and email. ... businesses ensure they opt for the best service to meet their needs? ... of hosted seats in the. UK grew
Hosted Buyer’s Guide Six key things to look for from a Hosted service provider
IP Cortex Ltd www.ipcortex.co.uk
Six key things to look for from a Hosted service provider Public clouds are now natural homes of mission critical apps, offering greater scalability, flexibility and price. This is now also true of real time communication; a change driven by changing network infrastructure and the overall decline and commoditisation of telephony and email. As a result, the number of UK businesses choosing a cloud-based - also known as hosted - platform for their communications is growing rapidly. At the same time, we’re seeing much larger organisations turn to hosted telephony and unified communications than ever before - a trend that’s being driven by the availability of rich functionality and powerful integrations.
The number of hosted seats in the UK grew by 24% in 2017
Hosted communication no longer has to be synonymous with cheap access to a dial tone, but with a wide range of features to choose from how can UK businesses ensure they opt for the best service to meet their needs? Below are the six key things that buyers should always consider when choosing a hosted communication solution, no matter the size of their business.
1. Am I locked into anything? Hosted isn’t just for small businesses our average is 40 users!
With hosted systems, lock in can take the form of long contracts, handset choices or an inability to port phone numbers to another provider. Look for providers that put the flexibility in your hands: handsets are never one size fits all so ensure there’s a choice, and no contract or phone number lock in means that you’re able to protect your business from disruption and reputational risk - never mind the fact that providers will work harder to retain your custom.
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2. Is it reliable? The most reliable services are built 72% of end users upon infrastructure that is resilient believe ownership - recovers quickly from failures; of support issues and offers redundancy - a second or third deployment running in was very important, parallel; and have sophisticated yet more than half service monitoring in place. Ask think their current providers about the redundancy provider’s approach and resilience of their datacentre infrastructure - switches and so on is unsatisfactory* - as well as the servers that actually deliver the communication platform. What proactive measures do they have in place? How quickly will the service recover after different types of failure? Will conversations drop, or continue?
3. How difficult is it to get started, and how much control do I have? Each business has their own communication needs and will want to prioritise some features and functionality over others. For example, some customer facing organisations may want embedded video, while others would prefer file sharing and chat functionality. Can your hosted services provider and their resellers configure and customise the system for you? Will they spend the time to train staff to ensure company wide adoption to make the most of the functionality that you’ve opted for? It’s also important to consider the process to get up and running; what’s required to integrate the platform and how much of a learning curve is there for staff? Ideally, the platform is intuitive enough to engage users without them needed to learn new skills or download specific software or applications onto different devices.
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4. Is it secure? What about fraud protection? Security and fraud should be top concerns for any reputable provider. Ensure that all conversations to the platform are secure - so this means video, chat and voice - to remove the risk of conversations being captured. Sophisticated hosted solutions should be just as “safe” as an on premises system deployed at your own offices - and shouldn’t rely on a VPN to do so. Fraud is commonly found within providers that only offer reactive support. Reactive measures are important too, so ensure they are present, but they must be provided as a backup, rather than a complete strategy. There are some important security features that should be provided as standard for all, and at no extra cost. These include; secure HTTPS provisioning, which stops fraudulent calls being made and prohibits the leaking of internal system information like address books; and unknown device quarantine protects you from automated external provisioning attacks.
5. Which features are included and which cost extra? Always look at the complete cost of the service on a per user per month basis so that you can compare your options like for like. Compare it over a year, including smoothing out any upfront or single licence costs, for a fair test. Ensure that even if a feature is included in the cost, that it doesn’t have any restrictive limits applied or require any bolt ons to be able to make the most use out of it.
“Must have” features vary hugely between companies, and requirements often evolve with time.*
Ensure that you have the flexibility to try new features as your needs change. One of the advantages of hosted communications
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services over many on premises systems is that new features should be available as they’re developed - no more upgrade charges - and providers should give you access to these at no extra cost.
6. What happens if our needs change? It’s hard to predict what shape your organisation will take in a few years time, and with so much innovation around the way we communicate it may feel daunting to choose a provider when you aren’t confident that they will always meet your needs. Choose a provider with a wide feature set that’s readily available to you, for free, so that you can find better ways of communicating and working as your needs change. It is helpful to ask about their development programme - how often they release new features or bug fix will give you a good idea of their agility and drive to stay relevant in the market. You may be considering a hosted solution due to the OPEX advantages, but be looking towards a longer term CAPEX solution. Migration between deployment models should not only be possible, but straightforward too. It’s a good idea to find out if the provider offers on premises virtual or hardware solutions from the very beginning. It is good practice to ensure that your provider hasn’t tied your pricing to the number of users that you have, leaving you unable to better your pricing if you increase in size, or having to pay for users that you don’t have after downsizing. Finally, make sure the provider isn’t trying to lock you into a multiple year contract so that you can leave their service completely if needs be.
Need more advice? Tell us what you need from your comms, and together with our expert partners we’ll show you how to achieve it easily and affordably.
Contact us today!
[email protected] 01908 276650
* From survey conducted by IPCortex amongst companies that were not customers, December 2016.
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