I, for one, welcome hosted. It is just another tool in the box for me. I have had triumphs and nightmares with both on-prem and hosted over the years.
Whichever route, the old saying of "failing to plan is planning to fail" always applies. On-Prem can be more forgiving of poor planning.
I recently changed, for the community I live in, a large CU using an old 3COM NBX dinosaur to a hosted solution. We all did a great deal of research into the pros and cons. It was really to the point where neither choice was a particularly good or bad choice. The customer went hosted because they believed the disaster recovery options were more flexible than on-prem equipment. They are constantly upgrading equipment of all types, dealing with software upgrades, dealing with hardware going obsolete like the 3COM and felt that, while the hosted will cost more, they are investing in the provider to upgrade, deal with hardware, make sure industry standards are met, and so on. They also have the benefits of a secure IM system and a meeting system that is simple to use and requires little admin on their part. They can access up to 6 months of recorded call center calls and not deal with storage headaches. For DR, they can use a mobile app to make/take calls or forward to land lines.
On stimulus day, the system had the trial by fire. They received over 1,000 calls to the call center and the management could see in the reports that, for the most part, their staff did well. Before installation, we simulated VoIP traffic so we all were confident bandwidth and Internet performance was not an issue. Their old system with a PRI would not have handled this well but having nearly unlimited call paths from the cloud saved the day. A well designed on-prem system could have done the same thing. My point is that hosted has come a long, long, way. It is mature, and proven. Like on-prem, if the attempt to cut corners or ignore standards for convenience are made, there can be negative consequences.
In the bad old days of the 3COM, they were using a ring group to answer calls. While I was setting up and training the call center, I noticed it was chaos. Constant ringing. I was going crazy. The staff had Stockholm Syndrome and believed a "real" call center with queuing would be a disaster. The day of cutover arrived and a VP was in the call center to observe. Calls started coming in and all you would hear was conversation, keyboard clicks, and phones ringing at various available stations to deliver calls. It wasn't long before someone reported they thought their phone rang when it shouldn't. VP's first comment was, "Wow, it is so quiet in here, I can think!" Could you imagine the stress of having a difficult call and the phones constantly ringing? I would be a wreck.
Callers can now request callbacks. The fighting over that was interesting but, especially on stimulus day, it proved valuable.
Now, they want to look at providing email and SMS queues. All of this is enabled on their hosted. If we went on prem and stuck with the original work, we might be looking at costly add ons for licensing.
Yes - on prem could have done all of this and that is not my point. My point is a well planned hosted system can, and does, deliver.
On the other hand, there are plenty of scenarios where on-prem would be preferred. Good Internet service is not always a given.
A good dealer, I believe, would be cognizant of the pros and cons of either platform and will help a customer make the best choice.
