(From left to right, Lisa Virtue – Osama Faris – Anson Pereira – Wayne Bartlett)

Yes folks, the title is pretty canned, but I really couldn’t think of anything sharp or witty. So it’ll have to do! This year has been a transition year for FAR; aggressive marketing, brand maturation, stepping outside of our comfort zone to truly understand what we are and why we’re different. One of our key partners, WatchGuard, honoured FAR with a Creative Marketing Award for 2010 at the Seattle Conference. As much as I would love to soak up the honour and bask in it, I’ve got to be true to myself and share the love with the two people who REALLY deserve the glory – Film Director Lisa Virtue from Right Path Pictures, and studio owner Wayne Bartlett from Bartmart Audio. No words could possibly describe the gratitude, so a picture is worth a thousand words. The only one physically missing from the shot is Ononymous, the rap star who wrote the lyrics and performed – but he’s there in spirit (you’ll get what I mean soon enough).

So as you know from my social feeds, I was at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit in Dallas a few weeks ago.  Great event, interesting ideas, fantastic people.  Two of them however, stand above the rest in my books.

Enter Jennifer Bauer-Anaya and Dennis Crupi onto my blog stage.  I’ve only spoken to Jennifer a few times over the phone and had a few email blasts back and forth.  She’s a PR/marcomm/marketing specialist and has been trying to get me onto a webinar as a subject matter expert to present.  The love doesn’t stop there.

Monday evening, Jennifer masterminds dinner and includes some really neat people like Travis Austin from MSPintegrations who I am a “not so secret anymore” admirer of – dude, I forgot to get your autograph), Gennifer Biggs from Business Solutions Magazine (remember to say “hello”!) and last but definitely not least, the coolest person I have met in a very, very long time – Dennis Crupi.  Dennis is the Director of Creative Services, for Ingram Micro.  I was so glad to meet Dennis – not just because he saved me from having to pay for dinner, but because he did for me in the next 5 hours (we were talking till 1AM) what no amount of money could have done for my business.

So here is what he did for me (for free):

1. He confirmed for me that I was not an idiot.  You’re probably saying “sure, ya right, not an idiot.  Have you read your own blogs, Osama?  Are you drunk on your own KoolAid? (more on the KoolAid thing on another blog)”.  I’m serious – in 5 hours, I exposed to him FAR in a way that I have never, ever exposed to anyone, except myself, in front of a mirror with the bathroom door double locked and barred (and you thought this blog was NOT about FAR…ya right).
2. He validated FAR’s marketing efforts. FAR has been working on a marketing strategy for months and months.  It has been a hard road.  Like Dennis said, it’s not just about having marketing for the sake of having marketing (or in Dennis’ words, it’s not about “showing up and throwing up” – sorry Dennis, I know you’re going to hate me for attributing that one to you), it’s about making marketing make your business grow.  It’s about making marketing produce results.  Wow, what a really cool concept, Osama.  “Geez, you’re a rocket scientist.  How long did it take you to figure that one out?” you say.  Longer than you think, is my answer to what I can HEAR you saying to yourself as you read this blog.  Yes, this blog has nascent Web 3.0 technologies built into it – I can see you read, hear you say the words in your head as you read, feel your finger on your scroll wheel rolling down to the next sentence, watch in horror as you click the X on the top right to shut my web site off right now out of fear that what you are READING right now is actually true.  Being at 46,000 feet while I wrote the majority of this blog must be affecting my small brain.  I need to see a doctor.

Two things?  Is that all it takes to make you idolize someone?  No, most important, what Dennis and Jennifer did last night is reinforce one of the driving forces behind our marketing campaign for 2010 and beyond.  I’ve said this statement so many times to myself, my staff and clients.  It’s not what you know, it’s what you share.

When I say share, I don’t mean like a “Web 2.0 share”, also called classically as bait-n’-switch.  Or as the “cool people” say it, how do we “monetize” the exchange.  No, it is what you truly share, without expecting in return.  It’s like our “Get the Skinny On” campaign running at Executive Fitness Leaders (the gym next door to our office).  For the past several months, once a month we profile one of the clients that go to this premier, private studio-based facility and plaster their profile and picture in the cardio room for a month.

We tell their story.  With absolutely nothing expected in return.  At no cost to them or to the gym – and there is a cost to FAR (designer time, professional photographer, coordination, writing, editing, etc etc.).  Sure, the FAR logo is plastered on the water dispenser. But I could have paid a couple of hundred bucks a month and got that.  The key element was the community building nature of the campaign.  We wanted to take the time to share other people with other people.  Just like Jennifer did connecting me to Dennis.  Just like Dennis did re-connecting me back to myself.  Dennis, truly – thank you for what you did.  I am forever indebted to you.  Rock on.

Reminiscing gave me some pause to think about how I’ve changed as a business person over the years. I’ve changed. I’ve learned. While I’m still an entrepreneur that chases opportunity in pursuit of excellence, here are the top 5 things I’m doing differently today:

1. Surrounding myself with happy people. You’d be surprised how important this is. Who would you rather have supporting your network? Someone who was competent, gruff and unhappy or someone who was competent, friendly and happy? The latter. Who wouldn’t? In fact, the only person on staff who is not overflowing with happiness is my Chief Marketing Officer. Free espresso. Free San Pellegrino. Corner office with a huge window. Still, he acts like I pooped in his cereal. What can I say? I did witness Vince smiling once; it was over our new business cards. But seriously, every business also needs serious employees. People who are serious can be happy, too.
2. Putting my existing clients ahead of chasing new business. FAR customers definitely appreciate this, and many businesses make the mistake of trying to chase every dollar that floats their way. At FAR, we focus on serving a small number of customers really, really well. We say ‘no’ to business if it compromises moral principle. I prefer to make “heavenue”: heavenly work that produces revenue.
3. Festina lente! It’s Latin. Yeah, I went there. It translates to: make haste, slowly. At FAR, we’ve thrown the phrase “as soon as possible” almost completely out of our corporate vocabulary. Today, at FAR we do “what is correct — quickly and cost-effectively”. Mistakes made in haste can be very expensive. So, we focus on being responsive, but in a way that avoids the panic that stems from everything being treated with equal rush priority. When you panic, you make mistakes. That’s why paramedics never run to get to an injured person. When you make basic mistakes, you might as well send your customer a singing telegram about why their money is not well-spent with you.
4. The money is in a trust account. What customers are really looking for these days is a trusted advisor for IT. Not a “partner”, an “expert”, or a “computer geek”. Yesterday I was in the elevator at one of my largest customers and one of the employees in the elevator said “do you work here?” I said yes and no. She said: “I see you here all the time meeting the Boss”. Hard to explain to her in 30 seconds that I’m there all the time “meeting with the boss” due to the trusted advisor status FAR has with a multi-million dollar global enterprise.
5. I don’t wait for the phone to ring. I’m proactive. It’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. Support is often a thankless job. So, I seek out the compliments. I’m not shy about it. Just yesterday I walked into Vince’s office and said: what do you think of my new guayabera? I didn’t wait for him to answer: I said, yes, yes, it is awesome, isn’t it. I don’t wait for someone to say thank you. I call them and ask them how they’re doing.

If you’ve never been to Miami, it’s a terrific city to visit. It has a lot of history and culture, as well as beautiful art deco architecture. The conference was great for Autotask partners, and I highly recommend it. I was just digging into my salad at lunch the first day of the show when I realized they were calling my name.

Osama Faris!

They called me a couple of times. I imagine people were having flashbacks to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off by the time I realized someone was calling my name. As an IT managed service provider, someone shouting my name is not always a good sign. But then I realized: they wanted to give me an award!

I’m not sure why I won. I have a lot of ideas on what makes me and FAR a valuable partner. Maybe it’s because I’m an extremely satisfied customer and I like to let other people know. Or maybe it’s because I provide a consistently positive but objective view of Autotask products to anyone who asks. Or maybe it’s because I work with my clients to help them understand the value of Autotask. Maybe it’s because I’m just that good looking. Or maybe it’s all four.

Either way, I’m very grateful to have won (look at how grateful I look in this candid photo!). So, I want to thank everyone at Autotask, as well as many of the great folks I met at the show. It was amazing. Autotask has a very vibrant partner community with a a diverse, third-party product ecosystem.

I wasn’t the only award winner, and you can learn more about the show from the press release. I met a lot of very talented and interesting Autotask partners, each with their particular niche, learned all about additional products I could add to FAR’s Autotask to better help serve our customers, won an award, got some wonderful Miami sun, bought myself a guayabera. I left inspired!

When I arrived at the airport on Wednesday, the woman behind the check in counter said: you’re going to have to check that. At first, I thought maybe she meant my head. It had gotten a bit bigger since my win. But she just meant the trophy.

But now it’s back to work and back to serious blogging. Coming up, I’ll be returning to my series on The Cloud to focus on whether or not hosted Exchange and other email solutions. Be sure to check back soon!

Be sure to read the press release and check out the Studi-O website for more details!

In my pervious articles, I talked about FAR’s decision to host our own espresso machine. When we decided to buy our own espresso machine to save money, we didn’t look at the cost of getting our beans wholesale and buying a coffee roaster. Not just because it wouldn’t go with the office decor. It also wouldn’t have made business sense.

A business should decide what is really integral to your business and what is not, and buy the tools that are integral to success, but consider renting the nice-to-haves. For most small and medium organizations, it makes sound financial sense typically to buy an on-premise phone system; if they have concerns about maintaining it, they can outsource the support and monitoring to a business like FAR. Just putting the suggestion out there!

Think about the service.
Where the espresso metaphor becomes a little problematic is in the question of service. I tried having Vince (my CMO) make espresso for me, but it just wasn’t the same as seeing a smiling, happy barista. On the other hand, if I want an espresso at 2:30am, I just phone him and get it delivered. He knows who signs his cheques (no, seriously, I would never phone Vince past 11pm for something that small).

But imagine a coffee shop where the line-up may be really, really long one day, and short another. The barista may be very nice and knowledgeable or very apathetic depending on the day. Having your own machine in the office means you can make your espresso when you want, and if you make it yourself, you know the service is going to be spectacular. Now, multiply the important of good coffee by the urgency of the most business-critical system you have, your phones.

The problem with making a business decision based purely on service is that it’s often difficult to determine what level of service you’ll be able to expect consistently from a provider until after you’re signed up. If you’ve ever signed a long-term service contract, you know that the quality of service doesn’t always hold up over time and that you rarely find out until it’s too late. Business should be careful to research their service providers to ensure that they are not just committed to good service but transparency in their business dealings.

With an on-premise solution, you have much greater control over service. You have the choice of hiring internal resources to manage your system. Or you have the choice to hiring an IT managed services firm like FAR.. Or you can rely on the vendor’s professional services and support organizations. Or you can do all three to solve specific problems. It’s entirely up to you, and you can make the decisions you think best for your business. With hosted VoIP, you’re one customer among potentially hundreds vying for the same resources when the system goes down, and your ability to draw in additional resources if often extremely limited.

Don’t believe everything you hear about disaster recovery
Many hosting providers tout disaster recovery as a key feature of their VoIP offer. At FAR, we take security, continuity, failover, redundancy, robustness and recovery very, very seriously. When it comes to disaster recovery, we advise our customers that what’s important is to have a comprehensive plan that protects their corporate data, their network infrastructure and their most valuable resources: their people. Disaster recovery is critical.

But it’s worth noting that any good on-premise VoIP system should provide redundancy and disaster recovery. Adtran’s NetVanta’s solution does and at a fairly reasonable cost. Also, keep in mind that the disasters that can happen to your business can also happen to your hosting provider’s business and the lines and cables in between your business and their business. Hopefully they have a lengthy disaster recovery plan of their own. If you do decide to use a hosted service provider, be sure to ask about this.

If up-front capital expenses are a problem, think about leasing an on-premise system
Even though the business case for an on-premise system is strong, many small and medium businesses want to get their feet wet with VoIP first before they make a long-term buying decision. This is understandable, but businesses should know that leasing an on-premise system is also an option, depending on the reseller. Leasing is a lot like renting, and there are economic advantages and disadvantages, but it can sometimes help your business to better structure costs.

Prices are also decreasing generally. The old, fairly expensive PBX systems of just 10 years ago are coming down rapidly in terms of their pricing, and typically, PBX replacements like Adtran’s NetVanta are even less expensive. There are free, open-source solutions. However, these often require a fair amount ofprofessional services and support to make them operational. The nice thing about a solution like NetVanta is that it’s inexpensive, very quick to install and deploy, and there’s a lot of end-user productivity functionality out of the box. In any case, businesses don’t have to buy Cisco or Avaya just to get a reliable PBX or PBX replacement anymore.

Remember, the features these days are more in the software, less in the hardware
In theory, a hosting solution provides a clear and compelling argument in terms of delivering new features when compared with a traditional hardware PBX, but in practice, this isn’t as good as it sounds. A hosting provider can deliver new features at any time – if the hosting provider deems it appropriate, if it fits with their business model and if they hardware and software decisions they’ve made allow for it. There are no guarantees, and the features available today and down the road may vary substantially based on the technology your VoIP solution provider puts in place.

With Adtran’s NetVanta UC Server on other, similar, software-focused solutions, to get a powerful new phone system with the latest features, we just upgrade the software. It’s very cost-effective and simple. Yes, we’re dependent on the vendor to add new features, but NetVanta’s software also provides a service creation environment. We can build our own phone-based applications whenever we want. The system is mostly drag and drop and it easily hooks into corporate databases.

So, should you host or not host?
What FAR recommend to clients is that they come in for a demo of Adtran’s NetVanta UC Server before they make a decision. If they like it, then they get a very powerful, very cost-effective phone system that really opens the door to individual and organizational productivity that empowers every employee in the business. If they don’t, then worst case, they get a free espresso and are able to make a clear and informed business decision based on the available options.

And if they come in to talk about VoIP, I also talk to them about their network, their security, their Website, their email and, most important, how information technology relates to their business process and how FAR can help them with all of those things. A phone system is just one business tool in the information technology arsenal these days.

In my next couple of articles, I’ll be talk about some of these technologies and whether putting them in The Cloud makes sense. Be sure to check back!

To be clear, the pricing comparisons in this article are not systematic or scientific.  They’re meant for general discussion purposes.  Many on-premise PBX solutions are much more expensive than hosted VoIP solutions.  Many hosted VoIP solutions are more expensive than some PBX replacements.  There are trade-offs to both in terms of whether you want to pay more up-front or down the road. What’s important is to do some pricing research, or, even better, to work with an IT managed service provider to get the benefits of their expertise and research.

Oh, no, charts!  I know not everyone is as captivated by the wonders of saving money and Microsoft Excel like I am, but I promise, this blog won’t be boring.  Let’s start with a simple metaphor: coffee.

To host or not to host your espresso machine

As many of our customers know, FAR has an espresso machine.  It’s not one of the $2,000 types, but it still makes great espresso.  We bought it because both my CMO and I like to drink espresso.  We ran the numbers. The cost for both of us to stop at Bridgehead every day to buy a double espresso was about:  $5/day.  That adds up to $1000/year (assuming 200 business days/year) or $3000 in three years, $5000 in five years.  Even coffee adds up!

And that’s just for one espresso each. Vince drinks at least 2 doubles every single day (so, his real world costs would have been more in the neighborhood of $5 just for himself).  The cost to buy a machine and about a pound of coffee every two weeks was about:  $1/day (it was actually 96 cents/day), or about $192/year, $576 in three years and $960 after five years.

For the same price, we had to decide whether we wanted 1 year of espresso that was less convenient or 5 years of espresso that was more convenient.  As you can see clearly from our bar graph above, having an on-premise espresso machine was a smart business decision for us.

To host or not to host your VoIP

Now, here’s where the metaphor comes into play. The typical hosted VoIP solution will cost a typical 50-seat business about $50/user/month.  That’s about $2500/month, $30,000/year, or $150,000 at the end of five years.  Typically, with hosted solutions, you’ll pay less if you sign up for longer, but you can see whether the math goes.

Further, at the end of the first year, you don’t (necessarily) own anything. You don’t necessarily get to reap the dividend of buying (costs drop) rather than renting (costs just keep going).  I should add, this is not necessarily the case for all hosted VoIP solutions.  With some hosted VoIP solutions, you buy the phones, but that’s not necessarily true of all hosted solutions. And other hosted providers have ways to recoup your investment, and if you really want to host your VoIP, you should look for that kind of solution. But for the most part, you’re renting a service, not investing in equipment, processes and human resources the value of which your business will retain.

But the market is forcing the price of PBX systems ever downward.  A solution from ADTRAN, including the installation, the phones, the servers, the phones and the gateway may cost about the same in the first year, but dramatically less over five years (it depends on specific business requirements and the reseller, but ball-park, it should be similar).

If a business wants to pay close to $150,000 to rent a solution for 5 years, or $30,000 to own a more robust and full-featured solution over 5 years, then hosted VoIP is a good business decision.  Most businesses will find a solution in the middle, but we find that NetVanta offers a compelling cost/benefit ratio.  Even if there are multiple branch offices, NetVanta can easily accommodate those requirements, even if a lot of other PBX replacements can’t.

If a business likes saving money and devoting that savings to making more money, then on-premise is typically a better choice. With a managed service provider like FAR, businesses can get the benefits of both: an on-premise solution that retains value and someone else to do the service.

With a solution like NetVanta, most businesses would save a great deal (and be able to put that money into something else). They’d also see serious productivity gains because of all the value that NetVanta UC Server provides.  That brings me to my next point. It’s not just the literal savings; it’s also what you can do with what you save.

Remember, it’s not just about price — look for solutions that help you lower costs and drive productivity

A low price is always good.  But it should never be the sole factor in any information technology purchase decision.  First, make sure the solution you choose fits the requirements you have.  And second, consider that a low price does not necessarily yield the best return over time. A solution that lowers costs and that drives productivity is almost always better than something with just a low, up-front sticker price.

Over three years, for example, $3,000 spent on hosted espressos would have been $1500 each that neither Vince nor I would be able to reinvest in ways that would save or make us additional money.  That’s $1,500 that I might be able to put toward a more energy efficient refrigerator for the office, saving me even more money on our electric bill (go green!). It’s $1,500 that he might not be able to put to a trip to New York to make him more productive in the office when he’s back.  In short, though, money should never be static; it should always be helping your business make or save more money (or both!), and information technology is a critical part of that process.

Regardless of where the solution sits, for many small and medium organizations, VoIP and unified communications pose some technical and business-related challenges. This is true of both on-premise and hosted VoIP solutions (and it’s actually true of a lot of information technology).  But if you have a managed service provider like FAR to managed an on-premise solution or a hosted solution, then your business can reap the benefits and let someone else handle the challenges.

In my next article, I’ll be wrapping up this series with some discussion of other important factors to consider when making the jump to VoIP and UC.  Be sure to check back next week!

What benefits should you expect? Lower costs, great productivity
The good news is that VoIP and unified communications can lower costs and help your employees respond to customers more quickly and more professionally.  On the other hand, it can also increase network and business process complexity. If inexpensive long-distance isn’t critical to your business, VoIP many not be the best choice.  If you do most of your business on the Web instead of by phone or fax, unified communications may not be worth the expense.  

On the other hand, many new PBX replacements are much less expensive (even with all of the added features and benefits) than their traditional PBX competitors; many are much less expensive to install; and you never know when your business requirements might change substantially.  The more flexible, less expensive, better-featured solution with more benefits is rarely a bad business decision.

The benefits are worth the costs for FAR. With VoIP, when I call a customer in Texas or in Australia (for example), I save on the long distance charges. FAR doesn’t even use a traditional phone company.  We use an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP).  The company who provides me the service is BabyTel, and I can tell you, the calls are as reliable and the quality is just as good as a regular phone line I don’t even have to worry about the cost and apathy of dealing with a regular phone company. 

In addition to the cost savings of VoIP, with NetVanta’s Unified Communications Server (the VoIP and UC solution FAR uses), FAR benefits from a wide range of productivity features with call control, unified messaging, simple administration, and more. 

Building your checklist—identifying whether VoIP or UC can benefit your organization
When businesses consider an information technology purchase, they should always consider the nature of the specific challenges they are trying to meet. What’s most important is to figure out which features are most important to your business and which features are nice to have, and how much you want to spend up-front and overtime, as well as what you expect to pay in terms of ownership and finally, what kind of return on investment you hope to see.  The last is very important, and it’s often the most difficult to calculate.  Some other common questions follow, but this is by no means exhaustive:

First, are your customers widely distributed geographically? One of the best reasons to invest in a VoIP solution is to cut long distance call costs.  If your business conducts a lot of its business by phone and has customers in Paris, France and Paris Texas, VoIP might be a good fit. 

Second, do you have a lot of fax machines? If you do, your business can always replace your fax machines with a fax server product, but many VoIP solutions include fax.  A fax server can help make your fax environment more secure where privacy is an issue. With customers who just want a fax server, FAR recommends they consider NetVanta just for his capability alone. It’s considerably less expensive than many off the shelf fax server alternatives and often more secure than stand-alone fax machines.

Third, do you have a lot of branch offices, teleworkers or a mobile sales force?  This is increasingly true for most small and medium organizations.  More people are working from home or remotely.  Many industries are simply given to having a lot of branch offices (e.g., insurance and real estate, among others).  Unified communications features (e.g., being about to route your calls to any phone with find me/follow me) and unified messaging (e.g. getting your office voicemail as an email attachment on your Blackberry at a customer site) and wonderful for today’s nimble small and medium organizations. 

Unified messaging is not necessarily a part of all unified communications offerings, but I would never recommend that a client buy a unified communications solution that didn’t have UM.  I can also have my calls ring my cell-phone, my home, to a hotel phone (or all four) with call control.  Anyone who calls me at my desk can be routed to my cell.  It’s not a bunch of arcane numbers and symbols I have to punch into my phone. Everything’s right in front of me on my desktop in Windows-based software.

Fourth, do you want to streamline customer service by providing information and account services to customers by phone self-service?  In the old days, it was called Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and it still is in some cases. Today, it’s increasingly called CEBP (communications-enabled business process), but these phrases are painfully polysyllabic ways to describe the organizational productivity behind: “Press 1 one now to check the status of your package”-style phone applications. 

A good unified communications solution should help any business streamline customer service with self-service phone applications.  Whether it’s checking the status of their package or order, transferring funds, registering for college classes, reporting their kids absent and more, phone-based self-service is increasingly popular.  It helps organizations work more intelligently and collaboratively.  NetVanta UC Server has a great point and click service environment that allows organizations or their service providers to build these kinds of applications quickly and cost-effectively.

Fifth, how critical is it to your IT team to be able to manage VoIP?  FAR uses NetVanta because it provides a simple, Windows-based environment for us to do administration remotely for our clients (I really like NetVanta, but yes, there are lots of other solutions on the market). 

It’s all managed through simple, Windows-based software.   It integrates simply and effectively with Microsoft Exchange and our Blackberries.  If I need to add a new employee, one of my managers just opens Active Directory and adds them as a user to the system and then plugs their phone into the network.  The software auto-configures phones from snom, Polycom, Grandstream and a lot of other vendors.  

Sometimes, very obscure features offer a lot of value. For example, I had no idea what a “hunt group” was before FAR installed NetVanta UC Server (it was Objectworld UC Server back then).  A “hunt group” means that a call rings one extension, and then another extension, and then another until someone picks up. It’s a good way to ensure that calls are routed to the most appropriate person first, but then escalated appropriately if that person can’t take a call.  Today, that feature is very important to FAR’s business process and our customer response.

Once you have a clear idea of your expectations and a checklist, you’re reading to start evaluating specific hosted vs. on-premise solutions.
Once they have a clear idea of what communications challenges they’re hoping to meet, businesses should do is to determine how they want to communicate with their customers in order to compete effectively, decide what their costs tolerances are, and then start looking for specific solutions that meet those needs.   If this sounds too complicated already, don’t worry.  IT managed services firms work with small and medium organizations to help them conduct these kinds of evaluations and make the best choices for their businesses. 

If there’s one thing that’s true about comparing VoIP and unified communications offerings, it’s that comparisons are rarely apples to apples and the feature descriptions are rarely intuitive.  Unless you can really trust your vendor, be prepared to ask a lot of questions.  Ask a lot of questions anyhow – if you trust your vendor, I’m sure s/he’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.  Next week, I’m going to start talking about price, cost and value in hosted vs. on-premise solutions.  Be sure to check back!

The question these days is: which VoIP solution is right for my business? Not always an easy question to answer. In some cases, the choices are very complicated, and this series of articles intends to help small and medium businesses make good decisions.

In my last two articles, I talked a bit about The Cloud and what it means for small and medium organization. This article continues a series that articles that advises small and medium businesses on what to host and what to keep on premise, and how IT managed services fits into the mix. I’ll be answering questions about whether to host a VoIP phone systems with its own small series of four articles, starting with some basic terms, and then moving through some discussions in terms of evaluate price and value. I’ll end with a summary of key buying criteria to help you make an informed decision.

What’s a PBX and what’s a PBX replacement?
My very first phone system was a Betamax waiting to happen. Some of you probably remember the Betamax (Sony’s competitor to VHS). It was the HD-DVD of the video cassette world. It was a technical marvel, technically superior to VHS in many ways, except the ways that customers seriously valued. From a technology standpoint, Betamax was a great technology. From the standpoint of general customers, it was an overpriced and under-featured solution to the problem of recording home movies.

As a technology, public branch exchange systems (PBXs) are similar. PBXs were a great technology in the 1970s. But in terms of today’s business communication needs, a PBX is fairly one-dimensional and not the broad communications solution most business need. The first corporate phone system I ever bought was manufactured by NEC. It was a traditional PBX, which sat in a closet. It was fairly expensive. It did provide consistent and reliable dial-tone to the desk phones in my office, but in terms of helping me and my team effectively respond to customers, helping to manage my email, faxes, cell phones, customer data, and so on, it didn’t do all that much.

Today, to keep it simple, “the PBX” is rapidly evolving from a particular kind of device to a term that describes a solution to the problem of business communication (with a focus on voice communication). Some vendors refer to their offerings as PBXs, some as soft-PBXs, some include their PBX capabilities within “unified communications”. Some refer t their offerings as PBX replacements. From an education standpoint, the product category is a big mess.

My current phone system is a VoIP soft-PBX with unified communications. That means instead of using regular phone lines, it uses the Internet, and instead of being a specialized computer that sits in a closet, it’s software that sits on a Microsoft Windows server in my server. How things have changed! They’re poised to change even more over the next decade.

“VoIP-enabled unified communications”: a lot of syllables for a lot of benefits
As complicated as choices have become, the news is good for customers. Businesses no longer have to wed themselves to hulking, closet-monster PBXs for 5-8 years, paying 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars just to get dial-tone to desk phones, locked into the same brands of phones and other peripherals. Prices for a phone system are rapidly decreasing and more and more offerings come with value added software (e.g., unified messaging, instant messaging, service creation, and a lot of other things I’ll be explaining in the articles in this series).

Suffice it to say, there are a number of different “PBX replacement” technologies. Some of them are network devices similar to routers. Some of them are purely software. Some of them are PBX systems with VoIP capabilities. Sometimes they’re called PBXs, IP-PBXs, SIP-PBXs depending on the specific offering. It all depends, and that’s part of the confusion when trying to make a purchase decision. The PBX replacement that FAR uses is called NetVanta Unified Communications Server (made by ADTRAN). It provides VoIP-enabled unified communications (you can learn more about NetVanta here).

Voice over Internet Protocol-enabled unified communications (VoIP-enabled UC) and the perhaps even more onerous “communications enabled business process” (CEBP) are a lot of complex syllables to describe basically three things:

• A phone system that uses the Internet and similar networks to make and take calls (the VoIP part); it makes network architecture a little simpler, provides a single point of management and it lowers costs on your phone bills.
• Productivity tools that help employees respond their customers by phone, fax, email, IM and other tools more quickly, more intelligently and more professionally (the unified communications part). UC helps small and medium organizations look bigger.
• Organizational productivity tools that tie communications systems into back-office databases to help business as a whole work more effectively with customers (e.g., imagine a package tracking system that allows you to enter your package PIN and get an update on its delivery over the phone – that’s CEBP).

Easy, right?

What businesses really need to know is that today, almost all business communications solutions, whether voice, fax or data, should be a part of your information technology plan (that includes email, fax, instant messaging, operator consoles, call-routing, etc.). It’s no longer necessary (or advantageous) for these to be separate purchase decisions. Now that you have some ideas on the diversity of offerings to replace your PBX and some of the key terms, I’ll be talking about how to prepare your business to be VoIP-ready. Watch this space!

What does “IT managed services” mean?
One of the most common questions I’m asked is: what does FAR do? Most people already know that FAR does something IT related, but information technology is an extremely wide field. There are multiple layers and lots of niches. Historically, most IT firms have specialized in one of a handful of things.

Some IT firms focus on “consulting”, which typically means improving desktop and organization productivity. Some IT firms focus on technical support, and some on custom programming. Still others focus on rolling out and maintaining networks and core infrastructure systems. These are just broad categories, with lots of specific niches (for example, some IT companies focus entirely on setting up, maintaining and troubleshooting their clients’ connections to the Internet).

In contrast, IT managed services firms take a different, more end-to-end approach. IT managed services often includes everything from high-level consulting to very brass tacks technical support and monitoring. As my Chief Marketing Officer says, IT managed services firms provide customers with one back to pat. That’s really what FAR does and part of what sets us apart: we provide small and medium-sized businesses with one back to pat for all of their information technology needs, whether it’s a security audit and analysis, a network implementation, business analysis consulting, or a new laptop.

So, what’s the FAR Cloud?
In my last blog, I discussed the value and hype of cloud computing. I’ll be discussing what to host and what to put in The Cloud in a string of articles over the next few weeks. Cloud computing takes the information technology complexity out of the business premises and moves it to the Internet; FAR takes all of the IT complexities off of our clients’ shoulders, regardless of where the information technology actually sits.

As a managed service provider, FAR provides a cloud of its own so to speak. As far as our customers are concerned, whether a server sits in their server room or is virtualized somewhere on the Internet, FAR makes sure that it works as expected, that it is monitored 24/7 and that it is continuously improved. To use the industry jargon, FAR does the operations, the administration, the management, the provisioning and the troubleshooting (the OAMPT for short) for most of our clients’ IT systems, end-to-end.

Some of our clients have internal IT resources, but most do not. I would say that many of FAR’s clients don’t have an IT team, but that’s not true: that’s the service that FAR provides to them. FAR is their IT team. The FAR Cloud simply refers to the carefully planned, executed and monitored package of information technology software, hardware and software that FARs plans, put into place and then monitors in order to help our clients meet their business challenges.

The FAR Cloud includes doing everything from fixing mice and sound cards when they break, to making sure that servers don’t melt, to network rollouts, to unified communications and voice over IP systems, to making sure the network is secure, and more. “One back to pat” means that if our customers have a business process or information technology challenge, we help them to solve it in a way that’s transparent, but also doesn’t require them to master a lot of technical details. That’s the FAR Cloud.

What’s in it for customers? It’s all about values
The value that IT managed services firms provide to customers it that they (should) take all of that complexity off the customer’s plate, create a solution, put it in place, monitor it, make it work and improve it over time. That’s what the FAR Cloud provides to customers: all of the benefits of an enterprise-level IT solution at a reasonable cost with none of the complexity: peace of mind, the best possible value in terms of meeting their business requirements, and the strongest possible footing for continued growth. If you’re working with an IT vendor who’s not providing that to you, FAR definitely can!

But I’m not just going to say it and hope for the best. Over the next several articles, I’m going to be sharing many of FAR’s insights into what to host and what to keep on premise in terms of your business systems. I’m going to be blogging about how to work with your customers more securely, how to keep your costs low for your email systems, how you can get the most value from a VoIP phone system, how to make unified communications an integral part of your business and a lot more. Be sure to watch this space regularly!