The Cloud Offers Communications as a Service

By: John Shepler

The migration of everything to the cloud has coined a new phrase: “as a service”. This implies the business model of pay-as-you-go rather than owning vast capital equipment and software resources and the support staffs that go with them. You still need in-house support for your staff and to liaise with your cloud service provider, but you no longer have to be involved in all the nuts-and-bolts that make the system work.

In addition to the backroom business software humming along in the background, the cloud now offers to take on your electronic communications with the idea of offering a more features for less cost that you’d likely have if you tried to run everything in-house. The name of this new opportunity? Why, Communications as a Service, of course.

Two Flavors of Communications as a Service
If you think of communications as “the telephone”, you are partially right. The landline phone has been the mainstay of business for over a century. It has been joined by the FAX machine to send documents over those same phone lines and the mobile phone that frees us from the wires. The marriage between phones and computers has expanded options to include instant messaging, audio, video and web conferencing, texting, file sharing, call routing and recording, call analytics and integration with business applications like CRM and project management software.

Communications as a Service or CaaS splits off into Unified Communications as a Service or UCaaS and Contact Center as a Service or CCaaS. What’s the difference? UCaaS is intended for use within the company for team collaboration CCaaS is for communicating with customers. You can think of UCaaS as replacing the old PBX business phone system and CCaaS as a technical upgrade to the old call center phone system.

How Unified Communications as a Service Works
With UCaaS the PBX in the closet down the hall or the key telephone set on your desk is gone. If you have a desk phone it connects to your LAN using VoIP rather than its own proprietary phone network. Your new phone system is in the cloud. Since much of your business software is also in the cloud, that makes it easy to integrate traditional phone applications and traditional business software applications.

Phone, or shall we say voice, features including call recording, call forwarding, call routing, teleconferencing, Inclusion of smartphones into the company phone system, and inclusion of work-from-home employees into the company phone system.

But that’s just the start of what can be done. The unification of voice, video and devices means that you are interconnected wherever you are and whatever device you are working from. You don’t have to be near your desk to make or receive calls and you can share documents or collaborate on applications as well as have conversations.

Expanding into Contact Center as a Service
UCaaS is great for interconnecting everyone within a company. Wouldn’t it be great if you could also include customers? That’s been the function of the call center, now renamed contact center. CCaaS supports incoming customer service and outgoing customer marketing.

You still get as many phone sets as you need, but they’re on the network connected to the cloud and not a room full of equipment down the hall. Instead of buying and maintaining all that equipment, you subscribe to the CCaaS system. You’ll get automated outbound dialing, interactive voice response for customer self-service, automatic contact distribution, analytics and other features that have traditionally been part of call center operations.

In addition, CCaaS is omnichannel in that is can communicate with your customers through voice, SMS, video, web sites and social media. Chatbots and virtual agents can handle routine inquiries so that your employees can concentrate on the more difficult issues.

Benefits of Service in the Cloud
With cloud communications as a service, you no longer have to budget large capital outlays for massive amounts of equipment only to have to replace that same equipment years down the road. You are not bothered with having to install constant fixes and upgrades or scheduling time for a vendor to come and service your system. It’s all being done invisibly within the cloud operation. You get the latest features all kept up to date and with enough hardware to run everything. You simply subscribe for as much service as you need when you need it. As your business grows, your cloud service can expand as needed.

You have a choice in how you connect to the cloud. Some companies, especially smaller ones, simply use an Internet service with Direct Internet Access or SD WAN as the most reliable options. For even better performance and reliability a private line direct cloud connection makes the cloud seem part of your facility… as it should.

Are you ready to move up from an antiquated phone system to UCaaS or CCaaS? Talk with a technology expert and find out the features and prices of a system just right for your organization.

Is Network as a Service Right For Your Business?

By: John Shepler

Running a company network can be a big operation. Perhaps too big. You need lots of capital expenditures for switches, routers and software. Then you need staff to plug everything together, deal with system failures and constantly keep on top of updates, security patches and incoming threats. But, hey, isn’t that just the price in being in business today? There really isn’t any way to avoid all this cost and hassle and still operate, is there? Or IS there?

Network as a Service
Actually there is a new trend in network management that might work to your advantage. Instead of doing it all yourself, how about buying the network functions and capacity you need as a service?

You’re familiar with the migration of everything data center to the cloud. Now, the network is moving there too. All that stuff you would otherwise buy and manage, including switches, routers, and security appliances, can be had on a pay-as-you-go basis. What’s more, you can easily scale up and down as your business needs change. No more buying equipment like crazy to meet a demand and then trying to offload it as surplus when the need evaporates.

NaaS takes care of acquiring the physical devices needed to make the network function, but also handles ongoing support. It has the smarts to optimize the network for optimum performance and keep everything up to date. In addition, NaaS can support automatically onboarding new users and supporting new locations without a lot of muss and fuss at your end.

What Does AI Have to Do With It?
Artificial Intelligence is the latest buzzword in business productivity with great promise for future profitability. Actually, AI is here already and has been quietly integrated in all sorts of technology behind the scenes. AI is important to Network as a Service in that the network is being virtualized, adding all sorts of complication. But AI can run this, optimizing the network and responding to changes as they arise. As businesses need to integrate multi-clouds and multiple locations, the workload on IT staff can go through the roof. Letting AI handle all this complexity on a real-time basis can give you much more capability without soaring expenses.

But Will It Help YOU?
Could Network as a Service be advantageous for your company? Maybe, maybe not. The way to make a decision is to find out the costs and capabilities of NaaS options suitable for your size business. Get a complementary quote now and see if you can get more for your network dollar.

The Time for POTS Replacement Has Come

By: John Shepler

Nobody likes change when it is forced upon them. But change we must as technology relentlessly advances. On its way out are innovations from the gilded age. The incandescent light bulb? Gone. The telegraph? Long gone. The telephone line? You guessed it. It’s going fast.

POTS is Kaput!
Alexander Graham Bell’s fantastic invention, the telephone, is going stronger than ever. But, it has morphed into technologies that weren’t dreamt of by Bell or Watson. What’s on the way out is the century-old connection system of twisted pair copper wires and the instruments that connect to them.

Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS is the current jargon for standard telephone lines consisting of two small diameter copper wires connected to a telephone company office that provides the power, switching and signaling needed to allow any phone to talk to any other phone around the world.

Why Ditch It?
There are two answers. Cell phones and Computer Networks. Neither have any use for POTS interfaces. Residential users have long embraced their smartphones to the exclusion of most everything else. Fewer and fewer are willing to pay the phone company ever increasing fees just to have an old-timey desk or wall phone available just in case the cell tower goes out.

Businesses have been on a similar trajectory. Mobile phones have become important business tools, but the desk phone still has a lot of value. The only difference is that the desk phone often connects to the computer LAN rather than its own unique network. This enables a lot more calling features, including a mash-up of desk sets, smartphones, laptops, PCs and tablets.

With this every increasing switch away from POTS, the phone companies find themselves with huge stockpiles of lines and switching equipment but less and less revenue to support them. That’s why the petitioned the FCC to let them decommission their copper resources and convert the central offices to data centers in high demand by AI and other computing needs.

Why Copper Retirement is Actually a Problem
Not everybody is on-board with chucking a perfectly good technology that is serving them reliably. Lots of businesses still have multiple POTS lines with in-house switching. Larger systems use a digital connection called PRI that multiplexes 23 POTS lines into a par of… you guessed it…twisted pair copper wires. Yes, as POTS goes away so does PRI and its cousin, T1 lines, that use the same wiring.

Another problem is FAX. Traditional FAX machines were designed for POTS and don’t like packet switched networks such as the Internet. Other systems specific to elevator phones, fire and burglar alarms, credit card verification, gate access, and emergency call boxes also were designed for POTS and only POTS. You don’t just plug these into your LAN and call it a day. So, what to do?

POTS Replacement Options
While POTS, PRI, T1, DSL and other copper line connections are rapidly fading into the sunset and not likely to return, there are replacement solutions available. Some popular ones are based on LTE cellular with dual SIM cards, battery backup, and failover Internet access. Also important is that a POTS replacement box provides the same signaling and RJ-11 connector that you’d get from a telephone line wall jack.

On a larger scale, SIP trunking is a replacement for carrying multiple phone lines used in offices and call centers. It can be provisioned over the Internet or, better yet, through a direct connection to a cloud phone service provider that interconnects with the Public Switched Telephone Network.

Have you been notified that your POTS service is being discontinued or greatly increasing in cost? It’s time to consider moving on with a new network based system or a POTS replacement appliance that simply drops in place of your old phone line. Get expert technical advice and pricing on POTS replacement solutions now.

Why Symmetric Bandwidth?

By: John Shepler

Bandwidth is bandwidth and the more the better, right? Well, not so fast. There is bandwidth and then there is bandwidth. All connectivity solutions are not the same. Let’s see why.

Sharing Isn’t Always Caring
Some connections are dedicated. Some are shared. You need to know which you are ordering.

A dedicated connection means a fixed amount of bandwidth that you are contracted for and are guaranteed to have all the time. The classic T1 line, SONET fiber optic, and many Ethernet over Fiber and private wireless solutions are dedicated. They may be set up as point to point private lines , cloud connections or last mile Internet access.

The advantage of dedicated lines is that your network capacity is always there even when you are not loading it up to the max. This improves latency and congestion compared to your other choice, shared bandwidth.

Shared bandwidth connections have other company’s traffic on the same line as yours. You have no idea how many there are or what they are doing. You may well feel their presence, however, as your WAN connection speeds up and slows down for unknown reasons.

So, why on Earth would you share bandwidth? Simply to save cost. Shared lines are dedicated lines that the carrier has sliced and diced to support many users instead of just one. If there is enough bandwidth and not so many users, you may not have a problem and can save considerably on monthly rates. Typical shared bandwidth services include cable broadband, wireless 4G LTE and 5G, and some passive optical fiber optic services that are available at bargain rates.

Symmetric vs Asymmetric Bandwidth
Symmetric bandwidth is when you upload and download speeds are the same. Asymmetric bandwidth means that one direction has much more capacity than the other. The high speed link is almost always the download path. Download speeds may be 10x faster than upload speeds.

Why? Asymmetric setups were designed to mimic the way people actually use the Internet. For the most part you download videos much more often than upload them. You enter short addresses in your browser and download web pages and content far more than you upload them. Or… Do you?

Business users may use their networks much more symmetrically than typical residential users. Business users likely transfer large files back and forth. Many of their applications reside in the cloud with data flowing up and down. VoIP phone and video conferencing are inherently symmetrical. Voice and images go both ways. Remote back-up is asymmetric for the most part… but the other way. Most data is being uploaded to the remote storage.

Traditional telecom networks are designed with symmetric bandwidth in mind. Consumer solutions, which are also typically shared bandwidth, are asymmetric in nature. For casual users and small businesses this may not be an issue. However if you are a heavy bandwidth user, depend on software as a service, do extensive video conferences or back-up your data to remote storage, you will likely be better served with symmetric and dedicated solutions.

Is your business running out of bandwidth or are you just frustrated with the solution you have now? Discuss your real needs with a technology expert and get quotes for multiple options that will work for you. There’s more available and at better prices than you think.

Bandwidth to Support Your Data Center

By: John Shepler

Data centers are hot these days. Oh, not just the temperature of the air exiting the servers. Data centers are hot business. As businesses are transformed digitally and AI is implemented to improve productivity, all eyes are on the data center and what it takes to gain the benefits of this technology.

Not Yesterday’s Server Closet
You can see advances in data center technology as information tech has grown in importance. Once a company is big enough to have more than one PC, it needs networking to interconnect computers and shared resources such as storage, printers and servers. Hot and noisy racks of equipment are quickly moved out of the office and into their own room, which might be the size of a broom closet. Hence, the server closet.

Little rooms soon become big ones with lots of equipment, special floors and ceilings for wiring, uninterruptible power and heavy duty HVAC. This is the genesis of the data center. Today’s businesses are dependent more and more on information technology and require substantial data centers and staff to process and serve that data 24/7.

Some companies still choose to maintain their own data centers in-house or at remote facilities. Others outsource that function to colocation facilities or cloud service providers. Still others see the skyrocketing demand for data center services to support crypto and AI and look to get a piece of the action.

What Connections Do You Need?
Even if you keep everything in-house, you’ll need external connections. That’s at least broadband Internet and telephone connections. If you have other locations in the same area, you can’t go trenching your own cables. You’ll need carrier connections from point to point or connect everything via the Internet.

There are two flavors of Internet access. They are called dedicated and shared. Dedicated Internet Access or DIA offers the highest performance. Dedicated means that the connection is for your use only and no other company is on the same circuit… at least until you get to the core of the Internet. Since most of the congestion occurs in that first mile, DIA can avoid many slowdowns during peak usage times. Fiber optic DIA is available from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps available in some areas.

Shared Internet Access is what is available with Cable broadband and Fixed Wireless Access. Your cost is lower because you are not the only one using the line. How well this works depends on how sensitive you are to interruptions and how many high volume users are sharing the same link.

Your data center servers will also likely need Internet access. Most colocation and cloud facilities have multiple carriers serving their facilities. This give you the option to have redundant connections so that if one goes down, another service provider is unlikely to be out at the same time. You can set up an arrangement like this for your own in-house data center. Just be sure that the two or more Internet Service Providers are not sharing the same fiber or other facilities or you may lose all service with a single point failure.

You can also get dedicated Ethernet point to point fiber optic service between two or more of your own locations. This gives you high performance networking without the security issues and variable performance seen on the Internet.

Connecting to the Data Center
If you choose to place your equipment in a colocation facility or contract for cloud services, you’ll need a way to connect from your company building to the remote data center. Some companies choose to do this through the Internet, but you can get much higher performance and better security with a dedicated point to point line also called direct cloud access. This is a private fiber optic circuit that runs from your facilities to the cloud service provider no matter how far away. You’ll generally have lower latency and more consistent performance than connectivity via the Internet.

Do you need a high performance connection to a data center or cloud service or Internet service to the Internet? If so, get highly competitive prices and availability of connection services for your business locations now.