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South East Business magazine article on Orbtalk Hosted PBX |
South East Business magazine has a feature on the Orbtalk PBX phone system in the latest edition. A copy of the Q and A article is included below.
We are moving to a new office building and need a new phone system, I have read about Hosted Voice Over IP being the future. Can you explain what this term means?
All calls made between users of a hosted system can be made for free, this means big savings if you make a large number of internal calls. Callers to your central switchboard are routed to multiple locations quickly and easily without any forwarding costs. Users are free to move around multiple locations needing only an internet connection to be available to make and answer your business calls. This could be in another office, in a wireless hotspot or when working from home. Flexibility is an important part of this type of communications platform and its increasingly being used by SME's who are embracing new technology only previously seen in the corporate sector. Small geographically fragmented teams are seen as one large organization to clients and customers.
With a hosted phone system (or hosted PBX), the hardware is located centrally in a fully managed datacentre. The management and support of this system is handled by a dedicated team of specialists. This means expensive support contracts are a thing of the past, as the support cost is included in the monthly charge. Updates as new versions are released are applied automatically, keeping the system up to date (In the past, phone systems are often quickly out of date).
A hosted phone server will have no bandwidth limitations at the datacentre. For example, if a traditional phone system is located on your site you will need to provide enough bandwidth to support a large number of simultaneous calls. This is not the case with a hosted system as you only need enough bandwidth to support the number of active calls between the system and your extensions. If you have 15 user extensions, then you only need bandwidth to support these and they could be in multiple offices or teleworkers in worldwide geographic locations. Each location will just need its own Internet connection connecting to the central phone system.
If your company runs an advertising campaign that generates a significant number of sales leads these calls can be distributed to users by the system, using auto attendants (automatically routing calls to specific users or teams). Overflow calls are placed in a queue within the system until somebody is available. The bandwidth (or number of lines) for this queuing is in your providers datacentre, so no users will receive an engaged tone. The result is that more calls are answered by your team and sales are not lost. Using a hosted system in this scenario offers big savings when compared with traditional, fixed line (ISDN 2 or ISDN 30) systems or even using VoIP enabled PBX equipment located on site. This means no expensive line rental contracts (typically between £10 and £15 per line per month) are required, just a reliable internet connection. Capital expenditure is very low as little on site hardware is required, typically from around £70 user for a suitable handset. Some users may even use software phones on their laptops which is even cheaper and extremely mobile.
Finally, scalability is an important benefit with a hosted system as new users or project teams can be added at any time from any location, as simply as adding a new email user. Additional functionality, such as call recording can be added as required.
In summary, hosted systems are increasingly a popular communications choice. Flexibility not previously seen in a phone system allows home workers and multiple sites to come together quickly without a large capital outlay.
The article is attributed to Brian Rainey of Future One Systems (typo in article), should be Future1 Systems.
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