Star2Star Archives - Connecticut Communications

What’s Different about Star2Star?

They’ve been winning awards for innovation, products, and service since their founding in 2005. Most recently, they were named to the prestigious Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies. They’ve won these accolades for three major reasons:

Superior Technology

They discovered one key thing very early on: Business VoIP users won’t put up with dropped calls or bad voice quality, no matter how much money it saves them. They developed their own unique technology to overcome the limitations of other VoIP products. They call it Blended Architecture™, and it is the cornerstone of everything they do. Blended Architecture allows them to provide a superior, business-class VoIP product at a highly competitive price.

Relentless Reliability & Customer Service

When you switch your phone service to Star2Star, they become your phone company. If something goes wrong – no matter where the problem is – they’ll take care of it, at no charge to you. They also monitor every telephone on their network around the clock. If they spot a problem, they’ll fix it immediately. If the problem is at your office, they’ll send a Connecticut Communications technician out with a replacement part, usually the next day.

Unfortunately, accidents and disasters happen all the time. And when they do, we’re able to keep your phone system working, even if your business suffers a power or Internet outage — or even a complete loss of your business premises.

Substantial Savings

We can save your business a substantial amount of money on your monthly phone bill. And if your business has multiple locations, we can save you even more money using our line pooling feature. Most of our customers see a positive cash flow the very first month they switch to Star2Star. See our Savings page for more details.

10 Reasons Hosted PBX is Best for your Business

Do you purchase a traditional digital phone system for your business, a hybrid phone system, an all IP based phone system, or a hosted PBX? Sometimes it’s not an easy answer as there are many factors to consider. However, here are 10 reasons hosted PBX might be best for your business.

Never a busy signal. With burstable SIP trunks, callers will never receive a busy signal.
DID numbers. DID, or Direct Inward Dial, allows you to have private telephone numbers in addition to your main number. Callers can reach your desk by dialing your personal DID number.
Voice Mail to Email. All your voice messages automatically get sent to your email as a .wav file. Easily play them back through your PC or Smartphone.
PC Attendant/Smartphone. Each user can transfer calls through a PC application or smartphone as shown in this link… StarPhone
Bundled Long Distance. Hosted PBX comes with 600 minutes of long distance each month, per line. Or, get unlimited long distance with seat licenses.
Remote IP Phone. It’s easy to install an IP phone at your house, simply plug it into your internet for connection back to your office.
Maintenance Included. Hosted PBX comes with a full maintenance agreement. All PBX modules and phones are covered with a full hardware warranty, all parts and labor. Free software upgrades too!
Redundacy. Premise based hosted PBX allows for dual WAN ports for redundancy. If one internet circuit goes down, the device uses the second internet circuit automatically.
Power Outage Routing. If you lose power (hurricane season is here) you can simply access your user portal, using your smartphone, to route your calls to individual cell phones, house phones, etc.
Out of Area Telephone Numbers. Hosted PBX allows your company to obtain out of area telephone numbers at no extra charge. Want a New York number? Simply order one. No long distance charges or call forward charges apply.

Click on the Star2Star logo for a detailed architecture of their hosted PBX.

Connecticut Communications offers traditional, hybrid, VoIP and premised based VoIP PBX. Please contact us to discuss the best option for your business.

Unified Communications as a Service helps in bad weather

Winter Storms Ion and Hercules, followed by a polar vortex, are spreading a swath of heavy snow across the American Midwest and ushering in dangerously cold temperatures throughout the United States. As of Monday, there were more than 100,000 people across six states without electricity, with temperatures continuing to fall. Flights have been canceled nationwide, and people are staying indoors.

It hasn’t been this cold for almost two decades in parts of the Midwest and Southeast, and businesses across the country are feeling the weight of the storm hit their bottom lines.

What many people don’t know is that having Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) in place means that businesses can actually stave off some of the sales losses seen during cold weather outbreaks.

Inclement Weather and Remote Workers

Firms that have adopted UCaaS or cloud-based communications could find that it curbs the amount of revenue lost from storms during the winter. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) estimates that cold weather snaps can seriously affect small and medium sized businesses. While places reliant on foot traffic are most at risk, any business can be beset by weather delays.

Working remotely, or in the cloud, is increasingly feasible and beneficial thanks to services like UCaaS. Tools like softphones, instant messaging, and audio and video conferencing can keep your business up and running even in the worst weather conditions.

How UCaaS Solutions Can Help

By giving your employees access to cloud computing services such as remote desktops and softphones that can be accessed from home or at work, organizations can ensure that employees are continuously able to do their jobs even if they cannot physically get into the office. This allows you to keep employees safe when conditions are too dangerous to travel without losing, what many times can end up being multiple days of, employee productivity.

UCaaS is one of the few services that can offer the tools required to help keep businesses communications running smoothly. This is critical for organizations that rely on communication for their revenue. In the normal course of doing business, or remotely during inclement weather periods, Unified Communications Solutions can:

Integrate email, voice and instant messaging into a cohesive communications system so all employees can stay in-touch as needed.
Provide access points to all data used by your organization, so users can communicate with others inside and outside their organization more easily and more quickly.
Lower overall IT and telecommunications costs, particularly for labor, because of the inherent economies of scale available with an integrated communications platform.
Provide access to carrier-grade communications that deliver consistency with easy-to-use functionality.

UCaaS solutions are just one of many cloud-based solutions businesses can utilize to protect themselves during inclement weather.

In the event of a cold weather snap, the right UCaaS solution can easily adapt to your changed situation without any extra spending on your part. These services house your businesses data in centers that are part of global networks. This ensures that once your data is backed up, it is mirrored in multiple data centers across the globe, meaning that there is more than one copy of your data to rely on in the case of a disaster or emergency.

With these types of disaster recovery options, it becomes easier to see how UCaaS and cloud-based services can help create a safe and secure solution to protect your businesses applications and data, helping to insure your businesses against losses caused by winter weather storms.

Contact Connecticut Communications representatives today to learn more about our cloud-based solutions and their disaster recovery benefits.

Music on hold for a VoIP phone system

Music on hold (MOH) is the playing of music to a caller placed on hold so they don’t hear silence. Callers calling into a VoIP phone system often get put on hold for a variety of reasons; being transferred to another extension or because the user needs to walk away from the telephone. Without something to listen to the caller might think they were disconnected by accident and hang up.

A PBX, or VoIP phone system, has a music on hold port to connect any audio device for music on hold. That music on hold device can be a radio, CD player, an .mp3 player or any device with an audio output.

The problem with a radio is that it is illegal in the United States to re-broadcast without the permission of the radio station. And even with permission, it’s illegal for the radio station to license it because it would violate their agreement with music title owner. Besides, who wants to risk the caller hearing a commercial on the radio from one of your competitors?

SiriusXM radio offers businesses a music on hold option. You pay for the service so it is legal, but it does come with a monthly fee that never expires.

A CD player that plays music is also illegal unless you first obtain permission from the owner of the song. You can record your own message and download it to a CD player, such as ‘please stay on the line your call is important to us’. If you select this option, please make sure the CD player automatically replays in an endless loop.

An .mp3 player, like the one above, is one of the more advanced options for music on hold for unified communications systems. You can easily create your own message file from a PC and then plug the USB drive back in the .mp3 player. Once again, you cannot load music that you do not have permission to use, but you can creatively produce your own messages anytime you want. Click on the link below for detailed information on an .mp3 music on hold player we offer.

.MP3 Music On Hold Player

To add music on hold to your digital phone system, hosted VoIP phone system, or premised based VoIP phone system, please contact Connecticut Communications at 203.985.1000.

Seven Reasons to Consider Cloud Based Unified Communications Services

The productivity benefits of Unified Communications (UC) continue to be recognized as it moves into mainstream adoption. As organizations consider how best to deploy, there are a number of factors to consider. This post focuses on the top reasons to consider Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). UCaaS capabilities, also known as hosted or cloud-based UC, include the features found in premises-based IP telephony, as well as presence, integrated audio and web conferencing, mobility, collaboration, video solutions, and business application integration features all delivered as a service.

The benefits of UCaaS go above and beyond simply shifting costs from a capital expense to a predictable operating expense. Here are our top 7 reasons to consider hosted UC solutions:

1. Business Agility

Many IT organizations are stretched too thin and struggle to balance day-to-day operations with strategic projects. One of the advantages of UCaaS is the speed of deployment. Businesses have the flexibility to rollout UCaaS without the IT time and resource commitments associated with a legacy deployment model. Additionally, maintenance and support time is reduced as there is no longer the need to plan and implement system updates. UCaaS offers quick updating through the cloud, so a business can choose to deploy new applications to all users or a single department as soon as they become available. This gives an IT department greater flexibility with their communications system, as upgrades can be rolled-out without any disruption to the system.

2. Increased Efficiencies

Hosted UC services provide business customers with the communications they need without the associated capital costs of traditional on-premises systems and the costs associated with management and support. This increases both budgetary and IT resource efficiencies. With a lower budget barrier to entry, businesses can avoid the upfront capital outlay with UCaaS. Additionally, the predictable monthly expense allows businesses to plan more efficiently. A hosted UC solution can also increase IT efficiencies as there is no need to support and maintain a physical systems on-premises. Eliminating a number of time consuming tasks for IT folks allows the organization to focus resources on core competencies and provide strategic value to grow the business.

3. Increased Reliability

Hosted UC providers power their UCaaS offerings via the cloud. The best providers have secure and resilient data centers that are redundantly configured and geographically separated to ensure continued service in the event of catastrophic events and Service Level Agreements that provide uptime guarantees. Each organization’s data and user settings are backed up and mirrored in multiple locations, creating a disaster-proof backbone for your business communications. Hosted UC providers also offer 24×7 monitoring, as well as the latest encryption and security protocols, so you can rest assured that your data is safe and secure.

4. Disaster Recovery

In the event of an emergency or disaster, a UCaaS service provider can easily adapt to your changed situation without additional expenses on your part.

Most companies have a Disaster Recovery Plan in place to ensure that data and records vital to the operation of the business are duplicated or protected in off-site storage repositories. UCaaS now provides the ability to ensure that business communications are also protected in the event of an emergency and can be incorporated into the overall Disaster Recovery Plan.

5. Greater Mobility

UCaaS is a strong enabler for the mobile worker, the BYOD explosion, and remote/home office worker. It allows users access to all business communications features from any registered user device, including a smart phone, laptop, desktop and, of course, desk phone. Organizations can enable users’ smart phones to transparently bridge calls from the company’s Wi-Fi networks to cellular networks and back again, keeping “on-the-go” and “location agnostic” users connected. Desktop client software can turn any networked PC into a virtual desktop phone and unified messaging terminal. Users can travel with their extensions, use video conferencing, and access advanced call forwarding and web-browser dialing. IT organizations often struggle with managing application across numerous devices. With UCaaS, users download the device application from the app store and IT can easily manage their access. An additional user benefit is that the experience is the same across all devices.

6. Increased Collaboration

True collaboration means anywhere, anytime access on any device. UCaaS gives your users access to applications that will let them instantly chat, set up on-the-fly conferences/meetings (both video and voice), share and exchange documents, and engage customers in real-time dialog. This will not only improve your workforce’s ability to be nimble, but will also improve customer satisfaction.

7. Better Customization

UCaaS combines enterprise-grade voice features with sophisticated Unified Communications and Collaboration applications and hosts them in the cloud. UCaaS gives you the flexibility to choose the deployment model and applications to fit your specific requirements. It also offers the flexibility to expand or contract as your business requirements change.

Additional Resources

To learn more about how Unified Communication as a Service can help you take advantage of the latest UC technology, easily connect mobile and remote users, and free up time for the other IT projects you need to get to, click below

NEC UCaaS Brochure

Unified Communications as a Service Continues to Grow

The cloud-based communications services market is one of the fastest growing segments in the quickly expanding Unified Communications market.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is essentially a delivery model for Unified Communications (UC). With UCaaS, employers have the opportunity to outsource communication and collaborative applications to a third-party provider for online delivery. It serves exactly the same purpose as traditional premises-based UC, combining multiple communications means and methods into a single, unified application.

Even with the advantages UCaaS offers, there remain some concerns about adopting these solutions. A recent Spiceworks survey of 267 IT pros in North America (11% of whom have already implemented UCaaS in their organization) points to two main concerns about hosted solutions: availability and performance.

By educating IT pros on UCaaS adoption trends and advantages, we hope to offer a closer look at the burgeoning UCaaS market.

Innovators using UCaaS

Early technology adopters tend to buy and try out new hardware and software, and versions of existing programs sooner than most of their peers. According to Everett Rogers, author of the Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) theory and book, early adopters make roughly 14% of consumers.

And while early adopters are eager to explore new options like UCaaS, they are not the only ones worth watching. According to Rogers, there is a small minority of early adopters called innovators. Only one person out of 40 is of this type. Innovators are the people most likely to conceive and develop new methodologies and technologies, and who often end up running large IT corporations or founding new ones.

As the Spiceworks research shows, they are the ones adopting UCaaS.

IT Pros Responding to UCaaS

Among IT pros responding to the Spiceworks survey, 11% had adopted UCaaS. However, another 12% indicated they are planning to adopt it in the next year, which will more than double the number of people using UCaaS today.

This projected growth tracks consistently with the expectations of UCaaS market growth reported in 2013 by researchers at MarketsandMarkets. Their report on UCaaS projects that the global market will grow from $2.52 billion in 2013 to $7.62 billion by 2018, at an estimated CAGR of 24.8%.

Some suggest that developing confidence in hosted solutions in general is the impetus for the projected dramatic increase in adoption. Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research, has pointed out, “…more than 90% of companies now use software as a service (SaaS) applications.”

UCaaS’ potential to create uninterrupted communications across multiple devices and methods appeal to companies whose employees are increasingly seeking seamless 24/7 access to communications. According to Denise Culver, research analyst and author of a recent Heavy Reading Insider report on UCaaS, “As UCaaS continues to be viewed from the lens of a solution that cuts the landline cord and eradicates the need for a traditional PBX, it will be looked at as a business enabler, rather than a simple phone system.”

UCaaS Adoption Advantages

Up-to-date UC Technology and Applications: UCaaS applications can be updated easily and deployed company-wide as they become available via the cloud. UCaaS helps avoid technology obsolescence and the time and resources associated with large scale “technology refreshes.”
Cost Savings: SMBs that choose UCaaS for their communications solution avoid the capital outlay required to set up and maintain on-site hardware. Instead, that cost is shifted to operational expenditures via the third-party UCaaS provider. Businesses also only pay for the level of service they require.
Scalability: UCaaS models allow SMBs to quickly and easily increase their service levels as they add employees. This means that the SMBs pay for only what they need and they are not required to predict their potential needs in advance. This helps streamline the budget and makes the communications plans more scalable, as the business can easily modify as the workforce expands or even if it shrinks.
Higher Levels of Performance:The best hosted service providers have secure and resilient data centers that are redundantly configured and geographically separated to ensure continued service in the event of emergencies and Service Level Agreements that provide uptime guarantees. Each organization’s data and user settings are backed up and mirrored in multiple locations, creating a disaster-proof backbone for their business communications. This alleviates the potential of SMBs losing their communication capabilities due to a technical problem or severe weather events or other disasters. UCaaS also ensures their employees stay connected and productive even if they are unable to make it into the office through the off-site cloud-based tools that provide them access from any location and any device.

According to the Synergy Research Group, UCaaS subscribers will grow an average of 76 percent annually over the next five years. SMBs are expected to be a large part of that group.

Communication is the Key! Unified Communications Newsletter May 2014

Read about how communication is the key to business. Whether it is email, text, phone calls, extra monitors, etc. read about how business people can be more efficient.

Connecticut Communications helps business people become more efficient at work, from unified communications to extra montiors to email.

Communication

There are many ways we communicate today; voice, text, email, instant message, snapchat, Facetime, Instagram, Facebook, video conference and others. They all have one thing in common; the Internet.

In the 1970’s everyone had a secretary to help communicate for them. The secretaries made phone calls, setup meetings, wrote letters, opened the mail, etc. Today, each person is responsible for their own correspondence.

Business owners can take advantage of the internet to help their employees, and themselves, become more efficient.

Voice: Make/receive phone calls on home IP phone, laptop or cell phone. You don’t have to take every call, but you have the option.

Email: Send/receive email on cell phone or home PC. Business voice messages are now playable .wav file attachments in your email. Some customers expect a speedy response.

Microsoft Office: Connect securely to your internet cloud account to create/edit sales proposals from home or on the road. Cloud files are always backed up and there for you. Create/send meeting requests. Create presentations. Why not close the deal now?

Multiple Monitors: If you don’t have two or three monitors on your desk you are not as efficient as you can be.

Wi-Fi: Wireless access in the business and home allows devices to easily access the internet. iPhones, iPads, PCs, etc. Cover your entire office with a secure wireless access.

Video Surveillance: Check in on your office or home from your PC or smart phone. Saves time by not having to drive there.

Internet Speed: Bandwidth comes in many forms; cable, T-1, fiber, Ethernet. 768k/1.5MB/50MB/100MB/higher. How much speed you can get depends upon your location.

Ready to be more efficient?

Contact Connecticut Communications, we might be on a beach somewhere…you will never know.

203.985.1001

Star2Star’s Blended Unique Architecture: A Smarter Hosted Product

As an executive who keeps an eye on the latest trends in technology, you’ve probably read about Unified Communications (UC) solutions. An increasing number of businesses are deploying UC in an effort to streamline their communications. In fact, the technology is in the midst of rapid expansion, as detailed in a recent Infonetics report that forecasts the total global UC market to reach $88 billion by 2018.

Merging all communications into a single system offers tremendous cost and productivity benefits for businesses—but not all UC systems are created equal. No matter what any of our competitors claim, Star2Star’s Blended Architecture is simply a cut above the rest.

Why? Because while some UC solutions include on-premises hardware, just as we do, our StarBox Cloud Connection Manager is more advanced and intelligent and the difference is on the inside. The StarBox Cloud Connection Manager, which takes the place of a typical edge device while also providing numerous features like quality-of-service and call control, connects over the Internet to Star2Star’s Constellation network, which employs a vast array of nodes and data centers that stretch across the U.S. The network continually collects data about the performance of each node and the traffic surrounding it. The system uses that information to determine the best route for each call placed on every Star2Star customer system, and that round-the-clock monitoring is responsible for our 99.999% uptime guarantee and a system that hasn’t been off-line since 2011.

Additionally, Star2Star provides flexibility that our competitors simply can’t match. We offer three different StarBox Cloud Connection Manager models to fit small, medium and large companies. Whether your organization needs five phone extensions or 600 at any single location, we have a model that will fit your needs. Although the models are built for different business sizes, all three have identical management and offer the same feature set, which includes:

Integrated monitoring and remote management
The ability to manage multiple locations from a single screen
Flexible, redundant networking configuration with dual WAN ports for automatic WAN failover
All solid-state, low-power consumption (as low as 6W)
Long life and high reliability
Edge traffic shaping
Continuous monitoring

On top of our unique architecture, Star2Star’s UC system comes chock full of features. Regardless of the size of your company, switching to UC can save money and provide significant benefits, such as free calling between disparate offices on the same system and a single monthly bill for all your communications. And if you are looking to check off a long list of business features you need from a system, look no further than our suite that includes:

Intraoffice videoconferencing
Presence management technology
Chat
Mobile communications for the iPhone
Call recording
Disaster recovery
Crystal-clear VoIP calling

When we say Star2Star’s UC system is smarter than the competition, we can back that up with a history of reliability and an industry best 99.85% customer retention rate. No matter how far and wide you look, you won’t find a UC provider that rivals Star2Star.

C lick here to download our white paper and learn more about Star2Star’s Blended Architecture.

Small Businesses have a Wide Slate of Unified Communications Needs

Small-business Unified Communications adoption is a significant growth area, with thousands of organizations looking for the right voice or unified communications service that can converge audio and data. According to a recent survey, more small business buyers already use VoIP service (36 percent of their sample) than any other type of voice service (POTS usage is at 24 percent, and PRI usage is at 11 percent of their sample)—with many, many others evaluating the purchase of a replacement product. The FCC also has stated that 15% of American businesses have made the switch to a VoIP solution.

The study, from Software Advice, shows that small business priorities are varied. Twenty-nine percent of buyers want a system that forwards calls to alternate devices, while 25 percent seek a system with voicemail (25 percent).

Buyers view call forwarding as the most critical functionality. Indeed, more request call forwarding (29 percent) than even voicemail (25 percent)—a staple of small-business communications, and the most requested functionality in the 2014 VoIP BuyerView report. Most of the buyers who request call forwarding say they want to send calls to mobile devices. Another 21 percent of our sample seek systems with mobile compatibility.

Some businesses also value call reporting (7 percent) and monitoring (6 percent) functionality, which are commonly used by call centers. Call reports display logged information about inbound and outbound calls, including phone numbers and call length. Call centers increasingly want this information in real time, along with the ability to monitor calls without agents’ knowledge. Many of those buyers already using cloud-based phone systems—in particular, request call reporting in the form of visual displays known as “dashboards.”

Other businesses are interested in integrating their Unified Communications software with other kinds of business software (6 percent). Of these buyers, three-quarters specifically want integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which help businesses store, organize and analyze data related to customer interactions. As we’ve explained before, call centers often integrate phone systems with CRM systems so agents can instantly view customer data during a call.

Another interesting trend is the need for a centralized phone-system setup (cited by 7 percent). Some of these buyers work at organizations with multiple locations that each have their own PBX system. These multi-vendor setups can create problems, such as expensive per-minute rates and a lack of routing functionality for calls between locations. Other buyers work at organizations that are opening new locations, and want to replace existing systems with a new one that will be deployed uniformly across the company.

Unified Communications is helping buyers reduce their overall number of lines. Unified Communications and VoIP specifically can enable businesses to provision more flexibly, because with services like Star2Star’s you can price according to the average number of employees simultaneously on the phone, as opposed to the total number of employees or by the seat whichever meets the economic demands of the business. To satisfy this varied slate of requirements, cloud system adoption is becoming more widespread.

“The adoption rate for cloud systems among small businesses is nearly even with those for on-premise IP PBX systems and legacy PBX systems,” Software Advice said in the report. “Many buyers move to the cloud to save money and avoid the hassle of updating and maintaining their phone systems themselves, though some buyers prefer to manage their own systems and opt for on-premise solutions.” Star2Star delivers the benefits of both, while resolving their respective problems. We call it our Blended Architecture because it combines an on-premise Cloud Communication Manager with a suite of cloud-based services—hosted at highly-reliable, redundant data centers—to create a complete, feature-rich communications system.

Star2Star’s award-winning, patented cloud architecture overcomes the quality and reliability limitations of other technologies and includes:

Self-monitoring capabilities with guaranteed 99.999% reliability
High quality, cost savings, flexibility and ease of use
Features set in the cloud, such as voice mail, auto-attendants, find-me/follow-me call routing, conference calling and ring groups
One provider, one monthly bill, one number to call for service and a seamless “it just works” experience

To find out more about how Star2Star is delivering all of this value to small and medium, and large) businesses, please contact Connecticut Communications at 203-985-1000 or Concom@ctcom.com.

The Unified Communications as a Service Market, what it means for your Business

What can unified communications as a service (UCaaS) bring to your business? The many companies that have deployed this technology to date answer that question with benefits like improved scalability, reliability, and collaboration among disparate work groups. For additional proof that UCaaS can benefit your organization, consider the fact that the market is experiencing considerable growth, and UCaaS solutions will continue to offer advanced solutions for communications and collaboration among your workers, partners, and customers.

NEC-Contact-Center-First-Call-Resolution-image

As a matter of fact, a new report from MarketsandMarkets forecasts the UCaaS market to grow from $13.1 billion in 2014 to $23.3 billion in 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate of 12.2 percent.

With hosted UC, organizations can avoid the capital expenses and maintenance responsibilities that an on-premise deployment of UC demands. Going without UC in this day and age is not a viable alternative for forward-thinking businesses. Brands trying to thrive in today’s competitive arena must be able to communicate across all mediums on any device at any time.

Below we take a more in-depth look at some of the primary benefits of UCaaS:

Deployment and Scalability: Transitioning to a new traditional telephony system typically involved a cumbersome (expensive and risky) rollout, with upgrades and new feature deployment being equally difficult. Conversely, a UCaaS solution can be made available to employees immediately, enabling distribution of new functionality depending on business needs. Moreover, UCaaS is known for its ability to quickly ramp up or scale back capabilities on an as-needed basis, with users paying only for active services.
Reliability of Business Continuity: One of the best features of UCaaS is its business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. Since communications are the lifeblood of an organization, any downtime means losing customers, money and your hard-earned reputation. Especially for smaller companies with tight budget restraints, hosted UC can cost-effectively build redundancy into organizational architectures. A best-in-class provider even will supply automatic call forwarding to alternate phone numbers in the event of a power outage or Internet connectivity disruption.
Collaboration for Diverse Work Units: The primary goal of UC is to improve user productivity and enhance business processes. With a UC solution that unifies voice, data, and video on one network, users are able to share important information and make critical decisions quicker and more easily. No matter where your employees are located geographically, they can connect to support team agendas via a variety of devices, reducing expenses associated with business travel.
Mobility: The business case for cloud solutions is strengthened when you consider the mobility afforded by UCaaS and its ability to integrate with third-party applications. As remote and mobile workforces expand, VoIP technologies mature, and the demand for personalization of services and third-party applications grows, cloud architectures will best support access to UC and collaboration capabilities for businesses.

If you are looking to replace an aging on-premises PBX phone system with a managed cloud service, you’re not alone. According to Frost and Sullivan, spending on cloud PBX replacement solutions is forecast to rise from $3 billion this year to $10 billion by 2020. With the switch, you’ll be looking at a significant reduction in operating costs with little to no CAPEX. Furthermore, you won’t have to suffer space issues when adding new lines and you’ll be able to deliver rich features like one-number dialing to employees.

With glowing prospects for growth in the UCaaS market, your business would be wise to consider a Scalable Cloud Communications Solution from Star2Star Communications when seeking to upgrade to a more cost-effective UC system.