Originally, PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone systems were devised to route internal phone calls within an organization, only using the external telephone network (PSTN) for calls outside the organization. With the growth of the internet and the emergence of digital VoIP (Voice over IP) technology, the functions of a PBX can now be provided through a hosted PBX solution where the service is outsourced to a data processing provider.
There is an increasing trend to outsource data processing requirements. This is largely because hosted solutions are less expensive to implement and maintain, are more reliable and can easily be scaled to meet increased processing requirements. IP PBXs, since they manage digital voice data using the same computing resources, are no exception.
This means that a PBX system can now be integrated into a company’s existing data processing infrastructure, providing considerable flexibility and cost savings in the implementation of office and intra-office telephone networks. Through virtual hosted PBX solutions an enterprise can, in fact, have administrator control of its PBX as if it was still in-house.
IP PBXs use the internet rather than the copper wire of PSTN networks, which means your company’s internal telephone network is available anywhere where a user can link to the internet. This enables a company with multiple business locations (such as branch offices, for example) to easily connect them resulting in much less expensive internal telephone communication. In addition, your internal telephone network can also be made available to users that travel regularly no matter where they are.
Using VoIP is much less expensive for long distance and international calls and can result in considerable cost savings. For example, when you make a call outside of the PBX system, you can choose the provider that handles your outgoing calls to take advantage of competitive pricing; for example, you might have your PBX hosted by one provider, international calls provided by a second and local calls by a third.
One of the greatest advantages to such a PBX solution is that it is highly reliable. Data center operators guarantee 100% uptime of your PBX system through large numbers of server farms, routers and other network components. They have highly redundant systems where a hardware failure affecting your virtual PBX is resolved by seamlessly moving it to another server.
Hosted IP PBX systems are much easier to implement and manage than a traditional PBX. Today’s hosted PBXs use the web and standard GUI interfaces to simplify the process for administrators. Most of these phone systems also come with a rich feature set that includes auto attendant, voice mail, ring groups, auto call forwarding and in some cases video-conferencing.
Hosted PBX solutions can give your company an internal telephone network that operates and has features like those used by Fortune 500 companies at a fraction of the cost of implementing and maintaining such a system. Their principal advantage is in the cost savings they can achieve (in both maintenance and implementation as well as ongoing telephone call costs) while at the same time being 100% reliable with unlimited flexibility in the creation of your internal telephone network.
