Hybrid-Hosted: Evil or Just “Unique”?

There has been much discussion within the trade press and at some industry seminars that centers around the “hybrid-hosted” model that Fonality has developed for PBXtra. Before addressing some of the questions and concerns that have arisen around this model, let’s clearly define what the model is and how the technology underneath it is used.

Briefly, the term “hybrid-hosted” refers to the fact that some of the administrative functionality of managing the phone system is hosted at a data center that is owned and managed by Fonality, while the actual system — and the ownership of that system — resides with the customer. This data center is hosted in a highly reliable facility with redundant links to the Internet to assure continuous availability.

The administrative functionality that is hosted at that data center encompasses the web-based Admin Panel interface and its associated behind-the-scenes logic; transparent software maintenance/updates; system maintenance tunnel facility; ACD and CDR reporting; security; and zero-configuration teleworker support.

Two important points should be made here early on. The first is that — no matter what may happen to Fonality’s data center or the internet connection from your facility to it — your local PBXtra system will continue to operate perfectly. There is no operational dependence on the data center for your system to place and receive calls normally. The second point is that the hybrid-hosted connection and the Admin Panel interface are not at all dependent on maintaining any particular level of support agreement from Fonality. Full support or no support at all, your Admin Panel works exactly the same way.

Hybrid-Hosted Technical Details

The technology used in the hybrid-hosted architecture is very straight-forward and uses industry-standard protocols and encryption techniques to maintain ultimate security of all information that flows across the tunnel, since it is traversing the Internet. As the local PBXtra system starts up, it starts 2 virtual tunnel daemons that establish the basic connection to the Fonality data center. Because the tunnels are established from behind the customer’s corporate firewall and use outbound port 80 (web), there is no modification needed to the customer’s firewall settings, thereby maintaining overall network security. Once the virtual tunnels are established, the local system hardware monitoring and other daemons begin collecting any error or threshold information that will be forwarded to Fonality support for follow-up with the customer.

One of the patent-pending techniques that Fonality uses with this tunnel is to glean the public IP information of the PBXtra server — this is critical information as it is used to enable the zero-configuration teleworker support that is unique to Fonality. At Fonality, close to half of our employees work from home using this configuration and it has been completely trouble-free in our experience — aside from DSL and cable modem failures, of course.

Hybrid-Hosted Benefits

Aside from the zero-configuration teleworker support mentioned above, there are other benefits that flow from the hybrid-hosted model.

Software Maintenance — One big benefits of hybrid-hosted is the ease of software maintenance and updates. By having a constant virtual connection, Fonality support engineers have the ability to transparently push the latest software updates PBXtra customers. Along with having a true picture of the current running version, we can coordinate updates to off-hours, avoiding business disruption.

Reporting — In order to perform decent reporting, there is no substitute for having a full database system from which to run the report. Unfortunately, every database system known produces very dramatic spikes in CPU load, and — if run directly on the PBXtra server — would affect the voice quality and responsiveness of the system. With the hybrid-hosted model, the database is run at our data center and when reports are requested to be run, the VPN connection automatically pulls the call detail records for the date and time range specified, loads them into the database, runs the report and then shoots the resultant info back to the user for display. This setup gives you tremendous reporting flexibility without the system loading that would be incurred by running it natively.

Anywhere Management^™ — The heart of the PBXtra system administrative interface is the web-based Admin Panel, from which administrators create extensions, edit your Auto-Attendant, etc., and end users configure FindMe and voicemail settings. Because the Admin Panel is hosted at Fonality’s data center, the web server and its associated security, bandwidth and maintenance challenges disappear from your list of concerns.

Common Hybrid-Hosted Misconceptions

Common concerns about hybrid-hosted tend to fall into a couple of broad categories, some of which are completely false and others which are valid concerns which we have attempted to address.

“Fonality has access to my Call Detail Records” —As described above, our ACD and CDR reporting mechanisms rely on the hosted database to off-load the CPU load involved in running reports. However, we have given customers the option to disable the uploading of CDRs to Fonality via a setting in the Admin Panel. This disables the ability to run standard Fonality reports, customers still have access to the raw CDR data for to run their own reports using Crystal Reports, Access or any other report writer which can import CSV (Comma Separated Value) files.

“Fonality has access to my HUD chat logs” — This is completely and totally untrue. HUD chat is managed within the local PBXtra system and at no time are these chats pushed to the Fonality data center.

“The virtual tunnel is a security hole” — Not at all. First, even with more sensitive data such as CDRs, all traffic over the virtual tunnel is encrypted, making it unusable to anyone outside. Second, because the connection is established from within your facility, your firewall can run more restrictive inbound rulesets. Otherwise, in order to administer your system remotely you would need to open up access to the outside world or rely on VPN connection points for any potential administrator.

“Fonality can listen in to my phone calls” — Another one of those internet rumors that is untrue. Your phone conversations are private, point-to-point, and do not traverse our net-work at any time. Please reference our privacy policy for more information.

Summary

You, as a business owner, want to concentrate on running your business, not running your phone system. Achieving this simple goal while at the same time dramatically extending the functionality of such a critical piece of your communications infrastructure is an even more daunting challenge. Fonality’s hybrid-hosted approach intelligently splits the responsibility between functionality which is better served locally and that which is better run in a hosted environment, making it the clear choice.