For a few years now, hosted PBX and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions have grabbed the headlines, due to the cloud’s rapid growth, reduced cost of ownership, ease of use, and the state-of-the-art technology it offers. On-premise PBX’s have largely been neglected. However, it seems that there is still abundant life left in the on-premise PBX market.

On-premise PBX deployments enjoy a surge in popularity during 2021

According to a survey of 1,000 IT managers performed by Eastern Management Group, UCaaS sales were upstaged by on-premise PBX deployments in 2021. The survey revealed that among enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, 61% of those that acquired a new UC system in 2021 purchased an on-premise PBX – outselling UCaaS by more than one third.

Meanwhile, small-to-medium businesses – those with less than 300 employees – chose to buy an on-premise PBX, 25% more often than UCaaS in 2021.

The survey also revealed significant differences between verticals – retail respondents have embraced UCaaS significantly, but on the other hand organisations in the banking were four times more likely to deploy an on-premise PBX than UCaaS, education three times more likely, and healthcare organisations twice as likely to opt for an on-premise PBX over UCaaS in 2021.

Survey respondents cited multiple reasons for choosing on-premise over UCaaS, including:

• Security features
• Productivity Improvement features
• Self-serve provisioning
• Dealer provided security and regulatory support
• Dealer provided system and network support
• Price (cloud was considered more expensive than expected)
• Total cost of ownership

But the real takeaway from this unexpected insight is that organisations are choosing the right collaboration and communication tool for their needs, which means that employees are likely to use multiple channels, devices, and apps to perform their daily tasks.

The rise of remote working means that employees need to communicate and collaborate on a range of devices, from a laptop, a web browser, a desktop PC, a smartphone, or a tablet, regardless of location. Often, they will use multiple apps and solutions.

Cisco remains one of the leading collaboration providers in Asia Pacific

But on-premise PBX solutions are still going strong. When it comes to on-premise, hosted and UCaaS solutions, one of the world’s best-known and leading providers is Cisco – according to IDC, second only to Microsoft in 2020. The same analysts also state that Cisco sales of all collaboration solutions across the Asia Pacific region grew 28% annually to reach US$8.4 billion in 2020.

Cisco has been the bedrock of many organisations’ communication and collaboration programmes throughout the region for decades, both for on-premise deployments and increasingly in the cloud. Cisco’s communication and collaboration tools include familiar names such as Cisco CallManager and Cisco Contact Centre.

Of course, this also means that organisations must ensure that they meet their compliance obligations across multiple channels – enterprise apps, devices, hosted and on-premise solutions, and regardless of employee location.

Avoiding compliance data silos

Many solutions can provide call recording capabilities (which is an integral component of an organisation’s ability to meet a growing list of compliance and personal data regulations), but are often optimised for a single channel or app.

This approach, however, can cause its own challenges, as it creates silos of compliance data from different apps and even business departments, which is also likely to create incompatible datasets, making compliance a cumbersome and painful process.

What’s needed is a comprehensive, unified platform and service that can record across multiple channels and store recordings securely, with controlled access and full transparency.

Touch offers a unified call recording solution for Cisco PBX, and more than 50 other channels

Touch Call Recording Service is a complete, multi-channel call recording service that can be integrated with hosted and on-premise PBX technologies, and with operator networks, giving organisations the flexibility to choose the right solution for their needs.

Our enterprise solution, PBX Recorder, integrates with multiple on-premise technologies, including Cisco, Mitel, Avaya, Unify, Alcatel-Lucent, and many others. The PBX Recorder comes as part of a comprehensive service offering.

Importantly, Touch also integrates with key business messaging and chat-based solutions, such as Microsoft Teams, Bloomberg and Refinitiv Messenger – bringing together all channels used in the enterprise, regardless of the vertical.

In summary, Touch can integrate with more than 50 channels, with all recordings available through an easy-to-use web-portal. with all recordings stored in an open, consistent format ensuring that organisations don’t end up with silos of compliance data that is difficult to analyse, access and compare.

Whether you have a Cisco hosted or on-premise PBX, or any other provider, Touch can help. Contact us today to find out more.