So who owns your clients' call recordings?

In a customer premise deployment it's a very simple question to answer. The recordings reside on the customers site along with the PBX. It's the customers'. But in a hosted environment, where the customer is subscribing to a service on a month-by-month basis is that still the case? What about the rest of the data that might be critical to a customer's operation - Call Management info and system database backups for example? Where do they reside? How easy are they to obtain? How quickly can you run searches to get the exact recording or report you require? What happens when you want to change providers for a better deal? And what happens if legislation requires call recordings to be kept for two, five or even ten years? How much is that going to cost to keep archived whilst retaining the ability for fast and easy search and playback?


At Splicecom we are voice specialists and pride ourselves to be able to "think outside of the box". We've developed our own applications in-house, rather than re-badging a 3rd party ones and we follow stringent security procedures. However just like the total cost of (non) ownership of a hosted system over three or five years, the title to, and access of, business critical data is one of those grey areas that's only just coming to light.


Hosted has got its place, but a blend of cloud and on premise just might be the answer for those who want a simple pay as they go service, BUT must have control of their data for legal and/or onward billing purposes. Many believe the current options are simply hosted or on premise but the reality is that you can get the best of both. Adopting a blend of cloud and on premise functionally brings clarity to who owns recordings and other important data.