Telesphere's Fully Hosted VoIP Service Allows Flood-Damaged East Coast Businesses to Maintain Communications and Operations during Catastrophic 'Sandy'

PHOENIX, Nov. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- While the gale force winds and flooding from Hurricane  Sandy left a record-setting swath of destruction, Telesphere's fully hosted unified cloud communications services allowed its numerous East Coast business customers to weather the storm successfully from a communications and operations standpoint, even in the face of crippling devastation to their physical locations. 

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One client's offices were washed away, and another's operations were submerged in flood waters.  Yet, the devastating impact of lost communications and data was successfully averted by Telesphere clients who had a successful strategy for disaster recovery in place well before the disaster itself occurred.  Telesphere's fully hosted unified cloud voice services enabled all their East Coast customers to remain accessible and keep their information intact through off-site redundancies and a host of customized solutions that are built into Telesphere's private nation-wide network.

In particular, a transportation company -- a liquid and dry bulk carrier operating in 48 states, Canada and Mexico – was deeply hit. With 20 offices nationwide, the carrier's New Jersey office was completely washed away by the storm.  Voice services remained functioning, as Telesphere was still receiving their calls into the Telesphere cloud.  Through Telesphere's disaster recovery and business continuity architecture, the transport company's calls were instantly re-routed to alternative numbers. "Customers have the choice of routing their calls to any location in the world.  This company's calls were sent to locations that weren't impacted by Hurricane Sandy, allowing them to maintain seamless operations," says Telesphere CTO Sanjay Srinivasan.

A world-wide ad agency's lower Manhattan office lost power as a result of electrical outages caused by Sandy. Telesphere controls more than 1,000 of their phone extensions in the Telesphere cloud, allowing their communication services to remain up and working while calls were re-routed to offices that were not affected by the storm.  While the agency remained without power for several days, Telesphere technicians helped the agency deploy a customized greeting that announced the power outage status on an automated attendant.  Customers received timely status updates and were not left receiving busy signals or a "service is unavailable" message.  By choosing this solution, customers were spared the frustration of not being able to communicate with the agency, especially when many were anxious to reach account personnel. 

Clark Peterson, Telesphere's CEO, explains that Telesphere's Hosted VoIP solution for enterprises has built-in intelligence to determine when a business' on-site phones stop functioning and automatically re-routes calls to alternative numbers provided by the customer.  Two National Operations Centers, in Arizona and Colorado, monitor communications 24/7 in real time, and avert the impact of disasters by switching calls to phones off-site. 

Srinivasan adds that when businesses go into backup mode on their own premises, the set of services available to employees is often limited; however, with a cloud-based hosted solution the functionality remains consistent and full services are intact, even while calls are routed to alternate locations.

Enterprises are expanding their business continuity by allowing for their endpoints to include mobile devices, says Peterson.  Customers have even more routes for connectivity, ensuring that they stay connected on their terms regardless of the device they use.

Through a redundant, hosted PBX platform, Telesphere can offer businesses throughout the U.S. the latest in voice and data services, business continuity and disaster recovery without the need and cost of purchasing an on-premises PBX of their own.  Services include IP Voice services (local and long distance), IP-VPN, high speed data and Internet services, fully-unified messaging features, and fully hosted PBX services, including IP telephone handsets.

Telesphere continues to aggressively expand its communications infrastructure, recently deploying two new "super hubs," that provide even more services for multi-site enterprise companies, regardless of whether there are 1 to 1,000 offices. Telesphere's private network has two National Operations Centers, in addition to 11 Points of Presence (POPs) that offer customers robust bandwidth and secure protection.           

Customers can connect with Telesphere at www.telesphere.com/Contact US.html or:

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/telesphere
Facebook: www.facebook.com/telesphere
YouTube: www.youtube.com/telesphere
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/companies/2102

Telesphere, based in Phoenix, Ariz., is the leading privately held provider of unified cloud communications, offering services nationwide.  It offers carrier-grade performance and support for wireline and mobile devices to businesses over its private IP MPLS network; one of the largest in the nation.  Telesphere's hosted services allow businesses of any size to enjoy all the latest voice, video, data and collaboration features of large enterprise systems without the costly investment of on-site equipment.

SOURCE Telesphere