When disaster strikes, communications are often disrupted, adding to the confusion and chaos. Small businesses that lack a recovery plan often find themselves cut off from their customers and their networks. In these drastic situations, opening lines of communication is critical – to ensure all employees are accounted for, emergency services are notified and customers are made aware of the issues facing the business. Since in-house, legacy phone networks often go down with power outages, small businesses that depend on hosted VoIP as part of their disaster recovery plans consistently restore communications quickly from disasters that cripple their communication infrastructure.
Hosted phone services provide several benefits that small businesses may find invaluable when developing a disaster recovery plan.
As the name suggests, hosted VoIP relies on offsite infrastructure to maintain communications assets. This means limiting onsite equipment to the handsets that are used to make the calls, preventing big, bulky, complicated servers from being threatened by natural disasters and allowing for flexibility in crisis communications. Since the technology requires minimum infrastructure investment, businesses that utilize hosted VoIP will also have an easier time replacing any damaged or destroyed equipment.
With modern softphone apps, connections can be restored even when the handsets are not available. Employees can reconnect outside of the disaster zone using smartphones, laptops or tablets with an Internet connection. By untethering users from their desks, hosted VoIP systems allow sustained communications during periods of evacuation or even when hazardous situations prevent employees from coming into the office.
Today’s VoIP providers also have extensive support networks, allowing quick response times to any outages and other technical issues that their clients may have. Their always-on hosted services allow instantaneous shifts from the office phone networks to mobile devices, ensuring that even power outages cannot completely disrupt workflow.
Hosted VoIP solutions allow for flexibility and portability when it comes to crisis communications. By separating communications from physical locations, hosted VoIP phone systems have become an invaluable part of any comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
