If an office worker from the 1960s could time-travel to today's workplace, they'd be utterly bewildered. The cubicle stations are half empty. Employees video conference from kitchen tables. Managers approve expenses while on business travel. The rigid 9-to-5, everyone-at-their-desk model they knew has been replaced by something far more fluid—and it works. Teams are more productive, talented workers can live anywhere, and businesses operate with a flexibility that would have seemed impossible all those years ago.
Yet somehow, your business phone system is still sitting in a server closet, tethered to aging copper wiring. The question that needs to be asked is, why?
The rise of hybrid and remote work has exposed a clear disconnect in how many businesses operate: we've embraced workforce flexibility everywhere except in our communications infrastructure. While companies have switched to cloud software, collaboration tools, and remote access solutions, many are still relying on on-premises telephone equipment designed for a world that no longer exists.
The Problem with On-Premises Phone Systems for Business
Traditional PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems were built on a simple assumption: employees work in the office, at specific desks, during specific hours. The entire architecture reflects this: desk phones plugged into phone jacks, wires cluttering desks and electrical outlets, and on-site telecom servers that require someone to physically access the equipment for changes or troubleshooting.
But when your team is distributed across home offices, office visits, and hotel rooms, this model breaks down fast:
Your remote workers can't access the full service. They might forward calls to their cell phones, but they lose access to features like call transferring, ACD queues, and any professional greetings their company set up (think auto attendant, for example). They're essentially operating outside your business phone service rather than within it.
You're paying to maintain infrastructure that serves fewer people. Your IT team still needs to manage, update, and troubleshoot on-site phone equipment, even though a significant portion of your workforce rarely uses the office phones. The maintenance costs don't decrease just because the desks are empty.
Simple changes become complicated projects. Need to add a new employee to the dial by name directory? Or update call forwarding rules for someone who's now permanently remote? With on-premises telephone equipment, these tasks often require a service call or an IT team member to physically access the phone server.
Collaboration gets fragmented. Remote workers end up using their personal cell phones or separate apps, while office-based employees use the desk phone system. Instead of one unified communications platform, you're dealing with a patchwork of disconnected tools that make it harder to collaborate and harder to provide consistent, professional service to your customers.
The Cloud Alternative: Phone Systems for Business That Follow Your Team
Cloud-based phone accounts—also called hosted VoIP or UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service)—operate on an entirely different principle. Instead of being anchored to a physical location, they exist in the cloud and deliver service to users wherever they are.
Here's what that actually means for your distributed or hybrid working team:
Every employee gets the same experience, regardless of location. VoIP providers offer softphones to their customers, which are essentially software-based desk phones. If an employee is working from a desk phone in the office or using a softphone on their laptop or smartphone, they can access the same communication system with the same features. That means they can extension dial coworkers, transfer calls, answer calls made to the main business number, and play their voicemail messages wherever they find themselves working that day.
Your phone system scales and adapts instantly. When you need to make moves, adds, and changes to your telephone service, you can do so by logging into a web-based admin portal. Adding users, changing call routing, updating greetings, or modifying auto attendants happens in minutes. When your team structure changes (and in today's environment, it will), your phones can keep pace.
Your team can work from anywhere with internet access. Employees traveling for client meetings, working from home during a snowstorm, or covering shifts from different time zones can all stay fully connected to the business VoIP service. Customers calling your main number have no idea whether they're reaching someone at headquarters or someone working remotely from their home office.
You eliminate the hardware burden (and costs). No more maintaining on-site servers, managing firmware updates, or worrying about what happens when that aging PBX finally gives out. The hosted VoIP provider handles infrastructure maintenance, feature rollouts, security updates, and system reliability on their end with their own IT team. Your IT staff gets time back to focus on initiatives that actually move your business forward.
Your Work Habits Evolved. Shouldn't Your Phone System, Too?
If you've embraced flexible work models for the productivity gains, talent access, and operational flexibility they provide, then maintaining a location-dependent PBX actively works against those benefits. You're asking your team to be agile and distributed while their communications tools are rigid and fixed in place.
Cloud-based phone systems for business align with how today’s businesses actually operate. They provide the same flexibility, scalability, and accessibility that you've already adopted in other areas of your technology stack. And most importantly, they remove the one artificial barrier your distributed team doesn't need: being tied to a specific location to communicate effectively.
The office worker from the 1960s would be amazed by how much has changed. Don't let your telephone system be the one thing they'd still recognize!