The breakdown of a communication system can have a devastating impact on a businesse. In the event of such a situation —which may be due to unpredictable circumstances such as weather, construction, power outages or other issue – some businesses may even lose their complete ability to operate. IP communications provider EtherSpeak has come up with a solution to this predicament.
The company has recently launched a cloud-based voice backup service called ShadowVox, which provides SIP Trunking customers with an option for a “stand-by” phone system that keeps business’ telephones operational in the event of equipment failures or local service outages, according to a statement.
ShadowVox can be activated when a company faces IP-PBX system or site failure. On activation, EtherSpeak SIP based phone calls are redirected to the customer’s iPhone, iPad or Android (News - Alert) device with voice. Other available options in the ShadowVox cloud offering include fax communication, instant messaging, presence and conference bridge.
ShadowVox is moderately priced at $10 per user per month. The service keeps track of a company’s phone system settings such as user extensions, call groups (like sales, support or accounting) and SIP-based direct dial telephone numbers, only requiring a simple installation of a downloadable softphone application on each user’s PC, Macintosh or smart device.
One of the greatest advantages of the service is that it is compatible with almost any on-premise telephone system, including those from ShoreTel, Microsoft Lync, Cisco (News
- Alert), Zultys, AllWorx, as well as those that are Asterisk-based platforms.
When a customer’s local Internet connection is lost, ShadowVox processes incoming and outgoing calls using the same settings, configurations and call flow as their original PBX (News - Alert), allowing users to maintain business continuity with any active Internet service while simultaneously preserving business operations.
Contrary to the traditional redundancy solutions which are either complicated, expensive or both, ShadowVox is user-friendly and cost-effective. It has been designed to provide EtherSpeak SIP Trunking customers with a cloud-based mirror of the business telephone system settings, providing true peace of mind specifically for small business owners in the event of a threatening event or disaster.
“We are excited to offer ShadowVox which fills a gap for our customers and partners. Just look at these natural disasters lately, if a client’s location or on-premise IP-PBX is affected by a local disaster which is outside of the client’s control, they would normally have to wait until connectivity was returned to try and repair their lost revenue and relationships. However, EtherSpeak’s ShadowVox makes business communications continuity an attainable goal ‘just-in-case’ there is a problem impacting the business,” EtherSpeak’s CEO Neil Darling noted in a statement.
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Edited by
Allison Boccamazzo