Datacentre analysis favours hosted voice PBX
Interesting to see a brief analysis in Datacentre Management (Nov/Dec 2010 issue), highlighting the costs of managing and maintaining traditional legacy PBX systems on site.
We sell hosted IP voice / PBX solutions, so it’s good to see another part of our industry attacking the topic, and very favourably in our view.
They note that two of the traditional drivers for moving to a hosted solution might be:
- eventual obsolescence of legacy on-site kit (expense or unsupportability)
- cost-prohibitive step changes in capacity requirements (extra ISDN lines or card require for instance)
Additional benefits for a hosted solution include:
- network and equipment resilience is delivered by someone else – the service provider – not your own IT problem any more!
- QoS can be managed externally, to SLA, and across the whole network using IP based services
- Scalability is essentially limitless if you choose the right provider and switch (from 1 to 1 million users in as many sites as you chose) – if you’re on a Broadsoft platform like Skyrack’s!
Of course, the main thrust of the argument here is about capital investment. With a hosted service you get all the benefits, delivered with no hassle, without the upfront CapEx investment. Depending on the scenario there may need to be some new handsets (but even this can be mitigated by using IAD converters, or even SIP trunks into the old PBX).
The figures in Datacentre Management compared a 400 user /6 site set up, conventional PBX to Hosted Solution.
- Conventional PBX CapEx £198,000 plus £9,000 monthly costs
- Hosted service CapEx £zero, plus £8,800 monthly costs
That’s a pretty compelling argument when you consider that with a solution like Skyrack’s you also get on network calls for free, and end-to-end high definition on network calls for free.
