’ from a web page or document – MXIE is able to offer hot-key screen-dialling from contacts or any number from a web page or document. Unity also offers this functionality to web browsers (Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer).
- Fax Server Integration – Both solutions offer inbound faxing. However, MXIE offers outbound faxing.
- Unified Messaging – Both systems offer secure instant messaging (IM) through their client applications, however the premises system has the edge in that MXIE can also be enabled to allow IM with Yahoo and MSN.
- Resilience options – The premises system has the ability to easily set up resilience options within the dial plan for outbound calls.
Number of users and locations…
Number of users does partly come into play when deciding between premises-based and hosted. Small businesses, fewer than 15 users are often more suited to the hosted route.
More care is required with medium-sized businesses. There are no hard and fast rules as to which solution is best – no two businesses are the same – so it cannot be said that fewer than 50 users should be hosted and above should be premises-based. Each of the many factors, all of which are different to each business looking to migrate to VoIP, need to be considered. Examples are:
- Cost Model – Is your business looking at upfront capex costs or recurring operational costs?
- Technical support – What is your business model in terms of outsourcing? Do you have an IT department and could it support an IP PBX system? Or would you prefer a fully managed service?
- Number of locations – Do you have one large site? Do you have a corporate site and regional satellite sites? Do you have many small disparate sites nationally and internationally? Each scenario could offer alternate solutions depending on the other factors as well.
- Number of home and mobile workers - Again similar to the number of locations, the mix of home and mobile workers should be considered.
Larger enterprises on the other hand are likely to go down the premises route. Typically, they have an IT department currently supporting their existing systems and servers and perhaps they too also manage a PBX. Larger businesss are also more likely to favour a capex model (although our systems can be leased if required).
Finally…
The number of users and geographical spread of them are certainly important considerations but the bottom line often still reverts back to your cost model and technical support. For example, one 100-user solicitor business with good IT department operating via a single site would be typically advised to adopted a premises-based solution. However, a similar 100-user landscape gardening firm with no IT department with a disparate workforce may be advised to adopt the hosted telephony model.
Here at 500 we say ‘No two clients are the same so why should our solutions be?’ so if you need to talk to us further about which solution best suits your business then please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0845 0000 500, or alternatively fill in our Contact Form.