Whether you’re making inbound or outbound calls, one thing remains the same – you should expect to be able to carry out your business continuously, without interruption.
After all, even a short period of time while critical systems are unavailable could result in lost income and, perhaps more importantly, damage to your reputation. When you’re unable to answer calls, make them, or your agent suddenly hangs up without notice, it’s impossible to keep your customers happy.
That’s why, at Hostcomm, we’re focused on keeping our clients connected at all times with our business VoIP service.
We know the pitfalls of choosing UK VoIP providers who cannot deliver the level of service you need (and you can read about them in this blog article).
So, across power, hardware redundancy, network capacity and design, our infrastructure is built for business continuity.
The importance of business continuity in VoIP
As Dr Jim Kennedy mentions in his fascinating Continuity Central article VoIP: Business Continuity Thoughts, moving telephony away from conventional systems and towards VoIP requires special considerations when it comes to availability.
While VoIP brings with it new opportunities for businesses of all sizes, not every business VoIP service will deliver the same always-on service you’d expect from your traditional phones.
The risk associated with this is significant and, thankfully, more and more businesses are becoming aware of the importance of business continuity in VoIP. In fact, the Business Continuity Institute’s Horizon Scan 2014 identified unplanned IT and telecom outages as the number one threat to business continuity this year.
Every contact centre and call centre requires VoIP that is always available. At Hostcomm, that’s exactly what we strive to deliver in four key areas.
1. Power
The electric power that supplies the VoIP infrastructure is paramount. Before anything else can be considered, you need to be certain that vital hardware is always receiving the power it needs to switch on.
Hostcomm’s data centres are carefully designed to ensure continuous power. Automated generator backup creates an uninterruptable power supply, where auxiliary power can supply hardware should a primary source go down. In addition, intelligent balancing reduces the likelihood of overuse and sudden power failure.
2. Hardware redundancy
At its most basic level, a business VoIP network links together different hardware units. Providing that every point on the network is suitably connected, and a link is made to an outside carrier (to transfer data across the internet), the infrastructure will be functional.
But what if a device fails? The chain of connectivity is broken. What’s more, if this particular device carries out an important task (such as routing traffic on the network perimeter), the entire infrastructure would be rendered useless.
Hostcomm’s infrastructure is highly redundant, with support hardware permanently connected to the network. All single points of failure are eliminated. So, if one hardware device fails, another is there to step in automatically, maintaining business continuity.
3. Network capacity
One of the best things about using VoIP is its scalability. The only limiting factor is bandwidth – the capacity of the network to handle traffic.
Capacity needs to be considered in two main areas:
- Is the standard network capacity enough to support communications in crystal-clear quality, with no lost data?
- Do redundant hardware devices have the capacity to support all traffic, from all users?
Hostcomm’s infrastructure offers a significant traffic capacity, as does every redundant node. In addition, all traffic in the network is carefully balanced, reducing the likelihood of any one point being overwhelmed with transfers.
4. Network infrastructure
Finally, the overall infrastructure needs an intelligent design. It’s not enough to keep devices powered and, thanks to redundancy, always available. The way they are used needs to be efficient, fast, and designed for the unique requirements of VoIP.
Hostcomm’s infrastructure brings together more than 250 servers, gateways and soft switches in 5 datacentres. These datacentres are directly connected to Tier 1 operators, offering fast transfer (and better call quality) – anywhere in the world.
It’s an OFCOM-compliant solution that offers the speed, call quality and availability that business users demand.
And with continuous power, no single point of failure, and a suitable network capacity, it’s a purpose-built infrastructure that helps keep your business connected and productive at all times.
To find out more about how Hostcomm’s infrastructure helps you maintain business continuity, click here or call us on 0808 168 4400.
