Sangoma

Technologies - SMB whitepaper – June 1, 2018

Five Things to Look for in Your Next

Small Business Communications System

A Lot Has Changed.

If you’re a small or medium-sized business (SMB)
with an aging communications system, you may be
surprised by the high-end, affordable features
available today. A lot has changed with regard to
private branch exchange (PBX) systems, from
Unified Communications and cloud-based platforms
to mobile-driven Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
strategies. By taking advantage of some (or all) of
the new options available with now-generation
communications, SMBs can now get “big business”
features on a small business budget.

Most SMBs have moved at least one business application into the cloud: customer relationship
management (CRM), email servers, web application hosting, data storage and even their entire
data centers. Increasingly, SMBs are also moving their communications and collaboration
platforms into the cloud. While reducing cost is a key driver for the move to the cloud, it’s not
just about saving money on hardware. Cloud communications can dramatically reduce opex
costs as well, allowing SMBs to focus their limited IT resources on driving revenue rather than
fixing phones and provisioning PBXs.

As the cost and complexity of cloud communications have come down, the number of
companies that offer cloud-based voice and UC solutions have grown. Most of these companies
offer basic voice and conferencing services with varying degrees of quality and flexibility in
terms of the features they deliver. Yet few of these cloud providers offer a true cloud migration
strategy, instead opting for a “rip and replace” approach that can be disruptive and inflexible.
Worse, businesses may find themselves with a cloud solution that costs as much as their legacy
system once “additional” features such as conferencing or network security are added.

This whitepaper is intended for SMBs that are considering moving to a now-generation
communications platform, but want the flexibility of keeping their communications on premise,
in the cloud or both. The information presented here is provided by Sangoma Technologies, a
pioneer of next-generation communications systems for more than 30 years. In this paper, we’ll

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outline the key criteria that SMBs should use for evaluating a now-generation communications
system as well as detailing the options and features that are available in the market today.


Five Things to Look for in Your Next Communications Platform.

The last time you bought a PBX, your purchase decision was probably driven by voice quality,
reliability and a basic subset of common call features. While those factors are still important
today, the evolution of IP-based communications, maturation of cloud technologies and the rise
of millennials in the workforce have shifted the focus of business communications to different
areas. Today’s SMBs must consider much broader criteria for selecting a communications
platform, including:



Productivity—Does the solution help us get more done, more
quickly by integrating and streamlining business processes and
fostering real-time collaboration?


Mobility—Does it support the mobile workstyle of today’s
workforce, so that productivity isn’t tied to a specific device (e.g.,
desktop) or location?


Security—Does the solution protect our business against the new
wave of network attacks, information theft and email phishing?


Flexibility—Will we be able to keep our legacy equipment (PBXs,
phones, etc.) with the new solution or have the option of moving
some applications into the cloud and keep others on premise?


Simplicity—Can we expect a seamless transition to the new
solution that doesn’t require a lot of re-training or consume our
limited IT resources to install and maintain?



As we’ll explore in the following sections, there are a lot of considerations behind each of these
criteria, based on the type of solution you choose. By the end of the paper, you should have a
much clearer idea of what options are available from today’s cloud- and IP-based
communications providers and what features to look for in your next communications system.

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies

What to Look for: PRODUCTIVITY

Technology has allowed us to become busier than ever: we constantly check
our smartphones for messages and power up our laptops the moment we’re
on a plane or in a hotel room. Being busy, however, doesn’t always equate
with being productive. Studies have found that the average employee spends
several hours each day just checking emails. Add to that number the time
spent checking voicemails, texts and instant messages, and what emerges is
the picture of a workforce overwhelmed by communications.

The solution to this problem isn’t to limit communications, but to
unify them. Unified communications (UC) has emerged as a best Productivity
practice for businesses of all sizes, allowing employees to manage all Features to Look
their communications— instant messaging, voice, email, chats, for:
audio/videoconferencing, file and screen sharing and more—from a
single application. Instead of time-consuming toggling between » Unified
different applications and devices, UC applications have been shown communications
to significantly increase productivity by enabling employees to check
and respond to all their messages from one screen, on any device. » Presence

In addition to boosting productivity, UC applications also streamline » Fax over IP
business processes to deliver better customer service. In a traditional
communications system, employees might communicate via email or » Intelligent call
voicemail and wait hours (or even the following day) for a response. routing
With a UC application, employees can literally see when another
employee is online or in a meeting (through a feature known as » CRM and Help
presence) and contact them directly for a real-time response. As a Desk integration
result, issues are resolved sooner and next-day responses for
customer queries become same-day responses.

Just as email has been around for years, fax services remain a critical communications
component for many businesses including law firms, real estate offices and healthcare facilities.
One of the newer features available in now-generation communications systems is the ability to
integrate fax services with a modern IP architecture, known as Fax over IP (FoIP). In some
cases, businesses can simply plug their existing fax machines into a FoIP gateway appliance and
send faxes directly over IP from any device that supports email. Where high fax volumes are
present, businesses can also opt to use IP-based fax servers. There are a variety of options to
look for in FoIP solutions, including built-in security, backwards compatibility with legacy
devices and automated archiving. By leveraging IP technology, FoIP reduces costs—eliminating
the need for a dedicated fax line—and also reduces the number of fax errors.

Boosting contact center productivity is another important goal for many businesses. In general,
contact center productivity is measured on two important metrics: the percentage of first-call

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resolutions (i.e., the customer issue/problem is resolved on the first call) and call duration. If
you operate a contact center, a next-generation communications system can play an integral
role in improving customer service by intelligently routing calls to the right person and
integrating customer relationship management (CRM) and Help Desk data into the call
experience. Call pop, a feature that instantly brings CRM data on screen when a customer calls,
is sometimes bundled in with next-gen solutions and can be especially helpful in creating a
more personalized customer experience.


What to Look for: MOBILITY

Not so long ago, the idea of “mobility” in
communications meant having a mobile
Mobility features to
phone. How times have changed. Now, look for:
mobile communications extend to letting
employees choose where they work, when » Support for BYOD
they work and what devices they use for (Bring Your Own
work. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives are Device)
commonplace, allowing employees to communicate and
collaborate with the devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops) » Virtual Private
they already have. SMBs have also turned their mobility into a Network (VPN)
recruiting advantage by allowing them to attract and retain capabilities
employees from different regions and connect them securely
using real-time communications and collaboration tools. » Mobile-friendly call
features incl. Find
When choosing your next communications platform, look for Me/Follow Me, Call
mobility features that deliver tangible business benefits: Forwarding & Multi-
• Unified communications apps are essential to the Device Ringing
success of BYOD because they allow employees to have
the same user experience across any device and » UC client (softphone)
synchronize communications across all their devices application
including emails, voicemails, IM/text, files and
conferencing tools;
• Built-in virtual private network (VPN) capabilities are another important mobility tool,
as they provide the foundation for secure communications into the corporate intranet
so remote employees can access sensitive corporate data or applications from
anywhere;
• Advanced call features such as Find Me/Follow Me, Call Forwarding and Multi-Device
Ringing also enhance the mobile experience by making it easier for customers and
colleagues to reach employees quickly, wherever they are, without incurring the high
cost of long-distance calls while employees are traveling.

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 • UC client (softphone) functions allow employees to use their laptop as a phone, making
it easier for road warriors and remote call center agents to stay connected and
productive without juggling two different devices.


What to Look for: SECURITY

The global communications industry has adopted
Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP-based Security features
communications (Fax over IP, Video over IP) as to look for:
the foundation for the future. Eventually, the
public switched telephony network (PSTN) that » VPN tunneling
supports older phones and services will
disappear. IP communications offer businesses a myriad of benefits, » Security-
from lower costs to new services that can now be created by enhanced PBX or
embedding voice, video and fax into other business applications Session border
(e.g., click-to-call features embedded in a website). controller

With all the benefits that IP communications deliver, however, there » TLS, SRTP, IPsec
is the security risk inherent in all Internet-connected encryption
communications: network attacks, hacks, viruses, information theft
and other forms of cybercrime. Businesses need to secure IP
voice/video/fax communications in much the same way they protect their current IP data
communications. The good news is that the telecommunications industry has had years to
develop and improve security tools and standards to secure IP communications, both on
hardware and software levels.

Unlike standard PSTN service, which delivers digitized voice through a dedicated line wired
directly to your phone, VoIP communications uses the existing local area network (LAN) to
connect directly to an external SIP trunk. (SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol: the
standard protocol for all real-time IP communications including voice and video.) SIP trunks
save businesses money by bundling communications bandwidth in a high-capacity line (e.g.,
cable, DSL, MPLS) rather than a dedicated wireline for each phone. Over time, SIP trunking can
save businesses as much as 60 percent on monthly phone charges. SIP trunks also let you share
this bandwidth anywhere that your LAN or wide area network (WAN) reaches. So, for example,
you could have a single SIP trunk that provides phone services to several regional offices at the
same time.

Because SIP trunks may be exposed to other networks including the Internet, it’s important to
provide a secure barrier between each network and the SIP trunk, creating a virtual private
network (VPN) connection between networks. In some cases, security features to create the
VPN are included in the PBX appliance itself. In other cases, a separate security appliance
known as a session border controller (SBC) may be required. An SBC behaves much like a super

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies

firewall, providing not only protection and encryption but also services such as load balancing
and media transcoding/transrating to improve call quality and maximize bandwidth.

SIP trunks are available from a variety of Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) including
nearly all the major phone service providers. Some SIP service providers will also include client-
side SBC capabilities as part of the SIP service, if needed. (Sangoma gives its customers the
option of using the security features built into its PBX platform or via an add-on SBC.) If you
choose an SBC, it’s important to make sure that the SBC platform supports the capabilities you
need and the existing technology (PBX, phones, fax machines, etc.) you have in place.

What to Look for: FLEXIBILITY

For any business, moving to a cloud-based
communications solution can require more than Flexibility features
a leap of faith; it may also require leaving to look for:
behind legacy phones, hardware and
applications that are still delivering value to » “Big business”
your business. That can be scary when you’re phone features at a
replacing a system that is very reliable—even if it is expensive and “small business”
limited in features—with an unknown, especially when it’s price
something as important as your phone or email system.
Businesses do have a choice, however, in their path to the future. » On-premise, cloud
For example, they can choose to get the benefits of IP or hybrid IP-PBX
communications (e.g., SIP trunking, unified communications) by options
upgrading to an IP-based PBX platform, moving everything into
the cloud or deploying a mix of premise- and cloud-based » Easy to add/remove
features. users and features
as needed
Moving everything into the cloud has its advantages. For one
thing, it allows your IT team to get out of the phone business by » Guaranteed service
shifting hardware maintenance and software upgrades onto the level agreements
cloud provider’s shoulders. Cloud-based communications (SLAs)
platforms also provide higher levels of efficiency that allow
businesses to quickly add and activate licenses as new employees » Solutions that scale
are added. Some cloud communications platforms provide added from 25 users to
resiliency by hosting applications in a high-performance data 5,000 users
center with built-in redundancy and disaster recovery. That can be
an important feature when disaster strikes because it allows
business communications to stay up even when the rest of the
business is shut down.

If you decide that the cloud is the right move for your business, there are still other decisions to
be made. With dozens of cloud communications providers on the market today, SMBs need to

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies

carefully screen which providers can offer them the best mix of price, performance and
features. It’s not enough to simply replace the communications features you have today in the
cloud; you should look to improve on what you have today by focusing on cloud providers that
can:
• Deliver “big business” call features such as Music on Hold, Callback When Available,
Auto Attendant, Time-of-Day Call Routing (including after business hours) and more;
• Provide options to port your existing numbers or choose new phone numbers outside
your region to expand your operations;
• Automatically provision new devices and onboard new employees in minutes rather
than hours or days;
• Back up their claims of high performance with guaranteed service level agreements.

Of course, the cloud may not be the right fit for your business right now. Maybe you simply
need to update an aging PBX system or you still want to “own” the communications experience.
In these cases, flexibility means the ability to choose an IP PBX platform that fits your business
and your needs.

Sangoma offers business customers both options: cloud-based communications and premise-
based IP PBX appliances starting as small as 25 extensions and all the way up to 5,000 unique
phone extensions. We also allow businesses to mix and match premise- and cloud-based
solutions across multiple offices (or even within the same office) as a single, seamless solution.

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies

What to Look for: SIMPLICITY

Change is good, but not when it means
disruption to core business capabilities such as Simplicity
communications and customer service. You can’t features to look
afford for employees to miss calls, lose messages for:
or spend hours trying to learn new phone
features. One of the primary benefits of unified » A complete
communications is its simplicity. UC applications should be intuitive solution from a
and easy to use, with a consistent interface that carries over single vendor
seamlessly to different devices, so that using a UC app on your
smartphone and using it on your laptop looks and feels the same. » Self-provisioning
capabilities
When evaluating a next-generation communications system,
whether on premise or in the cloud, businesses should remember » Automated
that the simpler a communications system is to use, the more software/firmware
people will use it, and the more productive they’ll be. Conversely, updates
hard-to-use UC applications will lead to employees finding their
own apps to do their jobs, creating a problem known as Shadow IT » Seamless
that can actually drive down productivity and drive up security integration with
risks. business
applications
What does a “simple” solution look like?
• It’s easy to deploy and integrates smoothly with your » Tested for high
existing business applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook, performance and
Salesforce, Skype for Business); reliability
• It provides time-saving features such as automatic
software/firmware updates and user self-provisioning;
• It is reliable and has been rigorously tested for high performance;
• It provides a complete solution including applications, security and services, all from a
single vendor.

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies

Who to Talk to: SANGOMA

Sangoma Technologies has the products, the people and the proven track record to help your
small-to-medium business shine with the latest communications and collaboration technology.
For over thirty years, we’ve helped small and medium businesses grow through scalable,
flexible, reliable communications solutions. Today, we offer a complete portfolio of next-
generation unified communications solutions including IP-based PBXs (PBXact), cloud-based
communications (PBXact Cloud), fax solutions (FAXStation), SIP trunking services (SIPStation),
session border controllers and much more.

Sangoma products and services are backed by the best engineers in the business and a
professional services team that is second to none. We also offer Peace of Mind Packages
(POMPs) that deliver systems integration expertise in a completely managed solution that
includes maintenance, upgrades, security patches and more for the life of the solution. If you’re
looking for a next-generation communications platform that delivers advanced features,
flexibility and high performance, you’ll find it at Sangoma.

To learn more about Sangoma products and services, visit us at www.sangoma.com.

© Copyright 2018 Sangoma Technologies