Software Upgrades

In hosted services, application and OS software upgrades are bundled in with the cost of the service.  There is no need for customers to manage or be involved in this process, as the hosted provider will handle the implementation details, including regression testing. As noted above, problems and issues that arise in a CPE environment regarding software version control are eliminated.  In addition, telecom managers don’t have to make a business case to migrate to the next version of software, which is especially difficult when the benefits are soft productivity improvements.  When this is bundled into a hosted service, there is no need to obtain business approval to proceed.  Moreover, this avoids the issues that sometimes arise when customers feel they are being forced to migrate just to maintain currency.  The elimination of the need for a business case, plus provider commitments to keep up-to-date result in upgrades being available more quickly in a hosted environment.

Mergers And Acquisitions

Hosted services offer customers the ability to deploy in any increments, so as new locations are brought into a company and are ready to migrate, they can be added easily. It’s generally faster and easier to use hosted services to add new locations to the network, especially when integrating voice and data networks. There is no need to test the WAN, and less planning is required on the part of the customer. And there is no concern that new locations could be configured to operate differently from existing locations, since they all use the same service. (This also avoids the overhead project management effort needed to create a template so that all locations will be implemented the same way.)