The unity*dc blog

Internet (VOIP) phones in a busy office

Wed, 13th Aug 2008

At an event I was at today a chap gave a talk about voice over IP phone phones and I thought I'd share our experiences with VOIP in our business.

We've been using a mixture of VOIP and traditional phones for about 6 months here now and we've learnt that there are some definite Pros and Cons. VOIP providers seem to promise an awful lot: cheap or free calls, fancy PBX features like conference calling and hunt groups (more about these terms later) and lots of flexibility.

The chap giving the talk today said that the main downfall of VOIP right now is the reliability isn't yet quite up with the reliability that you get from water or mains power. This tallies well with our experience - setting things up is still a bit like internet connectivity used to be with dial-up or before BT brought in their Homehubs: you need to know what you're doing with all the settings or have someone really techy on hand who does know or your phone will be flaky.

Because most of our people work remotely, we opted for a hosted VOIP solution, where the hosting people run the VOIP server in their data centre. We looked at various providers and chose Gradwell.com as they seemed best set up for our kind of business and responded well when we had problems setting-up. We chose their hosted PBX service, which they call Centrex. Gradwell's Centrex is reasonably easy to set-up and manage so long as you've learnt the phone terminology first. They have an extranet where you can manage anything you would do with a normal office phone system - hunt groups, time of day routing, voicemail, IVR menus, the lot. If this all sounds double-dutch to you, it did to us too - but persevere, I'll explain what it all means below.

The pros

We like our VOIP system because it is flexible and enables us to handle incoming calls efficiently no matter where our staff are - in the office or at home or even out-and-about. We're saving about 30-40% on our outgoing calls as all calls to geographic numbers are free with our package.

The cons

The biggest problem with VOIP is that it is totally dependent on your Internet connection. Unless you're watching the Olympics on the Internet it's unlikely that you'll notice when your connection is a bit slow or there's a bit of what techies call "latency." However, either of these things can make talking to someone over VOIP a real pain, with breaks in the speech or a nasty echo being the main symptoms. In our office we're dependent upon Regus for our connectivity so this has been a bit hit-and-miss on occasion. Thankfully we have a normal phone line as backup so we route all incoming calls to that.

Conclusion

In conclusion I'd say if you have a good IT partner that you trust to help you with your office computers and network then get them to help you with your VOIP. Unless you've got more than one office or you make a lot of international calls, you're unlikely to see a dramatic drop in costs from VOIP, but it will make you more flexible, especially for inbound calls. Over 95% of calls we receive get to a human being within 5 rings and this works well for us.

What the terminology means

PBXes are the boxes you'd have in your office somewhere to run your internal phone network. With VOIP, these are now bits of software that run on a server in your server rack/room or you can even buy a hosted service with no equipment needed, which is what we do.
Handsets are the physical phones you talk on. These look and work just like ordinary phones but cost a little bit more and they plug into your office network rather than the phone line. However, there are some that also plug into the phone line too, for a backup.
Hunt groups these are probably the best bit about PBXes. When a call comes in you can have it ring any combination of handsets so the person calling you gets to a human being as quickly as possible. We have ours set to go to the Regus receptionist first, but if she doesn't pick up in 5 rings, then all the handsets in the office ring at once.
Time of day routing this means that you can set different rules for your hunt groups etc, depending on if it's a weekday or after hours etc. The Regus receptionist goes home at 5.30 so after then incoming callers go straight to our office handsets.
IVR menus these are those annoying "press 1 for support" type menus. We don't tend to use them, preferring voicemail instead if the office is closed.

The woodchips are working just fine

Wed, 6th Aug 2008

Since our recent move to a new data centre powered by the Slough Combined Heat & Power (CHP) plant, we've had a number of comments about the woodchips. Will we now be offering Hickory-smoked websites? Most of the wood is willow, and comes from coppiced trees in the local area. Most local tree surgeons also supply to the CHP plant, so you never know, they might be called to fell a hickory...

The real news is that our servers are working fine in their new home - the new data centre has better, newer infrastructure, but with the same great team looking after the servers from Rackspace. If environmental credentials are important for your brand, why not save yourself 3 tonnes of CO2 a year with us?

unity*dc moving to new eco-friendly data centre

Mon, 21st Jul 2008

unity*dc is moving its servers with Rackspace to a new state-of-the-art eco-friendly data centre. We've hosted our servers with Rackspace for almost 4 years now as they're the only data centre provider that could effectively demonstrate how they can make their 100% uptime promise.

We're staying with Rackspace but moving to their new purpose-built data centre facility located in Slough Trading Estate. The new data centre is powered directly by the Slough Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant. The CHP plant burns sustainable wood chips and it also provides useful heat to nearby businesses to ensure that as little of the valuable energy as possible is lost. The new data centre facility itself uses new technologies to save energy on cooling, keeping energy use to a minimum.

Of course the data centre itself has all the usual backups in place - including enough battery UPS support to run the entire centre for over 10 minutes, backed by generators that come online in less than 30 seconds and can run the centre for days at a time. There are 5 separate high capacity internet links that come into the building from completely different points to avoid any problems from men digging holes in the street. Expect the same reliable service, but with a smaller carbon footprint.

The transition to the new data centre will take place this Sunday 3rd August to minimise disruption to our customers. If you are one of our customers and you will be affected by this, we will contact you personally about the move shortly.

Business networking with Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce

Mon, 14th Jul 2008

We've been members of the local chamber of commerce for a couple of months now and one of the main benefits of membership seems to be the business networking events. We're always on the hunt for new business so I thought I'd try them out, and this is what I've found so far. I am by no means an expert, but what experience I have, I'll share.

All the TVCC events work in a similar way - when you register beforehand they won't tell you how many people or who will be there. If you get to know the better TVCC staff they can give you hints. When you get there you get the usual badge and a guest list. I've still not mastered the skill of holding my orange juice, notebook and using a highlighter on the guest list whilst looking even vaguely businesslike. Women I know who have young children tell me I will learn soon enough.

Breakfast meetings work well but you need to be good at mornings. The Thames Valley CC breakfast meetings all start at 7.30, which is a bit later than some other networking groups but still early enough for a bed-bug like me. The turnout at the TVCC's J6 breakfast and Reading breakfast seemed good at around 30-40 people. Regulars tell me that this is usual and it is similar for the Swindon breakfast too.

The usual format has a networking session to begin, with then a sit-down breakfast at round tables, followed by a 25-min speaker presentation and a short chance for networking afterwards. Some of the meetings allow people to stand up and do a 1-minute pitch to the room after the main speaker. I discovered that getting there at 7.30 is probably a bit late as most people get there early, so I now try to get there for 7.15. The other thing I've learnt is that as soon as they call everyone to the table, it is best to end the conversation I'm having now and go sit with some other group, as otherwise we could run out of business smalltalk by the time I've polished off my first rasher of bacon. If the conversation from before was really going anywhere they come back after the speaker session to finish off.

Lunch meetings are a bit variable. I've been to lunches at Datchet and Marlow and whilst the food's great the times I've been have tended to be a bit swamped by bankers. Once there were just two of us who weren't in banking. The bank fellows were good company but the FD in me wanted to be back in the office. However, whilst the chats in other networking events can seem a bit rushed, if you're lucky enough to be sat by the right person, it's a great opportunity for a more in-depth discussion.

Evening networking events seem to be either frenetic or deadpan. There are some where I spent most of my time chatting to the Chamber staff because there weren't many other people who weren't competition, and others with 50+ delegates where it's a race against time to get round even half the people you've highlighted from the guest list.

Meet us at Business Live '08 at Ascot Racecourse

Tue, 8th Jul 2008

If you're coming to Business Live this year and you'd like to meet up to discuss anything on digital communications, call us!

We'll be there for most of the day - call us on 01628 200200 to arrange to meet.