Buyer be aware: today's biggest trends in phone systems
March 2010
Buying a new business phone system can be an exercise in sorting through acronyms and learning new technologies. When you're grinding through those types of details, it can be tough to keep the big picture in mind.
To help you out, we recently interviewed several phone system dealers to find out what the biggest trends in telecommunications purchasing are right now. Here's a summary.
Hosted systems continue to gain
The convergence of telephone and data networks has also made it possible to avoid purchasing an on-premise phone system entirely, as hosted phone systems run in remote data centers provide all the features of a traditional PBX through a broadband connection.
Debbie Jo Severin of 8x8 Inc summarized the benefits, saying that hosted IP solutions have "minimal upfront cost, versus a premise-based solution with a high capital investment and ongoing maintenance/management expenses."
David Politis from Vocalocity agrees.
- "More and more small businesses are discovering the benefits of Hosted IT applications, and over the last couple of years there has been a big move towards hosted telephony through the maturation of VoIP technology. The cost savings alone are reason enough to get most business owners interested, but when the benefits of a phone system with no service or maintenance contracts become clear, more and more businesses are making the switch. VoIP technology isn't necessarily new, but hosted systems have only recently surpassed in-house PBX systems as the preferred choice for most small businesses. This trend isn't going to end any time soon either, because the hosted option delivers a much more efficient way of implementing new features and upgrades with absolutely no increased cost or interruption of service for the customer."
Severin also went on to share some figures on current and future growth in the hosted telephony market:
- "Communications as a service is a growing trend for small-to-medium businesses. According to Gartner, 20% of businesses are opting for a hosted IP telephony solution … and that market will grow to $2.5 billion in 2011, with a large part of this growth coming from small-to-medium sized businesses."
Mobility and flexiblility
Three of our interviewees described increased mobility and flexibility as the most important trends, although in slightly different ways. Dean Maynard from The Maynard Group summarized the importance of mobility:
- "Mobility and unified communications are the key trends". Simply put, this means two things. One, centralizing your messaging allows you to be reached with a single number at all times. Two, allowing access to your applications wherever you may be gives you the capability to work abroad just as effectively as you would in the office."
Debbie Jo Severin from 8x8 agreed:
- "Everything is going mobile". Carrying your office phone with you on your smart phone is taking shape. You can make and receive calls on your mobile phone just as if you were calling right from your office phone. This means your calls are billed to your office plan and the features on your office phone work with your Smartphone. Your Caller ID even displays your office phone number. It's another way to streamline and unify business communications. Unified Communications takes the telecom/web ecosystem to the next level. Funneling voice, email, fax, web conferencing and other communications into one channel is extremely powerful."
Randy Simon from ABC telephone had mobility in mind as part of his key trend.
- "The key trend is flexibility - the kind you get with a hybrid phone system. They're capable of using standard digital telephones, VoIP, and SIP. It's a good combination because VoIP and SIP aren't perfected yet, but digital phones always work. And a hybrid is essential for offsite or remote workers. People want to know it's flexible for future growth."
Significant savings on dial tone
Finally, Greg Hendrix of CT Solutions explained how cost savings from improved service plans can be used to pay for new equipment.
- "Buyers need to be aware that there are more ways than ever to buy dial tone service. If companies haven't evaluated their monthly recurring costs in the last two or three years, they should.
- Right now is the best time I've ever seen in our industry for dial tone and internet pricing. Lot of CLECs [Competitive local exchange carriers] are now providing VoIP, and the technology is stable enough that they're able to deliver internet and voice over single circuit with reliability. That gives you huge savings on the recurring costs.
- I've been in the industry for well over 15 years, and when I started, a T1 would cost you $3,000 per month. Today, you can get a T1 from a reliable carrier in the $400 range. (Of course you can get a connection cheaper than that - but you probably wouldn't want to.)
- So it's a big opportunity for businesses that have 15 year old equipment, but don't have money to spend. We can get in there and evaluate the situation and often justify the expense of new equipment with savings on service."
Want more? We also asked these phone system dealers about mistakes buyers make and how to save money on a phone system purchase.
