Have you been looking into Hosted yet?  I mean for your business phones. If you have what you  probably didn’t know was that most of the providers out there are actually selling the same product. Yup, everybody or rather almost everybody sells a solution made by Broadsoft. What they do is they by a Hosting phone system made by Broadsoft with software made by Broadsoft, they put it in there office,  they buy dial tone from a carrier and then resell it to Businesses like you! Sounds great right? WRONG! Most of them have only one carrier one phone system, one location! What happens if any part of that fails? You’re dead in the water that’s what! What happens if you want a custom feature?  They have to hope Broadsoft will come up with it! The scary part this is true for most of the options out there!

Now all that being said there is hope! Star2Star hosted! They are an INC 500 company. Ever heard of  them?  Some big companies in the USA have! Dollar General has put it in all 10,000 locations. Quantum Airlines & Pizzahut use it for their call centers, Lowes has been converting their home improvement stores to it, & the US Postal service is testing it in a dozen locations, just to name a few! Many small businesses across the country as well. Now your probably wondering what’s so different about Star2Star right? First they are not on a Broadsoft platform, they built their own! They don’t host from a single office, they have 6 data centers located in “Level3″ data centers around the country! They have multiple carriers and the carriers use the same data centers so they are co-located! They have a great feature set including call center technology. You want a custom feature, well Star2Star is the MFG so there is no middle man. The way the equipment is connected is different as well. I don’t want to get Geeky here suffice it to say that they use an onsite unit that allows the phones to work more efficiently.

There is a lot more to tell you but your busy so I’ll save it! Sounds good doesn’t it?  It is , that’s why we offer it to our customers. Want to know more? Check out  www.star2star.com  or contact us at Pilothouse Communications.

Are you considering changing to VoIP?  What I would ask is do you know why? VoIP is a category of technology not just one thing, so when you say you want to change to VoIP, what is it you want to change? VoIP can be the type of phones you have in your office and the PBX that runs them. VoIP can be the type of carrier services you receive from your Telco. VoIP can be the technology used to allow a remote worker to communicate with the office, or the ability to connect to locations together so they can operate as one! Lastly there is the cloud based VoIP option, this is when you get both your PBX and your Telco from a service in the cloud using VoIP.

So when you ask your self Should I stay or should I VoIP, the real question is what do I want to accomplish with VoIP! Most people consider VoIP because they think it will save them money. This can be true but it usually requires and up front investment. When researching a new phone system consider a VoIP PBX, or a Hosted solution. Experts say that five years from now all new phone systems will be VoIP only! Technology is moving that way. AT&T has asked the FCC to allow them to stop delivering analog lines know as (POTS) by 2014, when that happens all of their services will be delivered via VoIP!

Confused? don’t be there are plenty of experts available to guide you and your business int o the VoIP world, and VoIP is not for everybody despite everything I have already written here! Many organizations have infrastructures that don’t support VoIP are not ready to make the leap! For them there are options that allow for what is known as a blended solution that will allow them to add VoIP when there are ready! Should I stay or should I VoIP? Maybe both!