Who Owns Your Data?

Call recordings are now (rightly) seen as business critical across many varied market segments - and not just to meet regulatory requirements. But when you consider these recordings, who actually owns this sensitive data?

In a traditional customer premise deployment it's a very simple question to answer. The recordings and call management data 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 cost to keep archived whilst retaining the ability for fast and easy search and playback?

"Just like the total cost of ownership of a hosted system, or to be more specific ‘non-ownership', the title to and access of business critical data is one of those grey areas that's only just coming to light," says Robin Hayman, Director of Marketing & Product Management for SpliceCom. "There's no doubt that hosted telephony has got its place in the constantly evolving IP Telephony landscape, but Hybrid, with its mix of cloud based services with on-site hardware for added resilience, just might be the answer for those who want a simple pay as they go service, but MUST have ownership and control of their data for legal and/or onward billing purposes. This is a topic that's set to run and run," concludes Hayman.