VoIP provides businesses with a cost effective method of deploying telephony and unified communication services to end users. When compared to a traditional PBX infrastructure, VoIP provides cost savings, flexibility and increased reliability.
According to Sipnology, 31% of all businesses currently use Voice over IP in their environments. Research analysts predict that the VoIP and Unified Communications (UC) industry will grow to become an $88 billion dollar market by 2018.
With businesses rapidly adopting VoIP in their environments, one big question remains: Where is the best place to host your VoIP infrastructure? Most experts suggest that you host your VoIP infrastructure in data center colocation facility and here’s why:
Network Uptime & Reliability
Network uptime is one of the most underrated facets of data center colocation. ColoCrossing offers a 100% network uptime guarantee. This provides your business with an edge on the competition.
When your organization can guarantee the availability of its VoIP services, your business can make more sales and help more customers.
VoIP services thrive when premium bandwidth is available to your infrastructure. With ColoCrossing, each of our 8 data centers can provide your business with the following:
- Direct connections to major networks
- Multiple tier 1 providers in every POP
- Real time 24/7/365 monitoring
- 100% Uptime SLA
Business Continuity
Can your business endure a disaster recovery scenario? If your organizations hosts its data center onsite, could it continue to operate without phone services?
For most businesses, the answer is no.
When your organization hosts its VoIP services in a colocated data center, your end users can continue to make phone calls even if your office is unavailable during a disaster.
How? While every VoIP infrastructure is different, the core principles remain the same. If your phone system is hosted in a data center colocation facility, your network administrators can deploy a configuration that will allow your employees to use their phones during a disaster recovery scenario.
This includes desk phones, soft phones and VoIP apps that can be loaded onto mobile phones.
Many organizations choose to host their VoIP services in a colocation facility for the simple fact that their telephony services will remain active even during a power outage or a network outage that directly impacts your office.Take a Virtual Tour of our Flagship Datacenter located in Downtown Buffalo
Controlled Environment
Hosting your VoIP infrastructure in a data center colocation facility gives your business several built-in advantages.
Consider this scenario: If your company deployed its VoIP services in an on-site data center, your organization will be responsible providing backup power and backup network connections.
Let’s say your business has fiber internet running into the building; if your ISP encounters any sort of issue, your phone services could become unavailable. This can be quite costly for your business, especially if you run call center applications.
Another potential issue that could bring down your telephony infrastructure is a sudden loss of power. Not every business has the luxury of having diesel generators onsite that will help keep your organization’s infrastructure online.
Even if your business has UPS devices, these battery backups can only keep your equipment running for so long.
If you host your VoIP infrastructure in a colocated data center, your telephone services will stay online and your business can rapidly recover since power and network redundancy will cease to be an issue.
Compliance
Even in the telephony world, businesses must make a crucial infrastructure decision: Cloud or Colo?
Cloud VoIP providers are becoming more popular but many businesses worry about compliance and reliability.
For example, if your business must record all of its calls, your call data may contain sensitive and privileged information about your customers.
This could include personal identifiable information (PII), credit card information or proprietary information about your business that you may not want to share with third parties.
From a compliance standpoint, your business must take the proper precautions to limit these risks. Deploying your telephony infrastructure in a colocated data center is a great way to mitigate many of these concerns.
Since you own the hardware, colocation data centers will provide video surveillance, physical security and offer two factors of security for each person that physically visits your rack.
By colocating your VoIP infrastructure, your business can mitigate many of these concerns since your business will retain complete control over your telephony deployments.
Get More Info on how ColoCrossing can help your orgnaization with PCI Compliance
Cost Savings
While VoIP services continue to rise in popularity, CIOs are tasked with a crucial decision: VoIP colocation, VoIP onsite or VoIP in the cloud.
When you shop and compare these services, the cloud option might seem more affordable at first. There are several caveats.
First, you’ll have to do the math. Colocated VoIP may have more upfront costs, but depending upon the size of your offices, the upfront costs plus the monthly costs of colocation could be more affordable than other options.
As your company grows and begins to scale, colocated VoIP will likely provide a better value since your business will own the underlying infrastructure.
The more handsets you deploy, the more value you’ll get out of your VoIP deployments.
Before you begin shopping around for VoIP colocation services, contact the experts at ColoCrossing for a custom quote. With ColoCrossing’s 8 US based data centers, your business can deploy its VoIP infrastructure in a data center with ultra low latency and 100% network uptime.
