Cloud telephony (or cloud calling) is a phone service that works over the internet instead of physical phone lines. A cloud provider can offer telephony services on their technology and infrastructure, as a managed service.
How Does Cloud Telephony Work?
Cloud telephony works by turning your voice into digital data that travels over the virtual network. Here’s a simple breakdown of the process:
- Making a Call: When you make a call, your voice is captured by your device (like a phone or computer).
- Converting Data: Your voice is turned into digital data using SIP* and sent over the internet to the cloud telephony provider.
- Routing the Call: The provider sends the call to the person you’re calling through its servers.
- Receiving the Call: The person’s device converts the digital data back into voice, and the call is complete.
SIP, Briefly Explained.
Previously, calls required copper cables, dedicated circuits and other physical connections to reach the public network. A company with hundreds or thousands of calls a day would have a large monthly expense for telephony. SIP works on both wired and wireless cables, which means it can make calls over the internet without physical connections. This makes installations and usage overall easier and cheaper.
SBC, Briefly Explained.
A Session Border Controller (SBC) is like a gatekeeper for SIP and other VoIP protocols. It manages real time communications and protects calls with security features such as firewalls, protection, and encryption. Businesses need reliable communications solutions; SBCs also make sure calls are high-quality and not prone to lagging.
Read about Session Border Controllers as a Service here, or learn about our native service SBCaaS.
Both SIP and SBCs can be completely virtual solutions, minimizing cost for scale by a significant amount.
Benefits of Cloud Telephony
Cloud-based phone systems have many advantages over traditional phone systems. Here are some key benefits:
- Cost Savings: You don’t need to buy and maintain expensive hardware, saving cost significantly.
- Easy to Scale: As your business grows, you can easily add more users and features without needing new equipment.
- Mobility: You can use the phone system from anywhere with an internet connection, perfect for remote or hybrid work.
- Full Features: Phone features like call routing, voicemail to email, automated attendants, and integrations with other apps are available.
- Reliability: Since everything is stored online, there’s less risk of downtime, making the system more reliable.
Integrations with Unified Communication
Another advantage of cloud telephony is its use with popular unified communication platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams 365. By integrating telephony with these platforms, teams can enrich and optimize the way they communicate internally and with customers.
- Transition between calls, videos and meetings. Telephony with UC takes full advantage of features you can find on your device. You can move from a phone call on your business number, to a video conference with one click while staying on the same app. Teams gain easier access to their communication tools.
- Bring data from other platforms. Besides flexible and intuitive tools to communicate, users can also integrate their telephony and UC directly to other apps. This includes CRM, inventory, and project management to enhance digital workspaces.
- Data handled by platform. Most platforms have built-in compliant data practices to serve even heavily-regulated industries, such as finance and healthcare. But businesses can also reach out to providers to further fortify their data handling protocols. For example, CallCabinet offers secure call recording solutions that help large businesses keep their checks and balances.
- Centralise your IT management. IT administrators can have more control over the business’ communications. Dashboards significantly reduce complexity, allowing administrators to manage phone numbers, call routing, permissions and other settings in one place.
Choosing a Cloud Telephony Service
Cloud telephony is a leap forward in communication technology, offering businesses a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solution. By understanding what cloud telephony is and how it works, businesses can improve their communication systems and boost productivity. Embrace the future of communication with cloud telephony and enjoy its many benefits.
You should choose a cloud telephony service that’s reliable, easy to scale, has the features and integrations you need. A provider with cloud-based services will fit your business needs and can grow with you.
