When you’re choosing a business phone system, there’s one big question you have to ask: cloud or on-premise?

Here at GoldStar, we’ve been providing Irish businesses with phone systems for over 35 years. This means we’ve helped a lot of businesses make that choice ever since cloud technology came along.

In Ireland, the on-premise PBX remains popular – and rightly so. These are an excellent choice for a lot of business. As it happens, we used one ourselves. Until recently! We’ve switched our phone system to the cloud. Today we’re explaining why. Hopefully, this helps you decide what’s right for your business!

What’s the difference between a cloud and on-premise phone system?

First off, let’s clear up the basics. Here’s a very quick overview of the difference between cloud and on-premise.

An on-premise phone system is a physical object installed on your site (hence the name – it’s on your premises). It routes calls from the exchange to your office phones. The version we had until recently was the iPECS UCP. This is a superb phone system and unified communications platform that served us very well!

A cloud system works differently. The system isn’t hosted on your site. Instead, it’s in the cloud – in other words, it’s hosted in offsite data centres. You log in and access it over the internet. This means you can use it from anywhere, on any device.

Why did we switch?

We were very happy with our iPECS UCP. But we realised over time that cloud offered a few extra features and benefits that really suited us. That’s what it comes down to: what’s right for the business.

We’d been in the industry long enough to recognise that our needs had changed. So, we moved over to the industry-leading iPECS Cloud platform from Ericsson-LG Enterprise. And we’ve never looked back! Here are some of our favourite features.

Our favourite benefits and features of cloud

Scalability

We provide telecom and IT services all over Ireland, and ours is a growing business. That’s always something to bear in mind when you’re choosing business technology. If you’re adding team members or new locations, does your technology scale up?

With an on-premise phone system, that can be a little more complicated. You may need to install new lines, or shell out for a new system. That’s no problem if your number of locations and staff are static. But we wanted something more easily scalable.

Cloud makes this incredibly easy. Let’s say you expand from one to two locations. If you have a cloud phone system, all you need to do is add as many new user licences as you need. That’s it. No new infrastructure or system – just a few clicks and that’s it! As long as you’ve got internet and a device to make a call, you’re away. It’s the same if you’re recruiting new people to your existing site. Add the licences and they’re ready to go.

Mobility

The question of where we work is changing. Remote and hybrid work patterns shot up in popularity after COVID – and Ireland may well be making remote work a legal right.

At GoldStar, we believe in embracing that change. Remote work can be great for work-life balance and team morale. It’s not just working from home either. Lots of our team work on the go. We’re busy providing business telecom and IT services all over Ireland. From consultations to technical support, we’ve got a lot of reasons to work outside the office.

This opens the question of business mobility. Without the right setup, your home and mobile workers are shut out of your systems. Well, a cloud phone system makes this easy. iPECS Cloud comes with the iPECS ONE app. This gives us full unified communications on any device.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re out and about with a mobile, or at home with a laptop. Wherever we are, we’ve got full phone system features, and access to internal communication.

Soft phone

We make and take a lot of calls here at GoldStar HQ. That’s a good thing – it means a lot of people want to find out about our services. But of course, with anything you do a lot, it pays to do it efficiently.

That’s why we’re in love with our new softphone feature! What’s a softphone? It’s pretty simple – it’s software that puts the functionality of a PBX on your laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone. Incoming calls pop up on screen, and you click to answer. For outbound calls, you click to dial.

It may sound small, but it’s surprising how much more convenient it is. And it makes us that little bit quicker to answer the phone or dial out. If you shave a few second off every call, it adds up. And this means we can answer more of your questions more quickly!

What’s best for your business – cloud or on-premise?

This is the ultimate question. We love our new cloud phone system, but we’re not knocking on-premise – far from it. Our iPECS UCP served us extremely well. It’s just that for our current business needs, cloud was more suited. For your business, it might be different.

We’re proud to be able to offer both cloud and on-premise phone systems for our customers. It’s about your business needs and which solution meets them better. If you want more guidance, get in touch.