Interactive Intelligence on Hosted vs. On-Premises Contact Center Solutions

RJ: Benefits of hosted solutions include the following: lower up-front capital expenditure and “pay-as-you-go” pricing model; easy to provision multiple sites and remote agents; reduced IT maintenance and management costs; faster application deployment and access to upgrades; and flexible scalability to quickly adjust capacity as business needs change.

It’s important to note, however, that over the last couple of years hosted solution vendors have made great strides in these areas. For instance, Interactive Intelligence has addressed these concerns by offering a unique local control VoIP delivery model that enables customers to keep all voice traffic on their network and record and store all recordings inside their firewall. Interactive Intelligence also offers scalable server virtualization architecture that provides dedicated servers for increased reliability, security and control. Of course, Interactive Intelligence always recommends that buyers conduct a thorough audit of a vendor’s hosted facility (both the infrastructure and policies) to ensure maximum security and redundancy.

RJ: Hosted solutions make the most sense for customers with any of the following requirements: fast deployment schedule; minimal capital expenditure; and flexible purchasing model that accommodate spikes in interaction volume (e.g. businesses that are seasonal or event-driven such as retailers and ticketing companies). [It also makes the most sense for] cost-effective disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (premises-based buyers can also deploy a DR-only hosted solution); and for multi-location and teleworker support. Some criteria that may make a premises-based solution more desirable are organizations that have very strict regulatory and compliance requirements.

As mentioned before, in some cases hosted solutions will not meet the needs of organizations that require highly customized applications. Finally, though hosted vendors are rapidly adding sophisticated applications to their offering, some may still not exist via this delivery model. For instance, business process automation will be difficult if not impossible to find via a hosted model. In addition, the degree of customization and complexity would likely make this type of application more ideal for a premises-based deployment.