Choosing the best way to deploy a new telephone system…….Why is this important? Well, it’s a key question we ask all new potential clients because knowing the answer will get you the system which is right for your business and to suit your finances. Initially this can appear to be quite a difficult decision to make, in this article I would like to simplify your decision making process.
1. Use the telephone system manufacturers own proprietary appliance
Advantages:
- This appliance is capable of housing a range of telecom interfaces to incorporate any older telecom technologies you wish to keep such as ISDN lines and Analogue devices.
No ongoing monthly costs other than hardware maintenance and perhaps a small technical support charge.
Disadvantages:
- Most telephone system manufacturer’s appliances have single points of failure as they generally contain only one Power Supply and one CPU. A failure of one or all of these leaves no backup.
- You would need to pay for annual hardware maintenance on this hardware.
- Additional features as they are released are generally purchased via software upgrade every 3-4 years. Some manufacturers (ours included) however now offer Software Assurance which gives you access to all software upgrades when they become available. This is available for a supplementary fee on top of hardware maintenance and technical support.
- There will be a relatively large upfront cost to buy hardware, licenses, phones, installation and training.
2. As a Software Based solution running on Industry standard server
Advantages:
- If you already have spare Server resources then no additional hardware is required (such as the appliance detailed above) to run the telephone system.
- Industry standard Servers can be configured to be highly resilient and fault tolerant with the option to have multiple Power Supplies, Multiple CPU’s and RAID configurations. Other features in software such as those provided by VMware are also supported.
- No ongoing monthly costs other than hardware maintenance and perhaps a small technical support charge.
- No annual hardware maintenance fee is required as with the Appliance based option.
Disadvantages:
- If you don’t already have spare Server resources then buying in a server to run the telephone system can be expensive, especially if you make it resilient with additional Power Supplies, CPU’s etc.
- Additional features as they are released are generally purchased via software upgrade every 3-4 years. Some manufacturers (ours included) however now offer Software Assurance which gives you access to all software upgrades when they become available. This is available for a supplementary fee on top of hardware maintenance and technical support.
- There will be a relatively large upfront cost to buy licenses, phones, installation and training.
3. Hosted
Advantages:
- There will be no large upfront cost to buy licenses, phones, installation and training although some providers do charge for handsets.
- This is often a much cheaper option than leasing a telephone system.
- The hosted solution is highly resilient and fault tolerant and it sits in the Service Providers network of Data Centres.
- Your telephone system is always on the latest version and new features are made available as and when they are released without a software upgrade fee.
- Less complexity and cost when adding many remote branches and/or home workers.
- No ongoing hardware support costs or technical support costs.
Disadvantages:
- There will be a monthly charge per user for the hosted license which equates to around £7 per user. If you have a large amount of users this can be quite a chunk of money to find each month.
- If you expect to keep your new phone system for longer than 5 years and do not expect to invest in future upgrades to get more features then in most cases Hosted will have cost you more than buying a system outright by about year 3 to year 5.
- Additional features such as Automated Attendant and Hunt Groups are often chargeable on top of your monthly subscription.