Hosted VoIP is getting a new spin as the telephony
community begins to explore voice communications as software
applications on a converged network.
"We're allergic to the word 'hosted,'" Russ Maney, vice
president of marketing, said when describing Smoothstone and its
view of the
Voice over IP (VoIP) communications world.
Rather than following the better-known model of hosted
VoIP services, Smoothstone considers itself a fully managed
communications service provider. Terming its service "converged
communications as a service," Smoothstone takes the approach of
offering a complete solution -- covering everything from basic dial
tone to automated call distribution (ACD) and videoconferencing
services.
Using the
Software as a Service (SaaS) model and replacing traditional
telecom equipment and separate silos of legacy networks,
Smoothstone makes VoIP software and services available over a
network connection from an externally hosted platform. In addition,
Smoothstone offers businesses the chance to converge separated
data, voice and video networks into a single provider that offers
these features over a private, nationwide network as a service.
Vic Elarde, IT manager at Telular, said that six months with
Smoothstone's complete solution liberated his staff to focus on the
higher-value activities of the network rather than spending their
time keeping the voice system operational.
With Telular's geographically diverse personnel -- it has
offices in Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Miami, as well as people
in Europe and Africa -- Elarde's IT staff was spending a lot of
time just keeping end users within the company in touch with one
another.
Whenever there was a problem with the phone system, Elarde knew
he would need to set aside at least a few hours to phone in the
problem to his previous provider, AT&T/BellSouth, and then wait
for a call back with a response -- the actual fix for the issue
could take another day or two, depending on the problem.
In comparison, Elarde said, "It took one call to reach
Smoothstone's support versus waiting a day or two to hear back from
our previous provider, or several hours on the phone before
reaching a support worker."
Along with the new freedom for his IT staff following the
switch, monthly costs were less than half the amount Telular was
paying its previous provider, Elarde said.
For Telular, the cost-savings benefits of VoIP and hosted VoIP
had become another incentive to find a different telephony
solution. With an average bill of $30,000 per month before
switching to Smoothstone, and struggling to reach a customer
service rep with the other company when there was a problem,
monthly costs of $12,000 to $13,000 reaffirmed Elarde's decision to
switch.
As a manager who is customer service-oriented, Elarde is also
thrilled with the near-weekly phone calls he receives from his
Smoothstone customer service rep to check in. Telular also found
that using a new hosted service helped the company avoid the cost
of a forklift to VoIP -- one that might not have included the other
unified features included with Smoothstone's complete solution.
Apart from cost savings and more freedom for the IT staff,
Telular put Smoothstone to the test early when the company moved
its headquarters from the Chicago suburb of Vernon Hills to
downtown Chicago.
During the move, the server on which the company's Web site resides
would have to be down.
Rather than allowing the site to be down for the duration of the
physical move, Smoothstone enabled Telular to virtually move the
site from the Chicago server to the New York office's server. Once
the physical move to downtown Chicago was over and the server was
back online, Smoothstone transitioned the site back onto the
Chicago server -- without experiencing any downtime.
For Telular's remote and mobile workers, additional features
have also improved communications capabilities. As its complete
solution places all network users onto the same private network,
the entire company is on the same virtual call center -- allowing
workers to communicate with one another as if they were in the same
physical location.
Telular's CEO has his own unique twist on that part of the
solution. When he travels to his second home, it is as if he is
still on the network because one of the office IP phones has been
plugged in there.
For the road warriors, the softphone option allows more
flexibility, while the find me/follow me option has been useful to
the entire enterprise.
Using a number of Smoothstone's features also enables Telular to
handle its call center more efficiently. As a provider of cellular
fixed wireless services, Telular operates a customer service call
center in its Atlanta office.
Another catalyst for the switch to Smoothstone came from issues
with the previous service provider, which limited the number of
inbound calls, and when additional POTS lines were needed,
installation could take between 30 and 40 days. As call volume
increased, the system would be overloaded and customers would
sometimes receive a busy signal.
Elarde has found that Smoothstone's flexibility is invaluable to
improving Telular's business -- including being able to add T1
lines as the volume handled by the call center increases, or
rerouting calls to the Chicago office when the volume spikes.
Issues of outsourcing the voice network might have worried some,
but Elarde said that "it never worried [him]." With the use of
Smoothstone's VoiceStalk software, he can log on at any time and
monitor what's happening on the voice network to find and diagnose
any problems that may crop up and to evaluate whether the network
is being used as efficiently as possible.
With the number of benefits Elarde has seen for his IT staff and
within the rest of Telular, he is confident that a converged
communications system was the best path for his company to take to
improve its business.
"In choosing to use a converged communications model," Elarde
said, "our cost savings alone have made our company
profitable."