Posts Tagged cloud computing
theitguys.co.uk Help sales-i Save Money With Telephone Conference Facilities
Posted by Tim A Hall-Woodcock in theitguys.co.uk Blog on May 13th, 2009
sales-i provide forward thinking sales acceleration software using software as a service for delivery to their customer base. Their software analyses sales patterns and provides realtime, up-sell opportunities and increased buying behaviour, which leads to customer focused profitable selling!
sales-i and their team of Sales Executives have used KomplettPBX, which is based on Asterisk and trixbox from theitguys.co.uk for a couple of years now. KomplettPBX is a telephone system that is packed with powerful call-centre style features and affordable to any size of company.
Paul Black CEO of sales-i is always striving to improve his company and its facilities and if Paul can realise a saving by switching his supply, like any astute businessman, he will!
Paul came to me with a problem; the sales-i sales team use telephone system based conference facilities in the USA to provide a client voice meeting location for training and demonstrating the sales-i software. 20 or so clients dial a toll-free number and join the conference with sales or training staff from sales-i.
The problem with this is the high cost of the US conference facilities. It is a rented service and in the US it is expected that the host (sales-i in this case) pays for the clients call. 20 users for over an hour plus the calls from the UK times by a few conferences per day into the facility amounts to a small monthly fortune. Especially as the business is growing rapidly through the success of the sales-i automation software.
KomplettPBX and Asterisk have the ability to provide conference facilities, effectively meeting rooms for clients or anyone with the available PIN and number to dial in to the system to converge or collaborate together. As the system is VoIP (Voice over IP - calls travel over the Internet) based we could effectively trunk calls at no cost from the USA straight in through the VoIP interface. So using a company in the USA called www.tollfreeforwarding.com who provide numbers for any state in the US, we registered a telephone number for sales-i demonstrations and one for training. Two conference boxes were added to the phone system and the numbers directed in.
Paul Black now enjoys big savings every month, plus he now has more control over the conference facilities. Additionally, every conference call is recorded and can be played back and used for training purposes.
This post demonstrates just one of the thousands of features on the KomplettPBX phone system from theitguys.co.uk. If you are looking to make savings or improve your telephony facilities or if you need bespoke telephony consultancy services then call 0845 004 6789 to discuss your requirements.
Cloud Computing - What is it and should I be bothered?
Posted by Tim A Hall-Woodcock in theitguys.co.uk Blog on April 5th, 2009
what is cloud computing?
For a few years now theitguys.co.uk have been supplying remote software services where you pay a low monthly fee, we provide you with a service and you take advantage of our data centre facilities with technical support and backup. Services such as email, calendar and contacts collaboration, email scanning and cleaning, remote backup are a few that can be defined as cloud computing.
Additionally theitguys.co.uk manufacture/ develop software that runs as a service in the cloud - commonly known as “software as a service” (SaaS). In days gone by companies would have an Access database developed that handled processes within their business, these days software is often required externally as people work remotely, on the road or from home. The safest and easiest way to deliver that is by cloud computing or over the Internet using Rich Internet Applications (RIA) - click here to see our software page for more information on RIA, Flex and AIR technologies.
should you embrace cloud computing?
Things are definitely moving in the direction of cloud computing and the biggest reason is cost and power. Why bother running your own servers and services that need to be constantly updated with new features at great expense when for a fixed low fee you can benefit from the latest in technology from your cloud supplier?
Lets look at the pros and cons:
Pros:
- reduced hardware, software, network, support, accommodation and environmental costs
- greater flexibility, mobility, utility, operational stability, process control and activity monitoring
- faster updates, procedural changes, training and debugging
- better security, scalability, use of resources, control of data access and recovery from catastrophic failures
Cons:
- dependence on centralised server and services that are in-sourced or outsourced, plus the need for fixed and mobile bandwidth everywhere
- instantaneous propagation of service-affecting errors, software problems, mistakes and other snafus
- catastrophic and instantaneous failure mode at a terminal level and no one can work until the problem is fixed. This is leading many people to opt for a ‘thinish’ client model with a limited offline capability such as Google Desktop.
With cloud computing the idea is to try and afford new degrees of freedom and flexibility in order to up productivity while maintaining the integrity operations and security of access and data.
Overall this is about efficiency and cost saving but these should not be at the risk of operational fidelity.
If you need more information please do not hesitate to contact us. Please comment below if you have an opinion.
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