Powerful Cloud Compute instances enable 3CX to support growing global customer base

Flexible Cloud Compute instances power growing telecom company

3CX is a leading business communications solution with more than 12 million users, 600,000 installations, and 25,000 partners in 190 countries. Founded in 2005, 3CX was initially conceived as a PBX phone system just as the VOIP era began. Since then, the company has grown into a holistic communications platform.

3CX offers its customers easy-to-use, flexible, and economical call, video, and live chat services. With offices in Europe, the United States, Mexico, UAE, Australia, and partners worldwide, 3CX's client base includes Mcdonald's, BMW, American Express, Honda, Coca-Cola, and Air France.

As Nikos Tsironis, Hosting Ops Manager at 3CX, says, “Any company can enjoy a reduction in telco costs, boost employee productivity, and improve their customer experience by switching to 3CX.”

New management needed

While it was already possible to host in a private cloud account on Google, AWS, Azure, and the like – it was still the responsibility of partners and end users to manage their systems.

Responding to the trend of companies moving their systems to the cloud, 3CX developed a hosted PBX solution in November 2020. 3CX managed the OS, including security patches and version upgrades, firewall auto-configuration, nightly backups, and 24/7 monitoring. 3CX partners could focus on larger and more complex installations without downsizing their customer base, and end-users were freed-up to do more critical day-to-day business tasks.

In May 2022, 3CX went a step further and introduced 3CX StartUP. This cloud-native solution is designed to target the needs of startups and smaller companies with a robust, set-and-forget communication system. Businesses of up to 20 team members can enjoy a full spectrum of features, including mobile apps, video conferencing, live chat, call queues, IVRs, and WhatsApp integration – all without hiring an in-house IT specialist. As with Hosted by 3CX, 3CX takes care of installation, setup, and system updates, but this time by grouping smaller installations on a shared instance. As Tsironis says, “This allowed us to offer the same services while keeping our communication costs to a minimum.”

3CX needed to deliver on its customer’s unique needs by providing a reliable, scalable, and flexible solution. It had to ensure that the cloud company it chose offered all of the following:

• Security: 3CX handles sensitive communications for some of the biggest companies in the world. A data leak could spell disaster with legal implications and financial and reputation risks.
• Low latency: Operating on a world stage means data must travel long distances, which can introduce latency that impacts audio and video streams in the form of jitters and garbling.
• High availability: 3CX’s customers cannot afford even a single second of downtime. Servers must be resilient and highly available.
• E2E management: Configurations and infrastructure are handled for the customer.
• Available globally: With 3CX’s global footprint, the cloud provider had to be a worldwide player.

The power of flexibility

Vultr provided Cloud Compute instances on Debian 10 (up to 8v CPU and 16G RAM) with 3CX installed, allowing end-to-end management and a scalable global footprint while staying flexible enough for its client needs. Delivering this top-notch service gave 3CX the confidence to grow and succeed in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Customer service reigns supreme

With Vultr, 3CX now has more than 2,000 new machines in regions such as Australasia and Central America. They’ve activated more data centers with fewer delays for their customers.

Tsironis explains how Vultr has supported 3CX’s growth: “In Spain, for example, we now host in Madrid. In the US, we’re now able to host at data centers in regions like Miami, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. Before we used Vultr, data for these regions had to be hosted in New York or San Francisco, so the distance between data and users was huge.”

Where other providers charge extra for bandwidth and use of resources, Vultr includes bandwidth and resources at a fixed price. As Tsironis says, “We’ve saved more than 50% using Vultr. Other providers charge extra for Bandwidth and usage of resources. With Vultr, bandwidth and resources are included in the fixed price.”

He also highly values the flexibility of Vultr: “Our 3CX system is constantly being updated and improved to cater to our customer needs, so we needed a cloud provider that was just as flexible to our demands and who responded in a timely manner.”

Finally, Tsironis talks about the support offered by Vultr, “To date, Vultr's support has been second to none. Not only have they gone out of their way to accommodate specific requests, but they have a dedicated Vultr Slack channel to help with key questions.”