United Communications

Is the premise phone system dead?

Is the premise phone system dead?
Once upon a time businesses had the only one choice for a phone system.  Direct to the Telco (AT&T).  Let’s look at the changes over the years of the Private Base Exchange (PBX).

Old Fashioned PBX: Then AT&T started producing the PBX that put some of the telco’s equipment in the local business. A traditional PBX phone system is a type of telephone system that connects an office to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). The traditional phone system is used for analog-based telephone networks. Traditional PBX systems are used in large business environments with multiple lines, and they require a dedicated phone line for each extension.  These were connected via T1 technology back to the AT&T office.

Digital PBX: A digital PBX phone system is a type of telephone system that connects an office to the PSTN using VoIP technology. Digital PBX systems are telephony systems that use IP-based protocols rather than analog signals to route calls. And these accounts are typically managed by software applications running on dedicated servers or virtual machines. These types of PBX were preferred by small businesses because they were less expensive than traditional PBX systems and easier to manage.

Onsite IP based PBX: In this type of PBX phone system, the hardware is installed on-premises and connected to an network that is capable of handling IP based traffic. The hardware typically includes a router, switch, and fax/modem. The IP PBX …

3 Ways Unified Communications Maximizes Your Control

With so many phone system options to pick from, it’s difficult to know which one will fully support your business. But you do know one thing: your current phone system no longer meets your company’s changing needs. So you do what any smart business person does – you conduct a thorough assessment of your options. You quickly learn that what you need is a unified communications system that will integrate with your current business applications at a reasonable cost. Most importantly, you want to control how you use, manage and pay for the phone system over the long term while building for the future and enabling an easy migration to the cloud as your business evolves.
If this scenario applies to you, it’s time to consider a unified communications system that gives you total control in three critical ways: 
1. Control Over Custody
Is ownership your preference? If you have a certain comfort level when the assets you buy are sitting under your roof, an onsite phone system will give you complete custody of the equipment. Simply put, you own it. This type of investment creates a future benefit for your business by reducing long-term system costs while increasing the book value of your company. The financial decision of leasing, renting or buying is up to you. A Mitel Connect ONSITE system gives you investment protection while laying the foundation for a later migration to the cloud. You decide how you spend …

5 Reasons Why a Switch to the Cloud Should Begin with Your Phone System

As an increasing number of businesses are now adopting cloud-based solutions, not being able to do the same may give you the feeling of being left out. Apart from the obvious advantages that a cloud-hosted platform brings to business operations, this solution is also very cost effective, given the right vendor.

If you feel overwhelmed at the thought of the transition of your services to cloud, then it may be helpful to concentrate on one service at a time. Integrating your phone system would be a great way to begin as this segment of business operations is deemed to be relatively simple.

Still need more reasons as to why the switch to the cloud should start with the phone system? Keep on reading to find out.
5 Reasons Why a Switch to the Cloud Should Begin with Your Phone System
 
1. IT can build internal support for cloud
One of the primary advantages of the cloud-based phone system is that it can be deployed in a controlled manner. This means you get full control of choosing how many employees or workgroups take the benefits of this deployment. As a result, you can put the new phone system to test incrementally before planning for a major scale rollout.

This practice will allow the IT system to work around potential hiccups that may hinder the full-time deployment. Additionally, your employees will also have a good experience with the final rollout and more willing to embrace cloud-based applications in their daily …

how financial institutions benefit from unified communications

5 Reasons Financial Institutions Can Benefit From Unified Communications

When it comes to banking, customers want nothing but the best from their community bank. With e-commerce transactions and mobile banking more popular than ever, customers expect top-notch service when they do go into a bank. Customers want speed, accuracy, and ease when solving their problems, which is why it has become even more important today for banks to have the best unified communications services.

Having the right phone system minimizes the chances of jeopardizing valuable customer relationships, and it also ensures that your bank employees are able to excel in their services in every possible way.
What are Unified Communications Services?
Let it be clear that unified communications are much more than just IP telephony—it is a sophisticated and robust information center that brings together phone, voice messages, and email services to provide optimal efficiency on all fronts.

At Millennia, we have the technology and expertise to equip your bank’s communication system with features that are a cut above the ordinary. This is why many community banks have put their faith in our phone system to help them achieve their goals. When we work with financial institutions on their unified communications solutions, these are the features we find they need for efficiency.
Essential Features that Every Bank’s Phone System Must Have
1. Easy deployment & scaling
Our distributed architecture follows a simple plug and play system that makes it easy to implement on our solid-state voice switches or on your servers in the form of …

UC Implementation Solutions: The Basics of SIP Trunking

From a data and storage perspective, internet cloud networking offers enormous benefits, particularly for startups looking for cost-effective UC implementation solutions. However, there’s far more to cloud computing than just storage benefits. Because of the versatility of the internet and the capacity of bandwidth that’s possible with fiber connections, massive amounts of data can transfer without issue. And cloud computing allows tremendous access to these advantages at a low cost. SIP trunking and voice communications are one of the biggest benefits often overlooked by growing companies.
What is SIP trunking?
SIP trunking is a data transfer protocol that allows data to layer on top of itself, which then allows for different types of data to transmit on the same transmission lines and conduits at the same time. In short, it’s the tool that allows the internet, digital data, voice data, and other data to move through the same channel at the same time versus waiting for one to pass before the other can move through.

The SIP part of the name is an acronym for Session Initiation Protocol, a form of Internet data transferring between two points, or peer-to-peer. The data moves between peers including email, texting, SMS chat, interactive gaming, fax data, and even voice communication converted to a digital format. The key factor has a tool that disseminates and filters all the forms of data so they can be created, sent, and interpreted correctly on the receiving end. The SIP standard is the …

Does More Technology Really Improve Business Productivity?

For many business owners, and senior executives, the thought of embracing the latest business technology can be daunting for numerous reasons. Reason being, making a significant technology change can quickly impact how the entire organization gets work done – so it must be carefully executed. So, the first logical question posed is: will these investments truly improve team productivity?

The second consideration involves the financial expenditures needed to fund these changes effectively. In this type of situation, stakeholders need to feel comfortable with the cost and benefits as it relates to their ROI.
Technology Should Make Work Easier – Not Harder
It’s important for management to understand how investing in new technologies can not only improve ROI but also enhance the overall workplace environment and productivity. For example, having an employee utilizing numerous applications on different devices that aren’t synced with one another can cause that employee to spend more time trying to track down just to get one piece of information they need.

Cloud VoIP solutions are helping to solve these types of problems by providing access to big IT without the headache of setting it up internally. Many technology companies offer services that are already linked together with advanced productivity applications and tools. These services also come with additional security features and updates – another line item that can relieve concerns for top executives.
The New Standard For Business
In today’s competitive business environment, there’s a massive shift taking place toward cloud VoIP solutions. …

Easing UC Implementation Fears

Today’s workforce is demanding enterprise mobility that makes workflows accessible in a familiar format. Businesses today looking to attract top talent need to do so with simplified interfaces that work in connection with mobile devices. Most businesses today need one infrastructure that everyone can use with all their different modalities.

But with the transition to a new Unified Communications (UC) solution, there may be some concern about the impact the transition will have. However, a carefully planned UC implementation process can virtually eliminate those fears.
Unified Communication Benefits
Cloud-based UC systems provide flexibility in communications. Team members are able to receive company calls, set up virtual conferences using basic internet connections, access corporate voicemail and use call forwarding to any device. Wherever team members are located, unified communication solutions makes employees more effective when communicating with other team players, clients and customers, as well as management.

Employees are empowered with an efficient flow of data, documents, files, and customer information, activities, and preferences right on their screens during a conversation. They are equipped to share, discuss in detail, revise, and implement business changes through audio, video conferencing, instant messaging, and even fax relay. On-screen file sharing is instant with UC conversations and off-site communications.

With a cloud-based VoIP system, your staff will know when to contact people (availability and presence), the history of a caller or customer and their preferences, as well as be able to schedule conference calls and video work sessions. These features will greatly reduce commuting time and expense.
Implementing …

Creating a Secured Unified Communications Strategy

The task of creating a secured unified communications (UC) strategy might seem overwhelming. But with VOIP the convenience of email, instant messaging, web collaboration apps, voicemail, and video means that businesses today are taking on the challenge. In doing so, however, leading businesses are realizing the importance of making the change with security as their top priority.
Valid Concerns
Here are the common security concerns businesses today face with UC:

IP-based security concerns
Mobile usage and password security
Data access and usage
The risks of data loss on public access points
Software and application usage and storage

While your small business may not have the means to implement the sophisticated and costly communications security measures that large organizations can afford, this doesn’t mean you’ll be left to face the threats unarmed. There are many simple and effective solutions you can implement.
Securing Individual Mobile Devices
Authentication

Investigate ways to authenticate each device your employees will be using. Once you’ve found the tool that suits your organization, implement it and only allow access to authenticated devices.

Encryption

Unlike communication exchanged within your brick and mortar location, messages and data sent over the internet aren’t going just to the intended recipient, they are traveling through many servers. Implementing end-to-end message and data encryption ensures your messages and data remain encrypted from the time they are sent to the time they are received, minimizing the chances of sensitive information falling into hostile hands lurking on the internet.

Lock and Kill

Require that every device to be used has a remote lock in place …

VoIP Michigan Solutions: How UC Changes Business

Michigan businesses are moving beyond the traditional telephone system and adopting the flexibility of a communications platform that meets their growing list of business communication needs. These modern tools provide convenience and extended reach to service a workforce located anywhere and at any time.

A key solution for Michigan employers is the innovation of the Unified Communication (UC) integration process. This combines all available components like instant messaging, video, audio conferencing, desktop file sharing, email, voicemail, calendar notifications, alerts, and more. This collaboration creates a robust communications package suite of all the company’s enterprise communications tools.

All growing businesses need reliable systems in place that are designed to increase their employees’ productivity no matter where they are located. UC solutions provide tools that keep communication moving in real-time – keeping teams informed.
Convenient and Cost-Efficient
Unified Communication organizes all elements of business communications into one system that can instantly grant access to mission-critical data and communication tools. Costs are reduced because employees have higher motivation, less stress, and no need to commute every day. All data and customer information is available on any device in the event of a sudden call or request. Desktop and cloud sharing enables employees to fax or email critical information to another team member or client instantly.
Enhanced Collaboration
UC systems were intended for cost-cutting and optimized business infrastructure, but these tools showed great potential as core components in extending business communications. The exciting part of Michigan businesses’ conversion to this cost-effective system is the improved employee collaboration …

What a UC Implementation Means for the IT Department

Your IT department is a valuable resource. They are responsible for ensuring you have the tools and resources that keep your business moving. From system security, software and application updates to new equipment set-up and repairs, they are the lifeblood of connectivity for a business. Because of this, when you are making the wise choice to move over to Unified Communications (UC), the IT department will play another extremely valuable role. But how exactly will the implementation change the way your IT department functions?

Here are a few IT changes you may experience:
Shifted Responsibilities:
There’s a long list of benefits of implementing a UC solution including enhanced user experience, mobile-friendly options, chat features, video conferencing and more. However, the downside is that it does take some time to switch over from a traditional phone system to a UC solution. Depending on the size of your business, this could mean weeks or months of transition time changing over equipment and processes. Additionally, even though your new systems will require less IT dependency on phone lines and additional servers, it will still require updates, monitoring, and scaling as business needs change.
Enhanced Security Policies:
A new UC implementation means you are likely implementing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) process as well. BYOD comes with a list of potential security risks for a business. With important business documentation and applications now being made available on a host of different devices and connections, your IT department will need to …

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Millennia Technologies is a full-service voice and data solutions company for midsize to enterprise customers. Specializing in UCaaS , CCaaS , Cybersecurity , IoT , Voice , Cloud , and more. Our passion is firmly rooted in showing clients how well-designed data solutions can significantly accelerate business operations, and then celebrating their goal-shattering successes.