1. The IT staff is bored out of their skulls. Most IT professionals would say that they feel that they’re overworked and don’t have enough time for completing day-to-day tasks, much less have time to focus on strategic initiatives. If your company’s IT folks spend more time checking their social media feeds than actually working, then you’re probably fine with your premise-based system, which usually requires a lot of hands-on maintenance. However, if your IT staff often feels as if they don’t ever have enough time in the day, then you should consider a hosted system.
2. You have technophobia (fear of technology) or neophobia (fear of new things). Some organizations prefer to stick to what they are familiar with, including managing their own phone systems, despite the fact that the IT staff often ends up chained to the office and squeezing their stress ball until it bursts. One day, when the company has no choice, an easy-to-manage cloud-based phone system will be waiting for you.
3. Your company is loaded with cash. If your organization is rolling in dough, you probably prefer to buy fixed assets like corporate jets and premise-based phone systems, so you are fine with a CAPEX model. However, many companies don’t want weigh themselves down with a depreciating asset. Most businesses prefer an operating expense (OPEX) model, with benefits including paying as you go and simplified accounting. Cash flow is crucial for the success of many businesses, so they prefer not to tie their cash up in equipment purchases, when there is an alternative.
4. The company is tanking. If your organization has no hope of growing and you’re considering throwing in the towel, then you wouldn’t have a need for the scalability and flexibility that a hosted VoIP system would provide. Companies that have seasonal needs or that are adding new staff members benefit from the ability to quickly and easily scale up or down with a hosted VoIP system.
5. Your company isn’t interested in getting new features. (Also, see #2 above.) You loathe having to use new features, even if they will make your job much easier. If you’re happy with the features that your premise based system is providing now, then you wouldn’t need to take advantage of the great benefits of a hosted system. Cloud based system provides new features as they become available automatically that are passed along directly to you, without having to make any additional purchases and without having to perform any upgrades. New features are just automatically turned on when the phone system is delivered from the cloud.
6. No concerns about DR/BC. Your phone system can be down for a day or two, with no concerns about it impacting your business. Heck, maybe you will just get rid of your phones altogether. Hosted VoIP offers inherent business continuity in that it enables quick rerouting of calls to an alternate location or cell phone number in the event of an incident that brings your power down. But, that doesn’t really matter to your business, so you wouldn’t be interested in a cloud-based phone system.
7. You have a recently purchased premise-based PBX. In all seriousness, if you have installed a new premise-based phone system within the last few years, you probably do want to let that equipment fully depreciate. Too bad you didn’t learn about the benefits of a hosted VoIP solution before you committed to that premise-based beast. But, for this reason, we can actually understand why you might not be looking to move to the cloud right at this time. We’ll be here in a few years when it’s depreciated.
Categories: Unified Communications
About Sammy Sarcasm
Sammy Sarcasm has been in the cloud services industry long enough to have become a bit jaded by the misconceptions many folks have about the cloud. He seeks to use his unique perspective to evangelize the cloud by contributing to cloud service provider's blogs.
