With the Big Switch Off already limiting businesses yet to upgrade, more than ever are moving to Cloud telephony and experiencing its many benefits. When speaking to those making the jump, the number one comment we hear is, ‘we don’t want our phones to go down if our internet goes down too’. This is a natural concern, but experienced telecoms suppliers will build multiple layers of resilience into their solutions to prevent this from happening. So, what should businesses be looking for to ensure their communications are protected when migrating voice to the Cloud?
In-built Cloud telephony resilience
The first point of resilience should lie with the Cloud telephony system itself. A robust solution should have the capability to cope with issues at both the end-user level, and at the data centres where it is hosted.
In the event of a local power cut or broadband failure, a Cloud telephony system should be able to detect this outage and activate failover functionality, such as automatically diverting all incoming calls to a pre-assigned mobile number. Softphone availability enables you to use an application to make and receive calls on a laptop, tablet or mobile device with an alternate internet connection (such as 4/5G). This means you can seamlessly switch to these devices, and if necessary, work remotely in an area unaffected by the connectivity outage.
When it comes to the data centres hosting your Cloud telephony solution, there are two specific factors to look at: one, that the service actively operates from multiple data centres (in the event of one going down), and two, that they have a high ‘tier’ rating. This tier system ranges from one to four, categorised in ascending order of seamless operation through elements such as security and redundancy. For the purpose of Cloud telephony, Tier 3 data centres ensure the required levels of business continuity.
Additional resilience measures
As these measures are intrinsic to a Cloud telephony solution, they would usually be included in the cost of a standard user licence. However, if your business requires further resilience, there are additional measures that a telecoms supplier should be able to put in place.
One option is to supply two circuits for your connectivity. These can be network diverse, carrier diverse, and exchange diverse; this gives you the highest degree of redundancy in the event of any kind of issue. It is worthwhile noting the difference between networks, carriers and exchanges here. Frequently, we’ve spoken to businesses who thought they had sufficient continuity in place by having connectivity through two different networks, only to discover that they both use the same carrier or exchange, creating potential vulnerabilities.
A diligent supplier will even look at providing these circuits through two different physical routes and points of entry into your premises. This means that in the result of nearby construction work severing a wire, you still have connectivity. A further step is to install a 4G/5G backup, which gives you a lights-on solution prioritising core business functions until regular connectivity is restored.
SCG’s Cloud telephony solution
As a complete telecoms solution provider, SCG offers all the above resilience options alongside the benefits of its own Cloud-hosted telephony solution, Evonex. Operational and synchronised across three Tier 3 UK data centres, Evonex increases productivity and flexibility across your business, with a simple and cost-effective licencing structure. Our industry-leading 4.9 Trustpilot rating reflects our approach to customers, working with them to understand their specific needs and ensuring we put the right level of resilience in place.
If you’d like to see how easy it is for your business to take advantage of robust and resilient Cloud telephony, contact us on 0800 090 1965 or sales@scgconnected.co.uk.