Bicom Systems, a longtime provider of Unified Communications and VoIP, has been around long enough to know its customers' needs inside out. This is why one of the key differentiators of their PBXware solution is its highly flexible deployment.
"Over time, the market has taught us how significant deployment type can be for businesses – in fact, no less than the solution itself," says Alma Junuzović, Deployment and Training Engineer at Bicom Systems.
"Each customer requires a UC deployment type that best fits their needs, scope, and growth plans."
To that end, Bicom offers multiple deployment types, but they can be sorted into two main categories: Hosted and Self-Hosted (or rented). Hosted deployment takes place in Bicom's virtualization platform, SERVERware; whereas self-hosted gives customers a choice between a third-party cloud environment (like VMware or DigitalOcean) and on-premises deployment.
How do you choose the right deployment type, and what are the key considerations? Let's have a look.
Choosing the Right Deployment Type
How can businesses know which deployment type suits them best? Bicom's hosted and rented deployments both have their unique benefits and limitations, and it's important to know them to ensure you make the right choice.
Level of Support: Opting for hosted deployment effectively means that Bicom owns all pieces of the puzzle – the cloud environment itself, PBXware for VoIP, and UC platform gloCOM (if included) for calls, web conferencing, and messaging. This, in turn, enables full in-house support and quick troubleshooting.
"Since we own all the components, we have full access to troubleshoot, modify, and remediate as necessary," Junuzović explains.
"With self-hosted, we can troubleshoot PBXWare or gloCOM, but if an issue occurs on the level of virtualization – the deployment environment – it's in the realm of the third-party vendor."
Size and Growth Plans: That said, for some businesses, self-hosted deployment is a much better match. Here's why:
"While hosted instances generally promise tighter support, they only fit smaller businesses, making self-hosted a much better choice for large enterprises," Junuzović notes.
"If a customer has a large number of extensions with many concurrent calls, we'll offer self-hosted deployment of PBXware and recommend a physical server to keep up with the flux of calls."
But there's also a middle ground: larger companies interested in keeping all their communications operations within the Bicom ecosystem can use SERVERware, Bicom's virtualization platform.
