If you are currently in the market for an upgrade to the phone system in your company, perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed. There are so many options to choose from and every option claims to be exactly what you need!
In an effort to simplify the process, we have distilled the many options down into two common solutions: SIP Trunks and Hosted VoIP. They are two of the most commonly used next-generation telephony platforms and have some key differences that make them work for different businesses.
SIP Trunks can be connected to your VoIP/IP PBX and use the SIP connection standard. The word ‘trunk’ means a group of phone lines. Therefore, a SIP trunk is a group of phone lines optimised for VoIP telephony. You use a telephony switch to connect to the internet and each line acts as a user account.
SIP trunks are a great value proposition compared with a legacy phone system. In a traditional phone system, you pay line rental for a number of phone lines but, unless you are a call centre, chances are not all of your staff are using your phone lines all of the time. If that is the case, you are paying for lines you aren’t using!
SIP trunking pools your lines together, meaning you can reduce your overall number of lines because the lines are shared. When a user makes or receives a call, they are allocated a line for the duration of that call.
Hosted VoIP works in a similar fashion, but with some fundamental differences. Hosted VoIP does not require any physical hardware in order to function. Whilst it is true that most businesses will ensure that users have a physical phone on their desks, with Hosted VoIP this is not strictly a requirement. It is possible to have a ‘soft-phone’ set up instead.
A soft-phone is a piece of software installed on a user’s computer, which allows them to make phone calls over the internet – thus removing the need for any physical phone. Since hardware can be a significant investment, providing soft-phones could constitute a notable cost saving. Furthermore, soft-phones are intuitive for remote workers or individuals that are often out of the office, such as travelling salespeople.
entrustIT’s Hosted VoIP platform can be completely externally managed. If you would prefer to outsource the management of your VoIP environment and therefore remove the need for your staff to be involved in their telephony infrastructure. Rather, entrustIT engineers will manage the entire system for you, ensuring that any issues are ironed out and keeping you online.
However, if you would prefer to have control over your telephony, entrustIT provide a self-service VoIP portal that allows you to allocate numbers, listen to call recordings and create users, giving you full jurisdiction over your infrastructure.
If you are interested in learning more about cloud telephony, and whether your business would benefit from SIP trunking or Hosted VoIP – get in touch with entrustIT today!
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