|
Hosted Telephony Services To obtain our heads around the state of play in the realm of hosted telephony services, we talked to industry expert Paul Desbois. Q. Hi Paul, I'd like you to imagine I am a novice in the marketplace. I could be running a call centre for instance, but need to streamline my operation including learn a little regarding the how's including why's of Hosted services. What should you tell me. Paul: let us go into some background first, including go from there. There are 2 main technology environments inside any business that have to communicate: 1 is telephony including the other is the IT environment. For telephony we're looking at telephones, modems, things that connect to the network but all in all people think of the as voice. On the IT side you are talking regarding database applications specific to running a business. People tend to think of that as data. Today, using ISDN including VoIP the 2 are being combined under the 1 umbrella. However, people still perceive them as different things - telecoms for voice including computers for data. Today, every business goes out including buys a telephone system including in making that decision regarding what telephone system to purchase they have to look at their voice applications including what they need to do with their inbound including outbound voice calls. There are questions in people's minds today regarding what is the future of voice technology going to look like; historically it is been something called TDM* including the future looks like something called VoIP. There is the question of which of these technologies to go for, what are the kind of applications that you are going to be able to run on those technologies including what services as a business are going to needed in the future. And then there is the issue of staying ahead pertaining to the competition. There should be significant costs in setting up a business to be able to compete in a given environment, so we are looking at capital expenditure to buy in technologies, both IT technologies including Telecom technologies necessary to be able to compete. As a hosting company we move with the times, take on the burden of capital expenditure so our customers should just obtain on with what they do best. Q. Explain the value of VoIP to me.. Paul: It seems that many people are lured by the perception that VoIP is free, however unless you use a client like Skype it is just another method of voice transmission. VoIP is still a particular immature technology. It was originally designed for video conferencing. Video conferencing required a protocol to allow people to actually tie up video data with voice data including synchronise the two. However with traditional telephony you have dedicated bandwidth, you have copper or a particular ISDN line between the connected points. With VoIP you have to deal with something called contention ratios, which is where the amount of data that you are sending has to compete for bandwidth with other data. the should give you latency issues. Latency is the lag in the time it takes for the data to obtain from point A to point B. Over a standard telephone the human ear should handle regarding 126 Milliseconds of latency before the conversation starts to sound actually affected Over standard telephone you have around regarding 40 Milliseconds of latency, which is virtually real time as far as the human ear is concerned. The problem with VoIP, is that at the time you take voice including turn it into data to travel down the network, you have to go through a codec - you have to basically convert it from analogue, which is what you hear in the real world, to digital. Every time you do that there is a certain amount of processing power required which takes regarding 30 Milliseconds. So, if you have more than 2 or 3 codex in the network between caller A including caller B, you could have latency beyond that of which people could be able to accept it as a valid service. You should additionally obtain a certain amount of data that just disappears including so the voice should break-up. Q: So how does the all relate to hosted services? Paul: Hosting actually sits including straddles both technologies, so a true hosting company should be able to provide VoIP including TDM options, which gives the customer the choice of which type of service to go for. Another benefit of being with a hosted company is that they will have installed systems within co-location facilities that are built specifically for housing data centres, so they are conditioned units to control the ambient temperature. They have high speed, high capacity data network switches that should carry VoIP traffic, including the whole environment is geared to high performance including high availability. So, from a client's point of view a hosted service has already dealt with all pertaining to the technical issues with regards to what to buy, how to set it up including where to install it. Q: Typically what sort of telephony services should you obtain on a hosted basis? Paul: Telephony applications are all based on 4 fundamental building blocks.
There's the outbound side which is the ability for you to connect to the outside world including dialler technologies like predictive dialling. Q: What kinds of companies are going for Hosted services? Paul: Most companies have room for hosted services in their setups: You have the new company with the opportunity to install completely new technology. For them there is a serious decision as to whether they go for the capital expenditure route of buying physical systems to install in the new office, or whether they go for a hosted model where they avoid those. You have the company with some old systems, some historical investment but a perception that they need to move upward including gain access to new applications including services, or that they need to enhance their existing platforms but don't again need to go through the capital expenditure of upgrading or replacing their legacy systems including again, they are able to go to a hosted supplier that has already made that investment, that is moving with the latest technologies including should make these services available on a Pay As You Go basis that the business should now run as a particular operating expenditure. I could go on, but you should see that it should be a sound technological including financial decision to go hosted. Q: So people should put off making technological choices that should not have a particular answer right now? Paul: Yes. With IVR systems, telephone systems, computer systems, CRM environments etc, a lot of work should go into understanding the technology. There are normally a number of different costs attached to that; there are the upfront costs of investment in consultancy, some upfront costs in buying systems. Then there's the actual cost of ownership - training, maintenance etc. 1 pertaining to the most difficult things is actually what hardware technology to buy because it has to grow with you including allow you to fulfil the requirements of that technology. Hosting provides you with a particular existing environment that has already been designed very effectively, so you avoid having to make a decision today that you should put off till tomorrow because with hosting you should go with existing platforms in technology - but importantly you should choose the things that you need in the form of a shopping list, including go through a learning curve without having the initial investment of buying the hardware. Q: Give me a scenario? Paul: let us take as a particular example a virtual call centre. A hosted service allows calls to be routed to different agents, for customers to feel as if they are in 1 environment whereas there is absolutely no need for the company to operate the way at all. Billing including statistics additionally come from 1 central source, so it ties up all pertaining to the loose ends. Our call centre solutions involve all that hosted telephony should provide in 1 place. Q: What are peoples fears regarding going for hosted services? Paul: It seems complicated at the outset because there are so many possibilities on offer. that is where we are here to help. Q: Where do people start? Paul: They will normally trial something like call recording because it is not a particular intrusive application. it is something that happens in the background including does not normally affect any pertaining to the existing processes. People should see benefits like access via the web to the recordings, stats as well as the reduced charges for their outbound telephony. Q: So people should save money? Paul: As a hosting company we generate lots of traffic including as such we're able to negotiate very considerable discounting. We pass the on to our clients. Q: Are many people using hosted services right now? Paul: Virtually everyone is using some form of hosted service already. If you use a mobile phone you are actually using a hosted service, because a lot of intelligence that runs on that phone is actually held at a central office location, so if you are with O2 or Vodafone they have systems that host your voicemail, they have IVR including you are mobile is just a particular access device. Typically the cost pertaining to the technology is supplemented by the contract you are on. So, you may have bought your phone for a few pounds at the time in fact the retail price of that phone may be hundreds of pounds including you are now paying for that technology over a duration of time, based on a contract with the spend value per month which goes to that provider. So everyone is actually using hosting in some fashion or another. Regarding market share, I estimate that 1% pertaining to the UK market will recognise themselves as hosting some sort pertaining to the telecoms service today. In North America it is much more. a particular example is that mail order companies should ship products with a service number attached to it, so if it arrives damaged there is a phone number on there that people should ring which could take you through to someone that should help you - in America 96% have this, in the UK it is more like 20%. Q: What will you ask your hosting company? Paul: The first thing to know is where have they co-located their equipment. You need a high capacity/high available environment with a lot of resilient architecture. What that means is that you need a co-location that has got environmental controls, is a manned facility with a particular engineer on site to deal with problems 24/7. Thanks Paul. *TDM Time Division Multiplexing is a method where lots of signals are combined for transmission on a single communications channel or line. Each signal is broken up into lots of segments, each having short duration.
|