‘Centralization or Decentralization – What is the Best Business Structure?
Business consultants make their living evaluating what is most efficient for a company. In computing, the pendulum has swung back and forth since the advent of the computer. Here is where we have been:
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- Mainframe (Centralized)
- PCs / LANs (Decentralized)
- Workgroup Systems (Minicomputers) (Mid)
- Cloud (Centralized)
Here at Inventive Labs, we believe the pendulum will soon swing back toward decentralization. Some external security or reliability issue will happen that will get corporations to re-think their cloud strategy. This is why you must build your applications so they can run either in the cloud or at your premise.
Cloud failures will happen. Are you ready?
If you have built your voice application or IVR on a cloud-only technology such as Twilio, Tropo, Plivo, or any other of the hundreds of cloud platforms – YOU SHOULD THINK AGAIN.
Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Google all had multiple outages in 2017. Here is one example that was dubbed the $150 Million Typo’:
On February 28, 2017 from 9 am to 1 pm, a large block of the internet was down due to AWS Cloud Storage failures due to human error. Amazon reported a tech entered a typo while debugging some server issues. Part of Amazon Web Services went down affecting several large service providers. It took down more than was intended – ooopsi.
Human error, it happens even to the best out there. But you aren’t locked in to that cloud environment.
Getting Your Head Out of the Cloud
We believe at some point in time, you are going to want control and run on your own equipment at your premise. The Voice Elements Platform is the easy answer.
Building on the Voice Elements platform, you can utilize our cloud service until you are ready to deploy on your own Windows VM (Virtual Machine) behind your firewall.
When you install our Voice Elements platform on your own Windows virtual machine at your premise, you end up with 2 Windows services.
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- Voice Elements Server – This is the API into our voice capabilities. It is optimized for Visual Studio and any .NET language such as C#
- HMP Elements Server – This implements a SIP stack and various media services such as Calling & call routing, Play, Record, Get Digits & tone detection, Speech Recognition, Text to Speech, Conferencing, call progress, beep detection, faxing, WebRTC, call recording, etc.
You would also typically create a service that implements your voice application that talks to the Voice Elements Service via the API.
Want to drill down on this? Read more in our Premise Guide Installing Voice Elements Premise Services.
The Premise Advantage
Implementing your voice application at your premise gives you the following advantages:
- Security and Privacy. No external company can listen in or record your calls. It is all protected behind your firewall.
- Simplicity. You can connect to your existing switch. This can reduce costs and new trunking requirements.
- Reduce Costs. If most of your calls are local, you can reduce or eliminate long distance charges.
- Total control. You are not at the mercy of your cloud carrier or internet connection.
If you see a premise solution in your future, please consider Voice Elements. There are only a few Windows based premise solution players. We are one of them. Our customers love our product. We know you will too.
