What is a Cloud-based Phone System and how can it benefit your business?
Posted on 10th September 2019 under Blog.
From 2025, ISDN and PSTN networks will be things of the past. Why? Because BT is going to slowly start phasing them out from 2020 (yes, that soon) and switch them all off completely in 2025.
In other words, if your business isn’t using an alternative business telephone system by 2025, you could find yourself incommunicado.
Don’t worry though, you’ve still got plenty of time to implement a viable solution and this post is going to tell you more about one of the most popular options available to SMEs: cloud-based phone systems.
What is a cloud-based phone system?
Everything is ‘in the cloud’ nowadays, but what does that actually mean? Well, in the case of a cloud-based phone system it means all the important hardware and software resides off -site in a secure data centre – so no more PBXs on any of your premises.
Instead of utilising traditional phone wires, a cloud-based phone system uses the Internet to send and receive voice traffic, which is where the term VoIP comes from.
Business users can make and receive calls via their VoIP desk phones, computers and mobile apps. Because the solution is cloud-based, businesses can host multiple office locations in one system and even if an end user is out of the office, they can function seamlessly as though they were at a business site.
Cloud-based phone system benefits
Cloud-based phone systems afford a number of business benefits, including:
- Reduced costs (a set monthly fee & no hardware/software maintenance costs)
- More flexibility (businesses can scale up and down as needed and staff can become location independent)
- Increased productivity (business users carry their extension around with them)
- Improved reliability (no need to worry about power cuts or natural disasters)
- Truly unified communications (VoIP can also handle faxes, email, voicemail, video calling, web conferences, instant messaging and more)
- Future proof your business (remember, the BT ISDN switch off is coming)
- One system, multiple locations (less distributed hardware/software to worry about)
- New features can be added quickly and easily (exactly what it says)
With a cloud-based phone system, your business users can work how they want, where they want, whenever they want…
To find out more about cloud-based business phone systems, contact DataKom now
