Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will ma

In most businesses that are considered medium size (that is more than 8 - 10 people). Phone systems typically include additional equipment. I will address that shortly.

In a small office it is usually cheaper to install analog lines and the ability can be built into a special Operator phone so transferring calls can be made at a very minimum. Minimal equipment is needed and it is considered the cheaper alternative.

Now here is where the big differences are.

Without going into great detail there are basically two types of phone service (I am excluding VOIP here). Analog which comes over the traditional phone lines. And Digital which comes in through a special line. The main difference is that Digital is a much cleaner line with virtually zero noise.

Now to graduate to a bigger phone system a switch is needed. This will have incoming ports that accept the calls as if it were one big line. This is the same for Analog and Digital. The switch itself must have either Analog or Digital ports or it could have both.

Attached to the Phone Switch can be a device called a Voice-Mail Server. Just about everyone these days has encountered such a system either as an employee or as a customer calling some corporate employee.

So far so good.

Here is where it gets REAL weird.

The manufacturer of the switch and the voice-mail server do not offer their customers updates. Now I could be wrong but that is my experience with the past two companies I have dealt with.

You maybe think that this is NOT weird at all.

Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will ma

Now here is where the big differences are.

Without going into great detail there are basically two types of phone service (I am excluding VOIP here). Analog which comes over the traditional phone lines. And Digital which comes in through a special line. The main difference is that Digital is a much cleaner line with virtually zero noise.

Now to graduate to a bigger phone system a switch is needed. This will have incoming ports that accept the calls as if it were one big line. This is the same for Analog and Digital. The switch itself must have either Analog or Digital ports or it could have both.

Attached to the Phone Switch can be a device called a Voice-Mail Server. Just about everyone these days has encountered such a system either as an employee or as a customer calling some corporate employee.

So far so good.

Here is where it gets REAL weird.

The manufacturer of the switch and the voice-mail server do not offer their customers updates. Now I could be wrong but that is my experience with the past two companies I have dealt with.

You maybe think that this is NOT weird at all.

Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will ma

Now to graduate to a bigger phone system a switch is needed. This will have incoming ports that accept the calls as if it were one big line. This is the same for Analog and Digital. The switch itself must have either Analog or Digital ports or it could have both.

Attached to the Phone Switch can be a device called a Voice-Mail Server. Just about everyone these days has encountered such a system either as an employee or as a customer calling some corporate employee.

So far so good.

Here is where it gets REAL weird.

The manufacturer of the switch and the voice-mail server do not offer their customers updates. Now I could be wrong but that is my experience with the past two companies I have dealt with.

You maybe think that this is NOT weird at all.

Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will ma

So far so good.

Here is where it gets REAL weird.

The manufacturer of the switch and the voice-mail server do not offer their customers updates. Now I could be wrong but that is my experience with the past two companies I have dealt with.

You maybe think that this is NOT weird at all.

Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will ma

Here is where the light turns on.

If your equipment is not kept up-to-date and I mean the hardware. Then when you do experience an outage then you could be stuck.

Stuck to me means no where to plan or justify a new system. Or even to upgrade the existing software. This could be THE worst phone system on the planet. If it goes out then your users will scream about it and so will management.

Phone System vendors and their manufacturers routinely change out their equipment and keep their software current. That way, when you, the customer experience a problem then you must seek their help to get it back to an operational level. Switching phone systems at this point would be expensive.

I recommend assessing the entire system.

* When was it purchased?

* When was the software upgraded?

* Do the Users have issues with it?

* Are voice mails dropped?

* Are there maintenance problems?

Once you have a handle on this animal. Plan for upgrading and build in a regular maintenance schedule. It maybe pricey but make sure management understands why the cost is so much higher