Hosted Voice Services are a Boon to SMBs

Hosted voice services are constantly in high demand, and new providers keep appearing to meet that demand. Businesses of all sizes are investing in hosted solutions in order to minimize costs while maximizing efficiency for their voice and unified communications needs.

There are several benefits to a hosted solution over a premise-based one, such as the ability to get new features and capabilities as they're released without having to upgrade servers or install new software. There are some costs to be considered, such as ongoing monthly costs, but that is balanced out by little upfront costs and the affordable growth and scalability.

There are clearly benefits for SMBs when using a hosted or cloud-based service:

• Focus: Organizations of all sizes can let someone else deal with the technology, allowing the organization to focus on its core business;
  
  
• Subscription OpEx model means that you'll just pay a monthly fee as you go, rather than spending a large amount of money upfront. This can result in significant savings compared to premise-based solutions.
  
  
• Companies can be guaranteed to get the newest features as they're introduced, and thanks to automatic updates, will never have to worry about falling behind.
  
  
• Time to deploy: Voice and UC services can be up and running much more quickly in a hosted or cloud deployment. The service can be available swiftly and easily, without having to install and implement servers. That means that the time to deployment can be cut down from months to days.
  
  
• Simplicity: Hosted services can be much simpler for organizations to purchase, deploy, and manage than premise-based solutions. While on-premise solutions may require additional technical knowledge, hosted solutions handle that from the provider's side, so the organizations using the service don't need to worry about it.

There are many service providers in this space, with well over 100 offering hosted voice services, each with different strengths and weaknesses that should be taken into consideration. One example is Fonality, which provides a wide range of unified communications and contact center capabilities, and includes a phone as a part of its service. Fonality provides not only a hosted solution, but also premise-based and hybrid solutions. Fonality's VoIP and UC business communications solutions are aimed at businesses with 10 to 250 users, and includes enterprise communication features such as conferencing, instant messaging, presence, and screen sharing, along with contact center features like skill-based routing.

With hosted or cloud-based services, organizations can get their UC services up and running in far less time than it would take for an on-premise solution, and leave the technical details and issues to the company that's hosting it, allowing the IT staff to concentrate on other issues, With a hosted service, the IT staff doesn't have to worry about updates, as those are handled automatically by the hosted provider.

When thinking about deploying a hosted service, UCStrategies co-founder Blair Pleasant suggests, "It's important to determine what you are trying to accomplish and what your goals are - are you looking for a full featured offering, low cost, or business process integration? There are wide variances, and it's important to carefully evaluate the hosted services based on your business goals." She adds, "Companies need to think about their business goals and strategies first, and then decide on which services and service providers make the most sense."

Using the cloud, small businesses can compete with larger enterprises on an even playing field.,Hosted service providers like Fonality make it easy for SMBs to get the services and features they need without having to sacrifice time, productivity, or more money than they can afford.