What is a cloud phone system?
Essentially, a cloud phone system frees you (and your business) from being tied to a telecom company.
Your cloud service provider maintains data centers that house the phone system. When you sign up with a provider (like Dialpad), they manage everything, and you can start making phone calls through the Internet without setting up any onsite hardware.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the technology that makes it all possible. Through VoIP, voice signals can be transmitted over an Internet connection instead of through traditional phone lines.
Why choose a cloud phone system for business communications?
Before cloud phone systems, companies used traditional phone systems like PBX (Private Branch Exchange) and landline desk phones.
As a phone solution, PBX has a few serious weaknesses. Not only does it require businesses to buy expensive hardware up front, it also forces businesses to estimate the number of users and calls they would need in the future and make purchases and infrastructure decisions with that maximum in mind.
Unsurprisingly, this estimate wouldn’t always match up with actual business needs, and companies would often have to overbuy in fear that they might hit capacity too early and have to put their business on pause—not good. This is where cloud based phone systems come in.