Business continuity planning, among other reasons we will get to later, have contributed to the tipping point for myriad IT, customer service and contact center managers in making the decision to host mission critical applications, rather than stock and support their own. The concept of a tipping point is when a confluence of factors come together to make something explode, turn into a fad, an epidemic or trend. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, this is described in sociological terms as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."[In the case of contact center hosting, several factors have converged to tip hosting as a trend into a preference.

The Decision Makers Grappling Points – Historical Pros and Cons of the Host vs. Buy Debate

Since the advent of the hosted contact center, vendors who provide both enterprise and hosted contact centers have used persuasive arguments as to why businesses should host or buy their own solutions, leaving business managers to weigh each point and build a business case to support the most attractive scenario. We don’t want to rehash every point, but in order to frame the underlying argument of to host or not, here is a brief list of the historical pros and cons that vendors have presented in favor of one way or the other.

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