Among the primary issues to address when choosing your phone connections is whether they should be cloud-hosted or on-premise. Yes, that is irrespective of whether they are landline, virtual or VoIP phone solutions. And, on that, it is best that you consider the installation and maintenance cost. On-premise phone systems will require your IT team first to install the PBX equipment. It is how well the installation of the physical architecture of this phone system will be that will determine how effectively it will handle the phone devices that you will use. So, it will require a skilled human resource to do the installation; and, that comes at a cost.
Equally, such on-premise phone systems demand frequent and thorough maintenance to check the devices. The maintenance also covers ensuring nothing tampers with phone cables and every other component of the on-premise phone architecture.
How about cloud-based phone systems?
Cloud-hosted phone solutions require minimal IT resources, way less than what an on-premise one will need even with the best technology. Ideally, that is because IP PBX providers house and maintain all the PBX equipment. Therefore, if you will opt for cloud-based phone solutions for your business, you will save on the installation and maintenance costs of your phone system. Your IT team will now focus more on other features other than the phone system infrastructure.
Since that is quite a simple task to do irrespective of the size of your business, you can downsize your IT team. Doing so leaves you with other employees that you can allocate other more crucial duties in your company. So, again, you will save on employment costs.
Can landline phone solutions deliver these features?
Well, it would save you much time, effort and research to have an only landline phone solution to deliver the above features of a virtual phone system. It will require you to install all the servers and related cloud-based phone system infrastructure that cloud phone service providers have. That does not make much financial sense. First, having such infrastructure solely for your business is costlier than the much you would pay to install, maintain and hire IT support for a landline phone system. The updates, which come up quite often, alone can cost you a hundred times more than if you subscribed for hosted phone solutions. And, yet, you will get the same level of security and efficiency, if that is your concern.
But, you do not necessarily require changing to a completely virtual phone solution. You can upgrade your landline phone system to a virtual one.
Conclusion: Virtual vs. landline phone systems
You can perform a partial upgrade of your landline phone system to switch to virtual phone solutions. That, however, will require that you call in IP PBX providers that have had the experience of integrating virtual phone networks into landline phone systems. That way, you will purchase equipment and devices that can work in both landline and virtual phone networks. With such a hybrid phone system, you will capitalize on the features of the landline phone system while enjoying the benefits of virtual phone solutions. Typically, that will include high scalability and reduced maintenance costs.
