This posting, one of an occasional series on the benefits of Cloud-based voice services, explores how the Cloud is able to deliver an unparalleled level of resilience unmatched by premises-based voice services.
Resilience is an increasingly critical business imperative, perhaps more so in difficult times, and one which demands board-level attention. Be it for regulatory reasons, or sound business planning, organisations need to ensure that their voice services are wholly resilient and not susceptible to failure under any circumstances. In this context, businesses concern relates to the delivery of incoming calls, since for outbound calls staff can relocate, move to another office or to their home, and start calling customers, partners or suppliers from there.
Adding resilience to incoming calls can be quite a challenge, especially since in large part the successful delivery of incoming calls is dependent upon the resilience of the public telephone network itself, over which most companies feel they have little control. However, the Cloud does now enable organisations to protect against not only failure of this public telephone network but also against more local events that can affect the organisation, such as denial-of-access events, PBX failure or even the local council workmen digging through a cable.
There should be no need to detail the importance to the organisation of protecting their incoming calls. Whether this is to take orders, provide service, offer a life-line or simply to transact business, the telephone is the most powerful and important piece of business technology any organisation has - and without which they will be lost. Voice continuity, the ability of the organisation to ensure the delivery of these important incoming calls, can protect the revenue and reputation of the organisation in a crisis. Nothing is more powerful in a crisis than a calming word, and the spoken word can say far more to customers, shareholders and other stake holders than any email, press-release anything delivered electronically.
And yet, while organisations have typically invested significant in business continuity planning to protect their data, networks and business applications, the area of voice continuity has been overlooked largely due to complexity and the belief that there was little that can be done to change the resilience of the public telephone network.
Infact, by moving enterprise voice services to the Cloud, the organisation can not only add resilience to their own premises, network and facilities, but can also extend greater resilience onto the public telephone network itself. Before I explain this further, I will provide a quick overview of the current public telephone network, the issues around resilience inherent in this network, and how the Cloud can overcome many of these shortcomings.
In the UK, the public telephone network is known as the PSTN (packet switched telephone network) and is comprised of around 100 core PSTN switches, spread across the UK, with each switch linked to a number of telephone exchanges. As a meshed network, each telephone exchange is itself connected to multiple core switches (known as DMSU’s – digital main switching units). A company’s DDI range, those telephone numbers that people call in order to speak to staff in the company, are held within a single local exchange, which is in turn connected to the company offices via ISDN circuits.
Should the company want protect against business continuity events in the network itself, such as failure of these ISDN circuits or failure of the local telephone exchange, or wish to protect against more site-specific problems, such as failure of the PBX or denial-of-access events, then it becomes very difficult to achieve these since many of these are outside of the direct control of the organisation itself.
However, organisations do now have a choice in terms of how they wish to protect themselves, and can look to the delivery of enterprise voice services from the Cloud not only to increase their resilience but provide benefits of agility, cost-savings and many more besides.
This is achieved simply and easily by moving the delivery of the incoming calls away from the local telephone exchange and instead to deliver calls through the Cloud. With cloud-delivery, the organisation is given a web portal to setup and manage how they would like to receive their calls, and can change this instantly and automatically to respond to different types of business continuity events.
It may be that in the first instance, the Cloud should try to deliver calls through the local exchange and across the companies ISDN circuits into the premises. However, if the service detects problems in the local exchange, or in the ISDN circuits or even with the company’s PBX onsite, the Cloud can instantly re-route calls through an alternative gateway onto their voice network. This gateway may be at another office, a data-centre, or indeed any point of ingres on the company’s voice network.
Should staff have to leave the building, or be denied access to it in the first place, the Cloud can re-route calls to staff on their mobile phones, home phones or infact any location from where they’re able to receive calls.
No matter what type of business continuity event may befall the company, be it as little as staff not being able to make it to the office due to weather disruption, or as major as a major infrastructure failure, the organisation can ensure that it is always able to receive it’s important calls – and that the caller is unaware that the business may be undergoing great stress.
It is this ability to project an aura of calm, business-as-usual operations in times of stress that can add significantly to the reputation of the business and protect it’s revenues. And while this is true of lesser events that may just effect the business itself, it is even more true of major incidents or events that could lead to competitors being out of action while the company itself proceeds on a business-as-usual footing.
By protecting against problems that occur as a result of network failure, or people/process issues due to a staff relocation, the Cloud is able to prove a critical business asset. And like any asset, the more uses that can be made of this investment, the greater will be the return. So it is with the delivery of voice services from the Cloud, which can not only be used to add resilience against business continuity events, but can also be used on a day-to-day basis to add organisational agility.
Since the Cloud removes any geographic dependency on call delivery, this ability to ‘virtualise’ a company’s DDI range can also be used to give staff a ‘number for life’. No matter where they are posted in an organisations, staff can move across the country and across the world and always ensure that there calls will reach them. Therefore, for office relocations which may affect large numbers of staff, or for individual call routing for personnel as they take on new roles in different offices, the organisation can be assured that calls to these staff will always be completed.
As more use is made of number virtualisation, so too will the return on this investment increase. As such, the Cloud can be an important business asset not only for organisational resilience but for agility and cost-cutting too.
And yet, while organisations have typically invested significant in business continuity planning to protect their data, networks and business applications, the area of voice continuity has been overlooked largely due to complexity and the belief that there was little that can be done to change the resilience of the public telephone network.
Infact, by moving enterprise voice services to the Cloud, the organisation can not only add resilience to their own premises, network and facilities, but can also extend greater resilience onto the public telephone network itself. Before I explain this further, I will provide a quick overview of the current public telephone network, the issues around resilience inherent in this network, and how the Cloud can overcome many of these shortcomings.
In the UK, the public telephone network is known as the PSTN (packet switched telephone network) and is comprised of around 100 core PSTN switches, spread across the UK, with each switch linked to a number of telephone exchanges. As a meshed network, each telephone exchange is itself connected to multiple core switches (known as DMSU’s – digital main switching units). A company’s DDI range, those telephone numbers that people call in order to speak to staff in the company, are held within a single local exchange, which is in turn connected to the company offices via ISDN circuits.
Should the company want protect against business continuity events in the network itself, such as failure of these ISDN circuits or failure of the local telephone exchange, or wish to protect against more site-specific problems, such as failure of the PBX or denial-of-access events, then it becomes very difficult to achieve these since many of these are outside of the direct control of the organisation itself.
However, organisations do now have a choice in terms of how they wish to protect themselves, and can look to the delivery of enterprise voice services from the Cloud not only to increase their resilience but provide benefits of agility, cost-savings and many more besides.
This is achieved simply and easily by moving the delivery of the incoming calls away from the local telephone exchange and instead to deliver calls through the Cloud. With cloud-delivery, the organisation is given a web portal to setup and manage how they would like to receive their calls, and can change this instantly and automatically to respond to different types of business continuity events.
It may be that in the first instance, the Cloud should try to deliver calls through the local exchange and across the companies ISDN circuits into the premises. However, if the service detects problems in the local exchange, or in the ISDN circuits or even with the company’s PBX onsite, the Cloud can instantly re-route calls through an alternative gateway onto their voice network. This gateway may be at another office, a data-centre, or indeed any point of ingres on the company’s voice network.
Should staff have to leave the building, or be denied access to it in the first place, the Cloud can re-route calls to staff on their mobile phones, home phones or infact any location from where they’re able to receive calls.
No matter what type of business continuity event may befall the company, be it as little as staff not being able to make it to the office due to weather disruption, or as major as a major infrastructure failure, the organisation can ensure that it is always able to receive it’s important calls – and that the caller is unaware that the business may be undergoing great stress.
It is this ability to project an aura of calm, business-as-usual operations in times of stress that can add significantly to the reputation of the business and protect it’s revenues. And while this is true of lesser events that may just effect the business itself, it is even more true of major incidents or events that could lead to competitors being out of action while the company itself proceeds on a business-as-usual footing.
By protecting against problems that occur as a result of network failure, or people/process issues due to a staff relocation, the Cloud is able to prove a critical business asset. And like any asset, the more uses that can be made of this investment, the greater will be the return. So it is with the delivery of voice services from the Cloud, which can not only be used to add resilience against business continuity events, but can also be used on a day-to-day basis to add organisational agility.
Since the Cloud removes any geographic dependency on call delivery, this ability to ‘virtualise’ a company’s DDI range can also be used to give staff a ‘number for life’. No matter where they are posted in an organisations, staff can move across the country and across the world and always ensure that there calls will reach them. Therefore, for office relocations which may affect large numbers of staff, or for individual call routing for personnel as they take on new roles in different offices, the organisation can be assured that calls to these staff will always be completed.
As more use is made of number virtualisation, so too will the return on this investment increase. As such, the Cloud can be an important business asset not only for organisational resilience but for agility and cost-cutting too.
No comments:
Post a Comment