Voice over Internet (or VoIP) services are fantastic for modern companies, offering flexibility and remote technologies that fit today’s world. For growing businesses, it’s important to choose a provider that can also grow with you.
If your company’s size or specific operations require scalability or a high level of reliability, choosing your VoIP provider needs to be done with these considerations in mind. Even though the competition is impressive in this domain right now, there are VoIP providers that push the boundaries of unified communications and achieve top-notch results.
In this article, we will explore what to look for when choosing a VoIP provider for your big business, or for a growing business needing a more reliable communication system.
Check-list for Scalability
Before choosing a VoIP solution, you need to research the best fit for your company’s needs. Most business owners focus on affordability and what is best for the present moment. But investing in a new VoIP provider is a long-term decision, and anticipating future needs prevents miscalculations.
Any business has a goal to grow the number of users. It is why long-term business plans project future needs and include sustainable solutions for the next phases in a company’s evolution.
Here are some questions to ask when choosing a scalable communication solution:
- Will the new VoIP system be compatible with the hardware you already have? Is it sustainable to work with your existing PBX equipment?
- Can you upscale the number of users without worrying about an increase in downtime?
- Does the new VoIP system include security and encrypting measures that will protect your data during the transition and further on?
What Kind of Technology Enables Scalability?
Simple configurations of VoIP systems support a relatively small number of users (up to 5,000) and face recurrent issues. Downtime, the period during which telecommunications are interrupted due to technical issues, can affect a business. On the other hand, simple models are the most affordable and can be a good place to begin when starting a small business.
Once the need for scalability is more pressing, it’s time to move to more complex VoIP models. Instead of using a single node of communication, scalable models often have two or more nodes that can each take over if the other is faulty.
For many companies, reliability is a crucial factor, and increasing the number of users can be worrying. Performant VoIP systems ensure the reliability of communications by backing up their system. Leaders in the field, like Unify OpenScape Voice, can easily be scaled up to 100,000 users while maintaining impressive reliability of almost 100%.
How Does Open Scape Ensure Scalability and Reliability?
When upgraded to the enterprise-level deployment model using two nodes of communication, Unify OpenScape Voice supports up to 100,000 users. It also guarantees carrier-grade reliability of 99,999%. This is due to the active-active redundant two-node cluster. Should a fault cause one of the nodes to crash, the other one would support the entire call load, with no interruptions during the transition.
Whatever VoIP platform you choose, providers like Unify are taking VoIP to the next level, and proving how flexible internet-based telecommunications are.
