Types of Business VoIP Installations!

The choice of installation depends upon the specific needs of your company as well as your company’s level of VoIP/Telecom expertise, commitment to managing your telecommunications in-house and the amount of capital you are willing to commit to managing your telecommunications.

There Are 2 Types of Business VoIP Installations;

1. Hosted VoIP: Also referred to as a Virtual PBX is the most common solution for small and medium businesses. With Hosted service, the VoIP phone service provider supplies the VoIP system, manages and hosts the system in the Cloud.

2. Premises VoIP: In this type of installation, you purchase all of the components VoIP phone system (VoIP hardware and VoIP software). Your business is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the system, i.e. hardware, software, firmware etc.

Which Installation is Right for My Company?”

There is no right and wrong answer to the questions” Which Type of VoIP Installation is Right for My Company”. The answer depends upon your company’s specific requirements. In general, if you need more customization, you are probably going to need a premise based solution. This is not to say you can’t customize a Hosted VoIP Solutions for small business, you can. It is just a more difficult to do.

Flexibility to Add/Remove Users

A Hosted VoIP phone service offers a great deal more flexibility than a Premise Based VoIP system. The main reason for this is that with a Hosted VoIP installation your company has not purchased the VoIP hardware and you therefore are not locked into this solution for the next 5+years. Another reason a Hosted VoIP phone system is more flexible than a Premises solution is that your company can easily expand your system across geographic locations, including home offices without purchasing additional VOIP hardware.

Another flexibility advantage of Hosted VoIP over a Premises based installation is that changes can be made much more quickly and easily. Moves, ads and changes as they are commonly referred to in the telecommunications industry are easily completed without the need for a technician to come to site, saving about $125.00 per visit.

A business hosted VoIP solution allows you to easily move telephone sets while keeping the telephone’s original number, extension and features intact. You can even move a business VoIP telephone set to a completely different physical location and the phone will still behave as if it were in your primary office location. You simply unplug your phone and plug it into another network jack location that is connected to the network. You can literally, take a phone, from a Hosted VoIP phone system, home with you at night and plug it into your high speed connection and it will function as if it were still at your office.

If your company requires customized applications that need to be integrated with your phone system, a Premises installation is probably going to be required as you would have to get the voice over internet protocol providers to makes changes to their entire system, which is unlikely to happen.

Cost Considerations

Both types of VoIP installations can save your company big money versus a traditional telephone system. Determining which type of Business VoIP Installation is the least expensive should include a time horizon of about 5-years

Reliability

There is no difference in the reliability or voice quality between a VoIP business solutions and Premise VoIP solution. VoIP, while once considered unstable, has now become a reliable communication solution. Distributing call processing functions across the network eliminates any single point of failure. Choppy calls, once the number one complaint among users, have now stabilized thanks to newer technology and better networks.

Infrastructure

With a small VoIP phone system the only hardware that you need at each location are the IP Phone sets and a specialized VoIP router (at each location). With a Premise based installation, you will be responsible for managing the entire telecommunications infrastructure, which includes VoIP servers to run the software VoIP, specialized routers and a technical staff to manage the system. In fact, you should have at least 2 full-time IT staff members dedicated to your phone system since your phone system is a "24/7" operation.

Conclusion

The decision between a Hosted VoIP phone installation and a Premises installation is more a function of your company’s needs. If your company’s needs can be met by either installation type, and your are completely indifferent to the considerations discussed above and only want to base your decision on the least cost alternative, then you should perform a standard cost analysis.

Most analysis we have seen that compares a Hosted Vs a Premises VoIP installation has a 5-year break even. During the first 5-years, the analysis favors Hosted VoIP because of the low initial capital outlay after 5-years, the analysis favors Premises installation as the system has been fully depreciated and the ongoing cost of running the system are generally less. But, after 5-years, do you really want to own a 5 year old system?

AVAD Technologies is a leading small business phone service provider in USA. With its cutting edge line of integrated voice/data solutions, AVAD Technologies provides complete VoIP configuration to cost-conscious, results-driven, value-oriented organizations. AvadTechnologies offers IP office manager, VoIP Services, VoIP configuration and call centers solution for small business and large enterprise customers.