Hosted VoIP and Unified Communications Services

In every list of predictions for 2011, hosted or cloud-based services made the top three. There's a multitude of hosted service providers angling to make it big in this market. Blair Pleasant and Dave Michels of UCStrategies set out to identify and profile several hosted services targeted at small businesses - particularly, under 20 users.

The hosted voice business is only about five years old, and initially made possible through VoIP. There are numerous service providers in this space, mostly targeting small (SMB) companies. The basic value proposition is outsourced communications with robust features charged monthly with no or minimal capital outlays, particularly attractive to businesses feeling trapped with expensive and/or obsolete communications equipment on premise. The hosted voice offerings tend to run $20-$90/month/user for various feature sets, minimal upfront capital outlays, robust VoIP enabled feature sets, and typically no long term contracts.

Now that most organizations are aware of UC and the benefits it provides, they're moving on to the evaluation stage to determine the best way to implement UC in their organizations. The two primary ways are via premise-based solutions (or what we used to call CPE, or customer premise equipment) and hosted service offerings. Companies need to look at their business needs to determine which is the best solution to fit your needs, and determine if hosted or a premise-based solution is best for you.

There are two broad sets of competitors for hosted voice service providers; traditional equipment-based solutions and competitive service-based service providers. The traditional equipment vendors have some brand recognition benefits, but are largely sold and supported by local independent dealers. Price comparisons between hosted and premise based solutions are difficult because premise systems require a significant portion up-front (capital expense - though could be operational expenses through leasing programs) and some ongoing costs for maintenance, and telephony circuits and usage charges (long distance). Hosted voice puts most of the costs into operational monthly expenses, and with unlimited usage plans can be more predictable.

Key Differences Between Premise and Hosted Solutions:

Source: UCStrategies

The other competitive group is other hosted voice providers, of which there are many. Hosted voice has few, if any, geographic restrictions, so competitors are inherently across the nation rather than across the street. Hosted voice providers rarely visit the customer on-site or in in person. Therefor the primary means of competition is via price and features, rather than relationship.

However, it is very difficult to compare price and features among hosted voice providers. There is very inconsistent use of terms and feature descriptions. This is exacerbated by the fact that few end-users know exactly what to look for in terms of features. For example, the feature "Exchange Integration" turns out to have a very high degree of interpretation among the vendors. It is not enough to simply require a feature, but detailed usage scenarios are required to fully understand the differences.

Why Hosted VoIP and UC

If you haven't already looked into hosted VoIP and UC service, now is the time. With hosted services, the hosting provider runs and manages the hardware and software in their data center, and is responsible for monitoring and managing the service, so the end-user company doesn't have to. Customers can get the telephony and UC services they need - whether real time voice, messaging, conferencing, mobility, and so on, from the hosted provider, giving them the benefit of UC without the large capital investment or the need to manage and maintain the solution. Hosted solutions replace the upfront capital costs of a premise-based solution with a monthly fee for the service.

We're expecting to see a big uptake in hosted communication services, with a great amount of the interest coming from SMBs, but also from larger companies. While cost is usually the main reason companies start investigating hosted solutions, there are a host (pun intended) of other benefits of hosted UC services.

Primarily, UC hosted services can be much simpler for organizations than premise-based solutions, which can be somewhat complex. Premise-based telephony systems require special facilities (HVAC), servers, ongoing maintenance and upgrades, and capacity planning associated with both the circuits and servers. Add in other applications, like web conferencing, it adds even more to the complexity. And of course companies need the personnel to manage and maintain these systems.

With a hosted solution, the service can be available quickly and easily, without having to install and implement servers. Users can have a hosted UC solution up and working in hours, rather than months. There are little or no capital expenditures, except for the phones in most cases. Companies only pay for the services needed for the end users on the system, and can scale up or down as needed, paying only for what you need at the time. Additionally, redundancy and disaster recovery plans are typically included in the base monthly service. Hosted offerings are particularly attractive to SMBs that may not have a large or dedicated IT staff. Hosted providers can turn up new locations and users as needed, without impacting the company's IT staff.

Perhaps the most compelling argument in favor of hosted services is the flexibility and ability to stay current with technology and upgrades. Companies don't have to upgrade to the next release each time something comes out, and they automatically get the latest versions. This also saves lots of time in money in terms of upgrading to the latest and greatest versions of software when needed. Hosted services can also give customers predictable operating costs based on their monthly service fees. Depending on the solution, hosted services may be able to offer more features than premise-based SMB systems, since advanced features such as conferencing and recording may be cost prohibitive in SMB systems. Hosted solutions can also offer higher availability, and intuitive web-based administration.

Alternatively, hosted services typically offer fairly basic features and functionality, and in some cases may not offer all of the functions that their premise-based counterparts offer (although this is more likely the case in enterprise solutions rather than SMB solutions). This may be a challenge for companies that require specific bells and whistles that the hosted provider does not offer, but for most companies, especially SMBs, the functionality provided meets or exceeds their general needs. Also, more comprehensive functionality is evolving and hosted solutions will include capabilities that are comparable to premise-based enterprise solutions.

The requirement for "voice" or "telephony" is quickly being replaced by the requirement for unified communications (UC), which is a broad term used to represent broader communication tools and capabilities. There is a tremendous amount of confusion and marketing hype around unified communications, but at its core is a solution that not only includes traditional voice, but features such as a presence/IM, video, collaboration, messaging, broader tools for mobility, and integration hooks with other applications.

Source: Alex Doyle, Broadsoft/Modified by UCStrategies

Hosted VoIP and UC Research Findings

We interviewed five of the leading hosted providers for the SMB market, focusing on features/capabilities, pricing, service, and other aspects that end users should consider when making their vendor selections. The following are key observations we noted as we compared the solutions and quotes from various hosted voice service providers.

• Access: All firms we interviewed expect the customer to use the public Internet for access. There was very little discussion or concern about the quality of service issues that could arise from use of the Public Internet. Most providers have some tools to test the bandwidth, but none offered regular monitoring or troubleshooting for network congestion. Because of this, none of the firms offered strong assurances or SLAs regarding the overall experience or system availability.
  
  
• Comparing pricing is extremely difficult. There is no consistency or simple way to compare vendors' pricing, as some features are included in pricing bundles and others are sold a la carte. We recommend that customers prepare a list of the features and functionality required for each user and try to compare apples-to-apples as best as possible. Make sure you understand what is included in the package and what else needs to be paid for (eg, one vendor includes a hard phone in their pricing, but the others do not; some include E911 and some charge extra for it).
  
  
• The hosted VoIP providers all offered the basic calling features - unlimited local and long distance calling, automated attendant, visual voicemail/unified messaging, Call forward/Call transfer/Call waiting, Enhanced E911, dial by name, Caller ID, Do Not Disturb, Ring (or Blast) Group, Find Me/Follow Me, call rules and scheduling, call log reporting, call recording, and other basic call functions. They all offer web-based administration portals for managing user accounts, as well as mobile capabilities such as being able to receive calls on a mobile device while maintaining and accessing PBX features and functions, the ability to initiate calls via WiFi and 3G, and simultaneous ringing on multiple devices.
  
  
• Where the vendors differ is in more advanced features such as contact center capabilities, advanced mobility, conferencing, unified communications, desktop controls, and advanced unified communications capabilities.

Vendor Overviews

The following outlines and highlights the vendor offerings in a few key areas: Unified Communications, Contact Center, and Mobility. This information is based on the responses to the vendor questionnaires and our phone interviews with the vendors. The table indicates how well each vendor meets our expectations based on the features/capabilities provided, and provides a summary of information collected.

Source: UCStrategies

Vendor Profiles

8x8

8x8 offers Virtual Office and Virtual Office Pro. Virtual Office Pro bundles Virtual Office phone service with online meetings, Internet faxing, and call recording, adding capabilities such as chat, presence management, web/audio/video conferencing, Internet faxing, and call recording.

Unified Communications

8x8 offers a good number of unified communications capabilities, including screen pop, and integration with Microsoft Outlook, SalesForce and Netsuite. Find me/follow me capabilities include: Ring multiple numbers simultaneously or have your calls hunt you down from phone to phone. Users define their own call forwarding rules based on time, date, or day of the week, phone number, area Code or Country Code. Other features include call screening and blocking, Live reply and 1-touch forwarding between mobile and desk phone. The UC desktop client is all web based, with no plug in required. The online dashboard, 8x8 Virtual Office Online, lets subscribers manage their features and functions remotely through a web portal.

8x8's UC bundle, Virtual Office Pro, includes:

• 8x8 Virtual Office Online for placing and receiving calls, setting call handling rules, listening to voicemail online, etc.
  
  
• Built-in softphone functionality
  
  
• 8x8 Virtual Meeting for web, audio and video meetings
  
  
• Social Media Integration that lets users post and send status to Twitter and Facebook contacts directly from the Virtual Office Online dashboard
  
  
• Video Chat.

For mobility, 8x8 supports Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Google Android (in Beta), so users can make and receive calls over their 3G network or any available Wi-Fi connection, just as if they were calling right from their 8x8 desk phone. Capabilities include 3-way calling, hold and transfer calls, calling from iPhone contacts list, and access voicemail, conference bridge, and auto attendant.

Contact center capabilities include 8x8 Call Queuing (an option for 8x8 Virtual Office Pro customers), providing up to 20 callers per queue, up to 6 queues per PBX, secondary queue extension group for each queue, and a voicemail box for each queue. This costs $14.99 monthly per user, plus a $9.99 one-time activation for call queuing as an add-on to Virtual Office. 20 users can be supported per queue, with up to six queues per PBX.

8x8 also offers a hosted call center service based on Contactual's service that integrates voice, email, web-chat, and desktop collaboration. This works with 8x8 Virtual Office VoIP phone service and costs about $150 per seat/per month. This adds features such as CTI, real-time monitoring and reporting, agent hot desking, Salesforce and Netsuite CRM integration, and more.

Pricing

The unlimited extension plan offers unlimited outbound and inbound calls to the US, Canada, and 8 other countries for $29.99 per user per month, with up to three additional extensions for $24.00 per user per month. Metered Extension offers 250 minutes of calling to the US and Canada, and 2.9 cents a minute after that, and any international tolls, for $24.99 per month, plus a $39.99 one-time activation. Unlimited Global Extension allows for unlimited calls to select international locations for $79.99 per month plus a $39.99 one-time activation. Optional features for these plans include virtual numbers, virtual extensions, audio production store, Softalk Office Softphone, professional installation, additional auto attendant, virtual attendant, call queuing, additional ring groups, switchboard, and iPhone integration. A Virtual Extension plan costs $9.99/month, and a Virtual Extension Unlimited plan costs $29.99 per month.

Strengths/Differentiation

• Contact center offerings - full-featured hosted call center service (via third party - Contactual) for multimedia routing and queuing, CRM integration
  
  
• UC capabilities: UC client and web-based UC bundle; provides presence management
  
  
• Video conferencing, video chat (only vendor to offer video capabilities today)
  
  
• Social Media Integration to Twitter and Facebook from the Virtual Office Online dashboard (in beta).

Aptela

In addition to the basic calling features, Aptela's enhanced capabilities include: audio conferencing, call answering rules, Call Flip/Call Toggling ("Flip" a call from your desk phone to your cell phone-or vice versa-), softphone, and more.

Unified Communications

UC features include: Find me/follow me, click-to-call (when using Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome), voicemail and fax to email, and "Smart Find Me Lists". The User Dashboard, a web-based dashboard, displays user line presence and enables click-to-call capabilities. Other capabilities include auto attendant, faxing, voicemail (including voicemail to text and email integration, web portal, and several add ons. The desktop application (currently in beta) provides screen pop, and, pops a toaster with caller ID for incoming calls. Users can answer or reject a call from the toaster. All active calls are presented in an active "call room" where users can place the call on hold, flip it to another phone, start/stop recording, take notes or forward the call.

Aptela created a mobile site for "any" smart phone user, called m.aptela.com. Users can make outbound Aptela calls with their caller ID, access one-click calling, view recent call history, listen to new voicemail messages, and enable/disable Find Me/Follow Me functions.

The "Mobile Plan" lets companies buy a non-VoIP extension, giving them access to the application and all features/functionality of the VoIP users without a SIP phone. There are two mobile pricing options: the Mobile Basic Plan is $9.99 per seat and $0.029 per minute for outbound calls, and the Mobile Professional plan is $19.99 per seat for 500 outbound minutes/extension, $0.029/minute after that.

Pricing

Aptela offers three pricing plans. VoIP Unlimited offers unlimited nationwide local/long distance calls, integrated faxing, and on-net calls, starting at $24.99 per user per month. VoIP Professional includes 250 minutes of nationwide local/long distance calls, and $.025/minute beyond that, plus unlimited integrated faxing and on-net calls for $19.99 per user per month. VoIP Basic costs $.025 per minute for nationwide local and long distance calls, plus unlimited integrated faxing and on-net calls for $14.99 a month per user. In addition, Aptela offers two Mobile plans: the Basic Plan gives auto attendant and PBX functionality to mobile employees for $9.99 per user per month, plus outbound domestic rate calls for $0.029/minute and unlimited on-net calling. The Professional Plan costs $19.99/month and includes 500 outbound minutes per user, with outbound domestic calls beyond that at $0.029/minute, plus unlimited on-net calling.

Strengths/Differentiators

• Department Dashboard - enabling remote workers, team management
  
  
• Mobility - the m.aptela.com mobile site, support for the most popular mobile softphones, voicemail/call/fax notifications
  
  
• Customization & Extensibility - configuration options
  
  
• Monthly webinars for end-users to provide training and additional information

Fonality

Fonality offers two services for small and medium sized businesses: Fonality Connect and Fonality Connect +. Both are bundled solutions that include phones, advanced calling and routing features, and a unified communications client for chat and drop-and-drag call management. Connect + adds two virtual extensions, a secure virtual conference bridge, two group mailboxes, advanced Call Center features, CRM Integration, and a desktop and smartphone license of HUD, Fonality's UC application.

Unified Communications

Fonality provides the most comprehensive UC capabilities. All users receive a desktop client called HUD (Heads-up Display), which works on Mac, Windows, Linux, and connects the users' phones, desktop and important business applications into a single interface. Users can send IM's, view employee's presence status, access drag and drop call management features and call control capabilities, and can set their status (online, away, DND, and "custom away"). Presence capabilities allow users to not only see if someone is on call, but how long they've been on the phone and if they're on a conference call. Presence information is also available for mobile devices so you can view presence on Apple and Android devices. Users can view someone's contact card and click on an icon to send an email, IM/chat, or an SMS. HUD integrates with public IM services such as Google, Jabber, and other XMPP chat protocols.

UC features include screen pop, including CRM screen pop, find me/follow me (based on specific users, location, status and call states, time/date options); call screening options, simultaneous ring, and 1-touch forwarding between mobile and desk phone. HUD also provides visual access to virtual conference rooms to let users enter a conference or drag and drop someone into a conference room, and see who's in a conference room.

Full contact center capabilities are provided as part of Fonality's Connect + package. It includes unlimited queues, conditional call routing using context or skill-based inputs, HUD Queues for contact center product, CRM integration with Sugar CRM, agent hot desking, real-time monitoring, CTI integration, and an FAQ database. Graphical queue reports and real-time queue statistics are provided, and users can identify who is in the queue, how long they've been on hold, which agent they're talking to, etc.

Mobile devices supported include Apple (iPhone, iPod, iPad) and Andriod (v1.7 & 2.1), supporting presence, Find Me, contact directory, partial call center features, visual voicemail, chat, recording, unified call history, and more. Two Virtual extensions are included in the package.

Pricing

Fonality Connect costs $30 per user per month, including a phone (they are the only vendor to include the phone as part of the basic packaging); Fonality Connect + costs $50 per user, including the phone and enhanced contact center functionality. Additional options include a full portfolio of desktop and softphones for upgrades, Conference Room with phone (Polycom IP5000), Virtual Conference Rooms, Virtual Extensions, Group Mailboxes, Voice Prioritization, Fax, CRM User Integration, iPhone/Android Smartphone License, Toll Free numbers, additional Local Dial in numbers, and international local dial in numbers.

Strengths/Differentiators

• Unified Communications - HUD offers very rich capabilities, particularly around presence information; screen pop with routing options
  
  
• Contact center - full contact center capabilities, including CRM integration, enhanced routing, views into queues
  
  
• Mobility - including presence status for Apple and Android devices
  
  
• International local markets
  
  
• Price and simplicity of packages (includes phone)

RingCentral

In addition to all of the basic functions, the RingCentral cloud-based Business Phone System offers unlimited virtual extensions, integrated Internet fax with dedicated number, call queues, softphone, customizable answering rules, and advanced call forwarding. Custom greetings and rules can be created based on Business/After hours, vacation or weekend rules. Rules can be created by caller, customer, or phone number.

Unified Communications

UC capabilities include screen pop, find me/follow me, real-time text-to-speech messaging, 1-touch forwarding between mobile and desk phone, and the ability to flip a live call from one device to another. The UC desktop client, the Call Controller, can act as a softphone (for Mac and PC), letting users manage calls, faxes, and their account from their PC, screen calls with visual caller ID, respond to callers with text-to-speech messages in real-time (eg; "I'll call you in 5 minutes"), listen to messages or interrupt callers while the message is being left, initiate conference calls with up to 10 people, record calls, and send and receive faxes.

Microsoft Outlook integration lets users click to dial from Outlook, and Outlook contacts can be imported and integrated into RingCentral so it can identify callers that are Outlook contacts.

Smartphones apps are available for the iPhone with VoIP (Wi-Fi & 3G), BlackBerry, and Android devices. Capabilities provided on the mobile devices include: show your RingCentral business number as your Caller ID when making calls from the app, making calls using VoIP (iPhone only), VoIP calling to make local calls to the US while traveling internationally, visual voicemail, receive, view and forward faxes, and intelligent call forwarding.

RingCentral provides call queues (voice only) and the ability for employees to take calls from queues and distribute them based on skills, availability, longest time on hold, etc. Salesforce integration will be provided shortly.

Pricing

RingCentral Office costs $49.99/month for one user, going down to $19.99/month per user for 20+ users. Pricing includes all the business phone and fax features, unlimited local and long distance phone service and local area code or toll-free numbers. Additional options include additional local, toll-free, or vanity voice and fax numbers. Unlimited virtual extensions are included with each account. Each extension includes voicemail, Internet fax and all the answering and call routing settings.

Strengths/Differentiators

• All-inclusive pricing and packaging - everything except the phone is bundled in.
  
  
• Call Controller: includes screen pop, call management capabilities.
  
  
• Mobile apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.
  
  
• Real-time text-to-speech messaging.

Vocalocity

Vocalocity's voice plan includes all of the standard functionality, including unified messaging, multiple virtual receptionists, dial-by-name directory, virtual departments, music on hold, and paperless fax.

Unified Communications

UC features include a Dashboard to provide real-time status of all extensions within the PBX, click-to-dial integrated with Outlook and the user's web browser, Custom Tag (to identify origin of incoming calls by adding a unique tag to each published phone number), cell phone integration (to forward calls to cell phones and use PBX functions from cell phones), softphone support, Follow Me, and Call Flip to transfer calls to a cell phone. Screen pop will be available in the next release, as well as a UC Desktop client.

For mobility, Vocalocity's virtual extension works with all mobile phones. Customers can purchase virtual extensions as an add-on feature.

Call center capabilities include call queues and call recording for additional fees. Call queues are managed through the web-based interface and can be set up in order of agent tier, random, etc.Additional call center capabilities are being introduced shortly, includingcall center manager features for barge/monitor/whisper, CRM integration, built-in contact management, real time reporting, agent hot desk, and graphical queue reports.

Pricing

Unlimited Extensions start at $39.99 per user per month, but can be discounted based on the number of extensions purchased. Metered Extension cost $14.99 + $0.03 per minute. Virtual Extension costs $14.99. Additional features include Paperless fax, Call group, Call queue, Conference bridge, Main company number, Toll Free Number, Local or Geographic Number, International Company Number, Virtual Mailbox, Voicemail transcription, and Company Call Recording Service.

Strengths & Differentiators

• Company Call Recording, On-Demand Call Recording
  
  
• Voicemail-to-Text
  
  
• The only company with a guarantee to have customers provisioned within one business day.