Hosted VoIP vs on-premise

4/4/12 - Votacall Hosted VoIP - Boston, Massachusetts - Often when I am in a meeting discussing Hosted VoIP with a skeptical customer they fall back on the misconception that Hosted VoIP is not reliable. They have hard the horror stories of the fringe players or unmanaged solutions. These solutions are drop shipped and advertised as plug and play. True business class hosted VoIP needs a level of expertise to deliver a sound product. Some reference issues with implementation and ongoing support of a Hosted VoIP solution by a major carrier (you know who you are). The carrier world is not used to features and functionality not to mention support, they are used to dial tone. As Hosted VoIP becomes more prevalent and offered by everyone, everywhere, differentiators must be known and discussed. The organizations that can supply true differentiators can say with confidence that Hosted VoIP is more reliable than on-premise. To some it is shocking to hear this, but it is true if your provider is a top tier player. It all goes back to the platform, not the internet. In an on-premise solution when the voice T1 goes down, nobody questions the reliability of the on-premise phone system. Conversely, when a Data product goes down, the majority question the reliability of the Hosted VoIP system. If we are to judge the (2) platforms on equal ground, it must come down to the platform itself. The real question is in an on-premise scenario, how often has a module, circuit pack, board, card, server or processor gone down rendering a piece or the entire solution out of service? Everyone who has ever invested in an on-premise phone system or had experience with one can tell you that the failure of equipment is inevitable, like death and taxes. It will happen and for some, it will happen more often than others. Now, compare that to a top tier hosted VoIP platform. The Votacall Hosted VoIP solution is built on the Broadsoft platform which is a class 5 carrier grade switch. I can say with great confidence that if a Broadsoft is correctly engineered and maintained (which is our job), our end-users will experience no downtime due to platform failure. There will never be an instance where a dead port, module, circuit pack or processor brings down a customers solution. Will a T1 go down? Of course, but the T1 will go down in a legacy scenario as well. The difference is in the Hosted VoIP world there are more options to achieve business continuity not to mention true service provider level tools allowing for the end-user to re-route calls avoiding the reliance of a carrier to forward lines. A true top tier Hosted VoIP offer will be built on a bullet proof platform that is more reliable than any on-premise could ever be based on the natures of the (2) solutions. One gets better with age and the other is destined to die the moment it goes live. Add the fact the the Hosted VoIP solution will provide the additional tools to quickly respond to an issue typically out of the customers control because that issue has nothing to do with the platform (voip or on-premise). Now I ask, which platform is more reliable?