Is your business still considering buying an on-premise phone system?

If so, take a look at this research from our friends at Software Advice.

When a new technology is introduced to the market, consumers are often hesitant to evolve. Especially when taking a premature “leap of faith” may leave them without their livelihood- that is, when their business relies on the underlying technology. Business consumers need to see the new technology put through the ringer and come out on top. Software Advice (who conducts testing and research to help businesses make informed software purchasing decisions) used Google Trends to gather data that indicates that Hosted VoIP (AKA Hosted PBX) phone solutions are now viable market competitors.

One trend that our research uncovered was the clear decline in popularity in “IP PBX” as a search term as opposed to “hosted PBX.” While “hosted PBX” has never attained the same level of popularity as “IP PBX” in its heyday (2004), it has overtaken “IP PBX” in popularity in the past few years, especially since 2012. This trend was confirmed by the VoIP experts whom we interviewed for the report, who explained that hosted UCaaS solutions are increasingly replacing on-premises IP PBX systems.

-Daniel Harris, VoIP and telecom researcher at Software Advice

The discussion Software Advice had with industry experts reveals several foundational movements in business telecommunications that motivate the current shift towards hosted VoIP solutions.

• Hosted cloud-based solutions sell communications as a service rather than as pieces of equipment which will demand the time of specialized IT professionals for initial set-up and continual maintenance. The initial cost of the on-premise equipment is expensive as is the time your IT team will spend working with and making changes to your on-site system. The right hosted VoIP solution will sell all-inclusive service at a rate your business can get behind.
• On-premise PBX’s came about many years ago in order to lessen the burden of the per-line cost for businesses- on-site PBX systems allowed multiple employees to share the same line. VoIP solutions do not rely on physical lines, which begs the question: why are businesses still using on-premise PBXs?
• The features that businesses are demanding more and more fervently are not supported by on-premise systems. The VoIP features that have been increasing in popularity over the last several years coexist in nature- that nature being the advancement of mobility. Businesses are not the same institutions that they were 50 years ago- they evolve quickly, hire globally, and explore options tenaciously. Hosted VoIP solutions allow businesses to keep their BYOD (bring your own device) philosophies, support employees across the globe, and incorporate mobile devices into the business’s telecommunications infrastructure. Hosted VoIP solutions allow your business to broadcast the same corporate identity across all of your locations and all of your devices.

FluentStream’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Josh Ellis, had this to say:

The popularity of the Hosted PBX solutions, I believe, has also increased due to the size of businesses that are now considering it as a relevant solution.  Early on it was typically very small organizations seeking out a hosted solution because it really did bring an enterprise capable phone system to the SMB space.  Now we are seeing offices with hundreds, even thousands, of employees seeking out a hosted solution.

Moving your telecommunications infrastructure to the cloud is the smart business decision. It’s not the way of the future — it’s the way of right now.