If I sold your company a state of the art phone system and then delivered a baby elephant in a pink tutu, would you be okay with that?

No, of course you wouldn’t.

Let’s face it.

People have issues.

Do you have a large corporate pbx that is end of life? 

Is it a ticking time bomb?

Just curious, do you have an Avaya IP Office, Partner System, or Nortel Meridian?

Any Northstar Phones just kickin’ it on desks?

What about a BCM box or something the size of a washing machine with lights and cords coming out of it?

Do you have multiple locations using VPNs to create extension dialing between sites?

Are you a self proclaimed Asterisk expert?

Let’s be real, your own Asterisk server was cool at the time, even fun, but now your company is growing fast and the stupid phone system is eating up your time like Cookie Monster at Mrs. Fields.

Your time could be better spent migrating all those mailboxes to 365, turning up that firewall at the new location, maintaining your network routing, and serving hundreds of employees.

Why should you be wasting time rebooting phones, programing call routes, IVRs, auto attendants, and tracking down equipment vendors or parts?

Any chance your telecom bills are well into the thousands for MPLS, voice trunks, POTs lines, usage, and even long distance?

Unfortunately it’s possible that your phone system is actually hindering your company rather than furthering its communications, sales, and growth.

The old phone system takes time and energy to manage.

The network is hindered with slow throughput and tortoise-like application speeds.

And… because your existing providers have no problem billing your company for that dinosaur network, there is less money for a network that would Blow the socks off Alfalfa.

Now you’re having thoughts of an evil telecom giant laughing as he raises the pricing on your old contracts and renews them for three years.

Dang!

You’re stuck and you should have been ready to upgrade and get out of those old contracts.

To further exasperate things, you have single points of failure and a maintenance agreement that provides no maintenance when things go down.

Really you are paying for a number to call, so you can try and get ahold of that one guy that knows how everything works at your company.

Its days, sometimes weeks to make basic changes.

Your phone system needs its own room.

It takes up a good portion of your server racks and if you have multiple sites it’s one of your favorite things to run around and manage.

It’s the elephant in the room. 

Literally its a baby elephant. 

Now for some reason people think the solution is to buy a new elephant.

It’s the way we’ve always done it.

Call up equipment vendors, and prepare the “P&L” for depreciation; we should probably just call it the “L”.

So…

Let’s be real, no one wants a baby elephant in any of their server rooms, no matter how well he’s dressed.

It’s a baby elephant dressed up in a pink tutu, and he comes with a number of clowns, and an enthralling ringmaster that puts on a good show.

But… you can’t… bring… a circus animal… and everything that comes with it into your business.

The animal is only going to get bigger, cause more problems, get older, and need specialty care.

However, maybe you are really into baby elephants in pink tutus.

If it was me, and I was into baby elephants with pink tutus, then I would be renting them and making sure they come with great trainers that constantly bring in new baby elephants on a daily basis.

Like a professional baby elephant service.

That way I could always experience the cuteness and full baby elephant experience. 

I could sit back and watch the private show.

So, if you’ve got this old elephant of a PBX issue. 

You don’t need to purchase a new elephant. 

Besides, elephants aren’t cheap. 

You need a boatload of cash or a major leasing company. 

Most of the cost is for the elephant, then all the extra equipment, the cage, setup, training, delivery, and the crazy yearly vet bills. 

You also have to pay for its trunk health and that’s a long load of snot.

But hey, “this is how we do it” right?

Well I’m done.

Not any more. 

I’ve been battling bills and providers in the telecom world for years and I have a way to ensure companies don’t screw up a decision that will greatly affect them over the next five years.

The corporate phone system equipment model is dead.

No one should be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars up front for anything voice related.

Stop managing via the life cycle mentality like this is a telecom expense management exercise. 

Voice services are now a network experience with many different communication aspects like chat, 365 overlays, easier call center addons, remote workers, the list goes on…

This is not a simple TEM world anymore! 

The PBX corporate phone system business is a sinking ship.

Serious people, when you go and buy a new cell phone are you asking for a razor or iPhone3 to purchase?

Hell no.

Make the paradigm shift.

Trash the rigid RFP that you saved prior to Y2K.

This is not a purchase anymore, this is an operating expense!

Just like Salesforce, Zoho, Allscripts, Dentrix, LexisNexis, the list is endless.

But more importantly, they all integrate together through various APIs with no-cost for professional development.

10 years ago I would have never taken this stance.

5 years ago I was more cautious and employed mpls and dedicated access.

Today there are dozens of VoIP companies peering with ISPs and there are numerous alternatives to MPLS.

I am not saying MPLS is dead yet, but is it needed for voice?

In many cases QOS is not even a concern anymore.

Further there are better ways to prioritize individual applications and ensure traffic shaping.

Today we can do things with SD-WAN and software defined networking that we could have only dreamed about years ago.

Do not

Do not

Do not buy another premise based pbx ever again.

Unless you like the betamax, I mean baby elephant dressed up in a pink tutu.

Am I biased?

Absolutely!

Save your company money.

Save labor hours.

Save yourself… my gosh!

Unify all of your systems and increase productivity.

Fall in love again with telecom.

Love the baby elephants for who they are… not your phone system.

My name is Phil Howard and I am the most bearded man in telecom.

The beard doesn’t make me qualified, but my many years of experience and partners do.