Is a cloud VoIP solution right for your business? While an on premise system may work for many companies, a cloud VoIP system might be a better fit. There are many key advantages and disadvantages of a cloud VoIP system, which will be explained below.
There can be distinct tax, budgetary and approval advantages to implementing a solution that would be an operating expense. These advantages make it easier in most organizations to deploy a new hosted solution as opposed to the capital expenditure required for a premise based solution.
A hosted solution will always have the latest and greatest upgrades included.
In most circumstances, if you have a high-speed broadband internet connection you will have the entire network you would need to deploy a hosted solution.
Most hosted solutions come with shorter term agreements, some as short as month to month. Therefore, if you are not satisfied with the hosted solution that you implement, you can easily switch to a new provider. In addition, as your organization expands or contracts, you should be able to easily adjust the hosted solution to your requirements as well as potentially the cost. Also, remote users or branch locations can be easy to deploy.
Simple to deploy and very little technical staff required. This makes a hosted system ideal for an organization that does not have an IT department in place or that is already overloaded with other projects. With most hosted solutions, if you have a technical issue you can just call a 1-800 number for support as opposed to having a technician come on site to service a premise system.
Most hosted solutions today do deliver good call quality the vast majority of the time. However, with a hosted solution, the call quality might be slightly affected at times.
With a hosted system the company will never own the equipment; this can be an issue, as you will be paying a monthly fee for the duration of utilizing a hosted solution.
For some organizations, controlling the system and applications that affect the users are paramount. On a hosted solution, since the system is not on site you do not have the same level of control.
On a hosted system you are at the mercy of the quality of your internet connection, and while reliability is very high there will be occasions where that is not the case. A premise system would not normally encounter these types of issues.