Why the on-premise PBX system is now a fish out of water

It has been a while since businesses have started using cloud telephony services in various departments. Whether it’s for marketing, sales, or engaging customers, there are always business-oriented telephonic systems that are designed to address the direction and volume of calls being handled – every. Systems like these are never without flaws. Advancements have led us to a point where these systems are no longer even hardware – they all exist on the over a Wide Area Network (WAN) or on the internet. This is a brief introduction to the industry of cloud telephony.

Why Cloud Telephony is the future

No system is designed for communication can be flawless. Using cloud services and computation is the most advanced attempt yet to optimize and automate the processes of business communication. Uploading all systems to the cloud makes a difference by leaps and bounds. Using clunky on-premise infrastructure has difficulties associated with it. Some of them are discussed here.

The drawbacks of a physical infrastructure

Local infrastructural presence implies that the hardware will require transport, installation, and maintenance charges. The duration for which the hardware can keep the system running is constrained by the telecom operator that is used with the PBX box and the infrastructure collaboratively. Imagine that your company’s communication system goes down because somebody split a cup of coffee. This is the sort of problem you can never have with a system operated over the Cloud. Another obvious charge is the on-premise model’s capital expenditure alongside its operational one. Additionally, if the company desires expansion to a different location, the CAPEX will be paid again, since a completely new setup is required. The time it takes for fresh setups to go live is can go up to weeks.

The Simple Feasibility of the Cloud

A Cloud-based system is least dependant on any one party for it to carry out its functions. Where only a single telecom operator can be used with one PBX box, the Cloud-based system involves management from several. This introduces the possibility of multiple backup options. The uptime of such a system is obviously much higher, therefore; state-of-the-art load balancers over the cloud ensure an uptime of 99.6%. Not bad, right?

Think about using a smartphone versus using a fixed cord landline. In the smartphone, you can switch sims, forward or waitlist calls, record them with ease, access your logs at any time, port, and do so much more. None of that can be done on a landline without external help. The case with an on-premise PBX box is something similar. Call data records are only kept for some time since data is stored locally. Lifetime storage cost is quite high. Over the Cloud, data is backed up automatically for complete data including recordings, at a minimal cost that varies from vendor to vendor.

Why do manually what a machine can do for you?

Why indeed? Handling hardware can be a cumbersome and expensive chore. It binds people to one location whereas the cloud allows for much more mobility. It’s difficult to customize each individual piece of hardware to suit every customer’s needs, whereas, with cloud telephony, a few simple lines of code might be all that is needed to make it perfectly customized. Transfers of calls and of data are near instantaneous, fully encrypted, and can be done automatically. Much of this would take a large number of human hours and effort as well, which also eats up time and money.