Shield your phones from the Legion of Downtime

Cloud-based voice services are your secret weapon against unexpected outages.

Picture this. You arrive at work early one morning, ready to close some deals. Your company’s latest sales promo just went live and you anticipate lots of prospects expressing interest.

But when you get to the office, you find that the power is out. You pick up the phone to call the power company and you hear nothing. No dial tone, nothing. No one else in the office has a dial tone either.

You use your mobile phone to get online and check the local news. And that’s when you find out that the emergency vehicles you passed on your way to work were heading toward an accident site where a construction worker ran a backhoe into a power pole, knocking it over. Now the power and the phone service are out over a 5-block radius and the utility companies are saying things won’t be fixed until tomorrow…at the earliest.

Prospects can’t reach you; they’re getting a busy signal. Your employees are all standing around; they can’t do any work. And you’re suddenly faced with a scary question: Will your business survive this outage? And if so, how much will it cost you?

The high cost of downtime

Phones are the lifeblood of your business. They’re your primary method of communicating with customers, partners, suppliers and among employees.

Most businesses are still using premises-based PBX systems or service from the phone company. And while that seems like it would be reliable and resilient, unexpected events like natural disasters and human accidents can take your phone system down for hours, days, even weeks.

Meet the Legion of Downtime

POWER OUTAGE

Lightning strikes a power pole
Power outage shuts down locale phone system switch
Short circuit from broken down wiring insulation causing circuit damage
Power surge

HARDWARE FAILURE

On-site PBX crashes
Cooling fans shut down and PBX overheats
Phones overheat
Misconfiguration or downloading the wrong configuration

FIRE

Fire destroys your building/a neighboring building
Sprinkler system or water from fire department damages your on-site phone system
Fire suppression chemicals damage equipment

SEVERE WEATHER

Severe storm shuts down your building
Hurricane/Tornado destroys your building
Severe temperatures damage equipment
Earthquake ruptures a gas line, shutting down your building

THEFT

PBX hardware gets stolen
Thieves damage equipment looking for valuables
Phones are stolen

FLOOD

Flooding shuts down your building
Flooding shorts out your on-site phone system
Flooding at phone company switch shuts down your system

SABOTAGE

Employee purposefully destroys your PBX unit
Phone company site hit by saboteurs
Ransomware or other virus infects your company and shuts down network and phone lines

ACCIDENT

Employee spills coffee on PBX unit
Car crashes into power or phone pole
Construction worker digs into underground phone or power lines

We picture these disruptions as villains all conspiring to bring down your business. The Legion of Downtime can strike any time – it’s not a matter of if, but when.

And when they do strike, you face 4 key issues:

Your office location can become inaccessible

Your workers can lack access to network services necessary to run your business

You can’t talk to your customers and your customers can’t call your business

You are unable to conduct business and generate money or support your customers and partners

It all comes down to one simple fact: when people can’t get you on the phone, big opportunities are lost.

How much would phone downtime cost YOU?

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40% of small businesses go out of business when faced with an unplanned disruption.¹ All it takes is a few inches of flood water, a car to crash into a power pole, a gas leak in your building or a neighboring site, and your business could experience a phone system outage that could last days or even weeks. Would your business fall into that 40%?

Let’s say your business does survive. Great, but how much does it cost you? According to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, 38.3% of businesses lost up to $20,000 due to losing critical IT services (like phones) or data in 2014, with 10% losing up to $100,000 and 19.6% losing more than $50,000 to over $5 million².

1. Protecting Your Businessess, FEMA.gov

2. The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness, Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark, 2014

Use this handy calculator to find out how much you could lose when the Legion of Downtime strikes your business:

Select your company size:

As a small business, your business will, on average:

experience

1.7

downtime events

averaging

2.2

hours per event

at a cost of

$46,451

per year

or a cost of

$12,420

per hour of downtime

Why Mid-Sized Enterprises Should Consider Using Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, Aberdeen Group 2012

As a mid-sized business, your business will, on average:

experience

3.5

downtime events

averaging

3.8

hours per event

at a cost of

$1,771,560

per year

or a cost of

$133,200

per hour of downtime

Why Mid-Sized Enterprises Should Consider Using Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, Aberdeen Group 2012

As a large business, your business will, on average:

experience

3

downtime events

averaging

0.8

hours per event

at a cost of

$4,881,600

per year

or a cost of

$2,034,000

per hour of downtime

Why Mid-Sized Enterprises Should Consider Using Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, Aberdeen Group 2012

Shielding your phone system from downtime events

The key to surviving an attack by the Legion of Downtime is to maintain a working communications system. If your phones are up, you can still contact customers and preserve vital relationships while your business gets back up and running, regardless of which downtime villain strikes.

And the key to maintaining a working phone system is to move your phone system and service to the cloud.

A cloud-based phone system is your secret weapon against downtime

When we talk about a cloud-based phone system, we mean a service where the calling platform and features are hosted by a service provider in their data center—as opposed to a PBX server that lives in a closet or server room in your office. With a cloud-based system, your users connect to the system by plugging their phones into the internet, instead of making calls over the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) that’s run by the phone company.

A cloud-based system is better than a traditional phone system because:

It’s simple to set up and manage the system because you don’t have to worry about server equipment.

Phones are plug-and-play and can be easily moved from place to place. They only require an internet connection to work.

It saves you a lot of up-front money—you pay per user/per month and the only equipment you purchase are the desk phones.

But even more important is how a cloud voice service handles disruptions.

When the Legion of Downtime strikes, your cloud-based phone system is a powerful weapon.

"Systems may die, panic may ensue, but with proper planning, it won’t paralyze your business. You won’t lose clients or your data. Even if operations aren’t at 100 percent, your business can still function. But if you don’t prepare, you’re a sitting duck."

- Jeff Chambers, Director of IT at WONGDOODY.

Protect your business with the “Double Coverage” of Cloud PBX from Intermedia

When choosing a cloud voice service provider, you want to make sure they have the features and resiliency to handle the Legion of Downtime. Intermedia’s Cloud PBX is one such option.

Intermedia’s cloud voice service provides “Double Coverage” to protect your business in 2 ways.

Double Coverage #1: Network reliability means Intermedia’s network will be available even if your location isn’t

Intermedia’s Voice Cloud network delivers 99.999% (five nines) uptime for our voice services that is supported with a financially backed Service Level Agreement. This level of reliability—which calculates to less than 26 seconds of unplanned downtime per month—is possible because our architects and engineers have applied their deep expertise to seven key technological components:

Network architecture
Failure-resistant SIP gateway, AKA “Uber Cluster”
World-class multi-region datacenters
Aggregation of Tier 1 telecom carriers
Constant network resiliency/readiness testing
Our software deployment strategy
Scalability

Learn about the reliability of our cloud voice solution

"The real-time nature of voice makes high availability a huge challenge. The words need to come to your ear in the order they’re said. Knowing Intermedia has failover nodes on both coasts with automatic transitions provides huge peace of mind for us."

- Jeff Chambers, Director of IT at WONGDOODY

Double Coverage #2: Business continuity features protect against local-level failures

Intermedia’s voice service includes a suite of business continuity features to allow your business to continue to make and receive calls even in the event of a local outage or more severe emergency:

Automated Attendant is hosted in the Intermedia Network and will be there to answer and route calls even if you have issues at your office.
Automatic re-routing to cell or other phone if your office phones are down.
Plug-and-play phone relocation if you have to move phones quickly.
Mobile softphone contingency so you can make calls from your mobile device as if you were in the office.

Learn about the reliability of our cloud voice solution

Just look at how our cloud voice solution handles these common Downtime villains compared to a traditional premises-based system:

POWER OUTAGE
HARDWARE FAILURE
FIRE
SEVERE WEATHER
THEFT
FLOOD
SABOTAGE
ACCIDENT

Premises-based phone systems

Phones are down – no dial tone
Customers get a busy signal

Cloud-based phone system

Calls are automatically answered and routed to an alternate location/phone number (including mobile numbers)
Users can take desk phones and use them anywhere there is a network connection

Premises-based phone systems

Phones are offline – no inbound or outbound calling available
Customers get a busy signal
Replacing or repairing equipment is costly and slow

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant answers and routes calls to an alternate location/phone number (including mobile numbers) allowing your business to function as normal
Intermedia rushes hardware to you, and new phones are plug-and-play

Premises-based phone systems

Phones may be unusable or offline
Office location may be unusable
Equipment might need to be repaired or replaced, which can be slow/costly

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant continues to answer all calls and route them to alternative phone numbers or locations
If you need new phones, we rush new hardware to you
If your phones are fine, your employees can use them anywhere there is a network connection

Premises-based phone systems

Your office may be unusable
Phones may be down—no inbound or outbound calling
Customers may get a busy signal

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant answers calls
Users can take desk phones home if there’s advanced warning
Calls can be routed to mobile devices

Premises-based phone systems

Depending on your system and the nature of the theft, phones may be unusable or offline
Replacing equipment can be slow and costly

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant answers calls and automatic fail-over routes calls to all of your pre-programed numbers, like mobile or an alternate office
If you need new phones, we rush them to you

Premises-based phone systems

Phones may be unusable or offline
Office location may be unusable
You might need to replace or repair equipment, which can be slow/costly

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant answers and routes calls to an alternate location/phone number, including mobile devices or an alternate office
Intermedia rushes new phones to you
If phones are salvageable, users can use them anywhere there is a network connection

Premises-based phone systems

Phones may be unusable or offline
You may have to replace or repair equipment, which can be slow/costly

Cloud-based phone system

Auto-attendant answers calls, which can be routed to mobile devices or an alternate office
If needed, equipment replacement is easy, Intermedia rushes hardware to you, and new phones are plug-and-play

Premises-based phone systems

Phones may be unusable or offline
If equipment is impacted, you may face costly/slow repairs or replacement

Cloud-based phone system

Calls are automatically answered and routed to alternative locations or to mobile devices
If you need new phones, we rush them to you

Always connected with Intermedia

Intermedia helps ensure our business customers always stay connected to their customers, their partners, and anybody else they do business with, or just need to talk to. This is especially important in times of uncertain events.

What You Need to Stay Protected

Highly available network

System automation and high availability of features

Automatic call re-routing

24/7 live and online support

"Customer service isn't just about working with a provider that addresses your needs. It's about knowing a provider is actively protecting your business from the costs of downtime.
Intermedia has done both for us in spades. In addition to having one central account person, we know that in the event of any natural disaster, our phone lines will stay operational. Intermedia has business-class voice figured out, end to end."

- David Tran, IT Project Manager at Maker Studios.

Talk to an Intermedia representative about protecting your phone system by moving to a cloud voice solution.

Or get started with Cloud PBX today!

877-244-9731

Learn more about protecting your business from the Legion of Downtime with cloud-based phone services

Get our comprehensive business continuity planning guide to help develop your strategy for weathering attacks by Downtime villains.

See how much you could save on your monthly phone bill by moving your phones to the cloud

Learn how Intermedia designs our voice cloud for enterprise-class reliability, security and quality of service 365

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Follow @intermedia_net or discuss this topic using the hashtag #ransomware

About Intermedia

Intermedia is the world’s largest independent provider of hosted Exchange. Our Office in the Cloud™ suite of cloud IT services includes Exchange Email, Email Security and Email Archiving along with over 25 other essential business tools. Our services are fully integrated, secure and mobile, with management through our central HostPilot™ control panel and backed by our Worry-Free Experience™ that includes a 99.999% uptime guarantee and J.D. Power certified 24/7 support.

Learn more about Intermedia

About Cloud PBX

Extend rich, reliable calling features that let you sound like a big business—and operate like one. With Cloud PBX from Intermedia, you can preserve capital and slash operational costs. We offer a 99.999% uptime SLA. We'll even help you work with the phone company so you can keep your existing phone numbers.

Learn more about Cloud PBX