Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud?

IS IT TIME TO MOVE YOUR TELEPHONY TO THE CLOUD?

An Edify eBook

Long ago we tossed our flip phones and bought smartphones. We transitioned from film-based to digital cameras. From bulky TVs to flat screens.

From hard-wired devices to bluetooth. In the office, we’ve gone from wired to Wi-Fi, from keys to keyless entry, from slides to laptop projectors.

These new technologies save us time and money.

And they make life easier. We wouldn’t dream of going back to the devices of a decade ago.

Is your office communications system still stuck in the past, though? If you have an on-premises PBX (telephony system), these questions will help you decide whether it’s time to move to the cloud with a UCaaS (unified communications as a service) solution to give your employees all they need and more.

Ask yourself the following questions...

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 1

Q1 Whether adding a new user, expanding an existing location, or bringing on a new site, do you have to reach out to your telephony vendor each time? In addition to the license cost, more hardware may be involved. It’s time-consuming and costly.

On a scale, how much effort do you have to expend today?

Super simple, takes a few minutes

Umm, let’s say a “while”

Full business day, easy

Oh my, don’t ask

With a cloud-based solution, expanding is do-it-yourself. It’s simple and it’s fast. And you don’t ever have to think about hardware.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 2

Q2

If your company has grown over time and you have multiple locations, each site may have purchased its own communication solutions from various vendors. Each system has its own unique administrative interface and feature variances. That means your IT staff spends a lot of time understanding and managing each of them. They have to ensure that your employees can communicate with each other regardless of location. Billing can be a nightmare, too.

How difficult is it for you to manage all your locations?

Nah, we’ve got it under control

It can be a challenge sometimes

We’re growing faster than we can keep up with these changes

I think I’ll just retire

When you move to the cloud, those challenges are gone. Same interface, same functionality, same ease of administration and management for everyone, everywhere.

Plus one simple, easy-to-understand invoice.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 3

Q3 Are upgrades included, or do you have to pay for them? Most traditional on-premises vendors charge significant additional fees for upgrades. And sometimes the hardware has to be updated as well, adding even more expense.

You may have to cost-justify these expenditures to your business. Is it worth your time and effort, or do you find yourself skipping upgrades? Every time a new release is available, you have to weigh the overhead and expense against the benefit.

What happens when you need to upgrade?

It’s effortless.

A time-consuming headache that I dread

Could be easier

What upgrades?

We can’t afford them.

With a cloud-based solution, that juggling act is over. You’re automatically upgraded to the latest releases, with no effort or added expense. Upgrades are delivered much more frequently as well. That means everyone in your company stays up to date on new features, making them more productive as a result.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 4

Q4

Given the myriad of known threats—and the emergence of new threats daily—security is one of the more critical challenges your IT team must deal with. You may have multiple solutions from multiple vendors; therefore, each presents its own opportunities for security breaches. It’s also likely that your telephony system has integrations with other solutions, presenting more possibilities for attackers.

Is security of communications a concern for your IT team?

Not really

Somewhat

It’s an ongoing concern for IT

Maybe that’s why they have dark circles under their eyes

You can leave security to the experts with a cloud-based solution that has a team of engineers specializing in detecting and preventing cybersecurity threats. It’s one less thing for your IT team to worry about, and one more area you can feel confident in.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 5

Q5 When you installed your premises-based phone system, it was a big investment—hardware, software, integrations, user licenses. That alone was a costly venture. The problem is, you just keep paying. For upgrades. For maintenance.

For additional hardware to support growth, and/or to upgrade existing hardware.

Are the costs a concern to your company?

No, we have deep pockets.

Somewhat — I keep hearing about budget cuts.

Definitely, more so all the time.

I’m wondering when I’ll have to sell my first-born.

Don’t let the up-front investments you have already made keep you from moving to the cloud now—if you stay with your on-premises solution, you’re throwing good money after bad. When you transition to a cloud-based unified communications solution, there is no up-front expenditure for hardware and software. You transition from CAPEX (capital expenses) to OPEX (operating expenses), paying only monthly per-user charges. Upgrades?

You automatically get the latest software, without paying additional dollars. Maintenance?

It’s included. Your company is growing? Simply add more licenses. It couldn’t be simpler.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 6

If the questions above highlight challenges you’re dealing with today, it’s time to explore alternatives. Your answers may show it’s imperative to put your transition to cloud at the top of your priority list.

Aside from mitigating the issues discussed, you gain so much more. Expect your unified communications solution to include embedded presence and messaging (with internal group and private chat), mobility, work-from-anywhere capabilities, embedded self-service, intelligent virtual assistants, and more.

And you automatically get new features on an ongoing basis--capabilities that maximize the productivity of your employees and your company.

Is it Time to Move Your Telephony to the Cloud? 7

Edify connects businesses with customers and employees with each other. The company’s Business Communications as a Service (BCaaS) platform, Huddle, is the only one uniting contact center (CC), unified communications (UC), and real-time communications platform (API) functionality in a single, cloud-native software solution that lets users move seamlessly among channels within one conversation. Edify removes all the risk of using its cloud-based platform with five free users forever, global availability, real-time redundancy, usage-based pricing, and a 100% SLA uptime guarantee. edify.cx 833.740.8024 @edifycx