FreePBX vs Skype: Software as a Service

jscanlan

jscanlan

Interesting PCMag John Dvorak article came out two days ago –

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2176192,00.asp

Dvorak’s article points out the problems of relying on a single server (or service) in a modern IT infrastructure.

The impetus for the article was Microsoft’s WGA servers going down for 19 hours last weekend, but those of you tempted to rely on ‘free as in beer’ services might do a gut check (this applies to paid hosted services, too, of course.)

Skype’s vaunted peer-to-peer technology didn’t help them stay up – their outage lasted roughly the same period of time.

That’s one reason why FreePBX® doesn’t rely on an external service to run – whether to log you in or store your settings.

With Moore’ Law at your back, why share? It is a valid question, which is sometimes met with one of the following answers:

1) offsite is supposed to be more reliable than on-site, because there are more qualified people making it their number one priority to keep it up

2) your team is distributed and they still rely on one service anyway

As the WGA and Skype outages show, these justifications sometimes fall down.

After all, at your office you can put in a backup system, if needed. It is hard to find a second service provider to be your backup.

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