Make Connections With On-Site Phone Systems
An on-site (or “premise-based”) phone system, with your own phone system/server in your own closet or server-room, is what most companies used to have and some still do today. For those who like to get their hands on a box that they can own, it certainly fills that need.
While we typically recommend a hosted phone service for your business needs, we understand that some companies and organizations prefer a premise-based system for internal reasons. CCi Voice offers a hybrid solution. We can implement your on-premise system, while our cloud expertise allows us to present far more in terms of benefits.
We provide affordable and reliable assistance, with unlimited support, warranty, and on-call 24/7 service. Most telecommunications companies only offer a warranty if a system breaks down—CCi Voice gives you an unlimited extended warranty. No one else does that.
And being a hybrid solution enables us to take your on-site phone system to the cloud at a moment's notice. This capability to shift our technological approach is what separates CCi Voice from the other guys.
What Is An On-site Phone System?
An on-site VoIP telephone system takes all the hardware and software required for communications and houses it on-site at your business.
The key solution to a successful on-site phone system is the ability to incorporate highly customizable functions, including the following:
Personalization and Flexibility.
As the system is operated on your site, you’ll have hands-on control of the communications suite, including call routing, tech support, scalability, software upgrades, and more.
Dedicated IT Staff.
Working independently on your communications requires your own experts. A dedicated IT staff is recommended, so that technical issues and configurations can be troubleshooted at a moment’s notice.
You Own The Equipment.
While you’ll have to spend money upfront to purchase VoIP equipment such as phones, servers, and switches, it can be looked at as a long-term investment in your business’ growth. Typically an on-site phone system is about double the up-front cost of a hosted phone service, mostly because of the on-site server and associated software and licenses per user. Be sure to include some sort of warranty and support plan from the local telephony support company that sells it to you
These last few months have been extremely tough for our business, and on senior housing as an industry." While we’ve had to cut back on certain expenditures, we’re looking hard at items we are recognizing value in. As such, we feel our investment in CCi Voice and the Sangoma phone system has proven worthwhile.
How It Works
The key to CCi Voice's on-premise PBX is that it’s deployed on servers that the business owns and keeps in-house. Your business manages the system entirely, but you must have the proper infrastructure in place—this includes one or more servers with redundancy built-in, a reliable network, POE (Power-over-Ethernet) switches, and a very reliable firewall. You will also have to bring in your own phone service, usually called “SIP Trunks” or ask your local phone-support company to recommend one.
On-premises phone systems are sometimes preferred by larger enterprises that not only have the infrastructure, bandwidth, and resources—including an IT department—to run and manage a phone system, but also put a premium on strict security and confidentiality. However, this comes at a cost, including not having the reliability and redundancy that a CCi Voice cloud-based service can provide. If any of the typical failures happen at a building (power, Internet or equipment), this is a complete dead-end for callers until the failure is remedied.
The typical benefit for a CCi Voice on-premise phone system is cost savings for a large number of users, because there is no monthly fee per-user. However, some hosted phone service providers (including CCi) have significant discounts based on size (using an economy of scale method).
This often makes a hosted service close to or even less costly than an on-site phone system.
The On-Premise Cost Three-Legged Stool
We like to say that owning your own phone system in-house requires three critical elements, like a stool with three legs (if any of the three legs fails, the system will stop working):
- The phone system hardware, software, and licenses
- Support from a local vendor to make changes and be on-call when needed
- Phone lines/service from a reliable provider. (Don’t forget conference calling services, faxes, etc.)
Hosted phone service encompasses all three of these “legs,” which is why it tends to be more cost-effective, especially, as we mentioned earlier, given that a hosted phone service is half the up-front cost as on-site systems.
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