A new breed of hosted PBX systems is bringing feature-rich and budget-friendly telephony to SMBs
The virtual workplace is a reality for hundreds of thousands of businesses. And while employees of large companies may have the option of connecting a local phone to the enterprise PBX, small businesses are likely not to even have a PBX to connect to. That leaves smaller operations, and those with workers located in widely dispersed locations forced to use standard phone services for their voice communication; a less than optimal situation.
The typical corporate PBX is the computer, or more often called the "switch" in telephony circles, that connects one phone to another. Typical PBX functions include the basics of delivering a dial tone when a phone is taken off hook. This dial tone is different from the one the phone company provides for a phone directly connected to its line, like a home phone. Other features include call hold, transfer, conference, intercom, call waiting, and automated answering services that range from basic voice mail to voice recognition and call routing.
The advent of Internet-based telephone services, or techenc|VoIP} has reduced the cost of single-line services, and the ability to make unlimited long distance calls over VoIP connections has made it possible for employees working in different locations to keep in touch as often and for as long as necessary. Even so, the features that office-based workers take for granted in their enterprise phone systems may be out of reach for smaller organizations.
Hardware-based PBX systems have delivered these capabilities for years, and the costs in terms of initial purchase, maintenance, and add-on features has traditionally been out of reach of small businesses. The advent of hosted PBX systems has removed many of those barriers because a single, high-performance PBX can be located anywhere in the world, and connect its users across the Internet. This provides greatly increased economies of scale so that hundreds or thousands of users can share the expenses of a single sophisticated PBX.
This new breed of hosted PBX services is now able to deliver the same levels of service and features through VoIP connections to organizations as small as two employees. And not only can these systems support small work groups, companies that use the services can add users whenever and wherever they need by simply adding a user account to their virtual PBX and connecting a VoIP telephone to the user's high speed Internet connection.
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