What are the benefits of managed IP telephony?

Let's not forget, the typical Corporate Telephony engineer is used to a room full of cabinets, full of proprietary cards, phones, and protocols that aren't exactly intuitive. Anyone that has programmed a Meridian switch as an example will tell you, it's not written in english.

However, these same companies that have large investments in this legacy and proprietary equipment have a belief that they have to get away from an on-site PBX to get away from that sunken investment, and many see a managed solution as their way to save money.

What they are missing is that there is a whole world of new PBX products out there, based on open standards, browser based and intuitive GUI based configurations, that a company can manage with little to no effort.

Today, if you are sending staff to training on how to manage your PBX, you have the wrong PBX. If you can not configure a new phone in less than a few minute, you have the wrong PBX.

Sure, someone needs to install the system, but from there, these systems just work, and take a minimal amount of effort to maintain.

The world of telecommunications has evolved significantly over the past few years. Not being educated on new systems, their enhanced features, and the open standards that are available today will keep your company from seeing all of what is available to you today. And this will only cost you money long term.

Benefits:

1. You don't have to employ an IT person responsible for "keeping the servers up". There is some value in their salary saved immediately (70k + ? )

2. You get automatic upgrades because you're paying a subscription fee, and the company is able to pay their engineers using proceeds from MRC - so you won't ever be hit with a "new version" for $$$.

3. You get the reliability of data center infrastructure that your monthly budget could not otherwise afford. The DC cost per sq foot in the best DCs is in the $500 range which already breaks the budget of the SME for monthly telecommunication costs.

4. You have support automatically - it's not an extra fee to worry about.

5. The per-minute rates of calls are typically the lowest in the industry. The Cloud company can leverage huge volume to put downward pressure on inter-connection fees between other carrier networks. An SME alone does not have this leverage.

6. It uses your existing Internet connection (which you have anyway likely serving YouTube and Facebook to your staff as a primary use), you're not using 100% of what you're paying for, and bandwidth is a lot cheaper than another analog line or PRI.

These are just some of the benefits. As the years pass, you'll start to find that telecommunications will only be offered in an IP format as it benefits the carrier to over-subscribe single copper cables instead of dedicating a cable per telephone call (lots of wasted space on the cable!)

The death knell of analog and PRI has rung - it's only a matter of time. It will take years, but the transition is underway, and it cannot be stopped because it benefits the carriers most.

Good stuff Tyler, one point to clarify point 6, The Internet connection must not move voice packets over the public Internet. One of the requirements of successful VoIP is QOS. Since there is no QOS on the public Internet, there are no guarentees of latency or throughput whatsoever. This means that the connection from customer to carrier must be either a point to point or a "private" MPLS connection, not a public Internet MPLS connection. In this way the carrier can provide QOS, known latency and seperate voice packets and get them to their carrier switch in a controled environment, never over the Internet. Carrier networks are setup just like this, Verizon has been doing it since the late 90's They have been replacing their seperate private voice pipes, and data pipes with private IP pipes to carry VoIP together on all their links that connect their pops and CO's. Now all they need to do is replicate that same phillosophy with that same connection method on the last mile to the customer premise.

Bob, you can disagree with me, but that makes no sense. You can not disagree with facts. "You said it is possible to have successful VoIP with out it” Those are some very subjective words you are using. It is also possible to get from 50 miles outside New York City to midtown in under 2 hours in rush hour, but it is unlikely that you will have a quality ride every day. Because no one controls how much traffic and accidents will be on the Long Island Expressway. No one also controls the traffic on the public Internet so you nor anyone else can guess as to how often a call will go through, sound bad, get dropped. Those are facts. If you have a way to control and Implement QOS over the public Internet please tell us all how. So don't give me subjective words like successful. unless you are prepared to define it empirically. Your examples about other people who are happy with a bad setup hold no water.
Evidently you did not read my post very carefull where I said you musst have point to point or MPLS connection, then you state that you disagree and that your customer has a point to point? So you are agreeing with me then.

If you are next going to tell me that you have a gay male friend who has sex with strangers and never got an STD, that has to do more with odds and luck then it does recommended safe and reliable practices. I am sure there is one guy like that somewhere. I am sure you will not recommend that behavior.

Your dsl customer is not having safe sex.

Lindsey,

Managing ones own on premises PBX is quickly becoming extinct.

As for Hosted vs Managed, that is an interesting debate. For the purpose of this answer, I'm considering "Managed" to be a vendor deploying on on-premises solution but managing it themselves, instead of you having to manage it.

I'll disagree with Tyler that this will automatically free up the cost of an engineer. It has been quite some time since I have seen a telecom-only engineer, and that has been in larger organizations. Today, the person handling your phone system is most likely handling your LAN and WAN, so having this one function outsourced is just going to reduce the dilution of his/her time on the telco part of the network, not eliminate his job altogether.

In a hosted environment, you are usually going to have to wait on the vendor to upgrade their platform in order to support any new options from the manufacturer (depending on the significance of the upgrade desired).

It *might* be possible, in a managed environment, to be able to get upgrades faster, as there are less dependencies and interactions with other customers. As for features, it is not clear that one approach will be better than another automatically.

Either way, however, costs should be more manageable. Depending on who performed the actual deployment (your org or the vendor), or who owns the equipment, you might even have less upheaval if you changed managed vendors...

-ASB: http://xeesm.com/AndrewBaker

There are lots of ways to answer this, and being free advice, I'll just add a basic comment. Based on how your question is worded, this probably needs to be high level. First off, hosted and managed are both variations of outsourced telephony. Your question sounds like you think hosted and managed are different services - they're variations on a theme. They both contrast with premise-based telephony, which often involves capitalized equipment such as a PBX.

The main reason you wold go hosted - or managed - is that you're ready/willing/able to consider outsourcing telephony. There are many reasons that could lead you to that conclusion, and they're all valid. In many cases, businesses have simply had enough in terms of the cost, inflexibility and ongoing maintenance to support a PBX. You will save money with hosted, but it's definitely not free. Cost savings are an important consideration, but you'll likely be basing your decision more around the peace of mind to hand telephony off to the cloud, as well as the richer communications capabilities that come with outsourced IP telephony.

Lindsey,

There is a difference between hosted and managed service telephony. Tyler covered hosted pretty well above, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse. The only thing that I will add is that SIP and the ability to run multiple applications over a network that doesn't care about the type of endpoint is the real future of telephony.

With regard to managed services, I am seeing some of the traditional PBX resellers moving in this direction. Many of them will install the phone system at your premise and manage, maintain and upgrade it for a fixed monthly charge. Some are even including the voice and data service through agent agreements to give the client a one-stop-shop. The rates I've seen have been more favorable than a true hosted solution.

The one area that a hosted solution would have an advantage is if a business is considering a DR/BC plan. The beauty in hosted is the ability to pick up and move anywhere there is a broadband connection, plug in, open a soft phone and work without missing a beat; even if your business is wiped out by a hurricane. Here in Florida a lot of businesses are considering hosted telephony for that very reason.

Dave,

*With a managed service, you as the customer is relieved from maintaining the equipment. Thats a positive given costs around ongoing maintenance and licensing alone! Again, this comes back to SLA's that was defined with the 'managed' service that the supplier is offerring. At the end of the day if the provider can meet the SLA's then there shouldn't be any issues right? Any provider who offers managed services and not take responsibility for simple software upgrades as needed and puts the service at risk shouldn't be in the game!
* I realise what you are saying in respect to each service and what the question is. I was merely making comparisons based on two possible solutions and putting things out there.. The Hosted solution we propose allows each of our customers to remotely configure their own 'virtual' PBX and they have their own portal access to set up all standard PBX functions as if it was on premise. The benefit there is that there is no capital outlay on the hardware and it is a pay as you go service, WITH NO LOCKED IN CONTRACTS.
* The idea of our HPBX is to allow our customers to utilise their standard internet connection as we are in the 'Cloud'. Without going too deep into the design of our system we have multiple interconnects in our network and redundancy is standard as part of our engineering experience, so no issues there with regard to failure and we hope that our customers design their own networks to offer redundancy, again each to their own. Failing all of that there is the trusty mobile phone :)
* The drawing on our website is a 'logical' diagram to illustrate the concepts of Cloud Calling or a 'Hosted' model and the technologies around it for end users who are technically challenged so don't focus on it too much.. and I would have to disagree with you on the costs associated in our cost model. Either way we have published the costs on our site so feel free to make the comparisons.
* One thing I forgot to highlight is the cost savings on the calls VS standard telephone calls from the incumbent service provider so please make sure you take those costs into account as well.

back to the question. It's actually phrased a bit self contradictory, and I think it is bourne out of as the author(Lindsey) says out of lack of knowledge. She is looing for education on this topic. every telephony system can be managed, and it has to be managed by either an employee or a vendor. The question states "hosted or proprietery" This is misleading because all hosted solutions are propreietery systemes. Perhaps Lindsey is looking to know the difference between hosted and customer premise equipment? To answer the last question in Lindseys posted querey, the management of a system refers to maintanance and programming, not the features set available from any switch.
I think this question is born out of Lindsey's need to understand that a hosted solution is simpley a telephone system that is not located within the walls of a customer's site. It is located at the hosted providers facility. Eiether can be managed by a customer employee or a vendor. So the question I think Lindsey is looking for is more in line with hosted or CPE. Lindsey?

Hi Lindsey, In a nutshell benefits of on a 'Hosted' PBX solution.

http://www2.sabcomm.com.au/index.php/blog/entry/2010/09/08/sabcomm-introduces...

A managed PBX solution typically sees the end user or customer paying a monthly or yearly fee to basically outsource their telephony requirements. This is governed by Service Level Agreements based on uptime, quality and availability (agreed by the supplier & customer at the time of contract).

The immediate benefits include (to name a few):

* complete ownership of the system is handed to the supplier
* replacement and/or restoration of faulty parts
* commitment to 'agreed' uptime and availability
* always playing with new technology
* no need for internal staff to maintain system

Hope this helps!

Cheers
Singto

*ownership of the system handed to the supplier is a negative not a positive, because systems don't get upgraded as often they will with a customer owned and managed system.
*replacement and restoration of faulty parts is a key benefit to a provider managed system, not of a hosted system.
*reliability weather agreed to or not, is always lower on a hosted PBX rather than on premise equipment. with hosted there is no possibility of dial tone redundancy, with onsite managed equipment, One can use as many carriers as is required, and select simple equipment redundant, neither of which is available with a hosted solution.
*hosted providers do not upgrade their systems as often as managed on Premise equipment. This will vary somewhat by hosted providers and is not always part of the customer agreement.
*if it is managed, it is managed! (by a hosted provider or a vendor that supports on premise equipment), it is managed, by definition this means internal staff is not required to manage a system. The benefit to on premise equipment particularly by ShoreTel is that it is easy to make changes yourself, so in addition to relying on outside vendor managed support, the customer has the option at anytime to make fullly accessible and easy changes to his system. Conversely with a hosted solution they set the rules and they will not give the customer full access to change everything they want. There is significantly less control over maintenance and MAC work at that point. further, if any aspect of a hosted provider is not desirable such as programming changes, price, second carrier, telephones, then the entire provider of all must be changed. This puts the customer into a virtual lock unless he completely changes his entire telecommunications infrastructure. With on premise managed equipment, the customer is free to change any portion he wants thus enhancing the entire experience.
The solution on your webpage is more expensive than CPE, and very unreliable based on the drawing you have.

Lindsey, to Derek's point about DR if needed is not best served by hosted since the cost of the service is always so much more thanon premise equipment and carrier service, oftne double the monthly. Hosted has no strength over CPE. Placing a redundant PBX and pipes in a second site can be very expensive with Avaya or god forbid Cisco. In both cases you need a whole second switch, and carrier service offsite, although this will still be cheaper than your sinlge location Hosted solution which is mobile only if you use bring your own bandwidth, the opportunity cost of spending the money this way on DR might get a thumbs down vote. The best way to do it is to use the ShoreTel architecture with N+1 redundancy. You can put a $1200, or $1700, or $2500 switch offsite to back up site for between 2 lines and 20 phones, and 8 lines and 50 phones to be backed up. add the cost of the backup lines and Internet conenction, and you are still much lower monthly and or TCO then you are with every hosted solution.

I am going to disagree with you somewhat Mr Hirsch. Although an MPLS or other private connection to the hosted provider is an excellent solution it is possible to have successful hosted VoIP service without.

For example I am currently successfully using a hosted voip service through AVAD Tech using a relatively large DSL connection and an Edgewater router that makes certain at least on the LAN side, the voice packets are protected. Only experiene can really tell if this would work in a larger business setting. So testing would be your only real answer for this low end solution.

Here is another solution that is working successfully for us. I put a customer on a PTP DS3 to connect to their Cisco VOIP equipment that was housed in a COLO facility at a telco hotel in Seattle that was on Level3s backbone (among others) . Note this was also done to avoid some rate center issues. The hosting provider was colod in a teleco hotel in Los Angeles also on the level3 back bone. The traffic stays on Level3 backbone between facilities essentailly never touches the "Internet". This is an example where we are mixing internet access and Voip successfully without QOS or MPLS.

You can save the client money if you have the facilities and services available at the lcoation and know your carriers. I specialize in knowing the different carriers and their networks and therefore probably have a different viewpoint.

Note: I am only talking about VOIP and connection to the hosted service - no video streams or video conferencing.

It works and customers are satisfied