Hosted PBX
Strengths of a Hosted PBX
Hosted PBX systems have a number of important advantages over premise-based PBX systems. As with any mature technology, however, there are a wide variety of providers for this type of service and a correspondingly wide spectrum of offerings. Potential customers need to verify that the strengths listed here are included in the system they are investigating.
Call routing to any phone:
An inherent advantage of most hosted PBX systems is that calls can be routed to any phone, of any type, anywhere in the world rather than only to phone physically connected by wiring to an in-office PBX. Employees can seamlessly receive business calls whether they are working in the office, at home, or on the road. (Note that this is often not true for hosted VoIP PBX systems.) This ability to send calls anywhere has helped spawn a whole new way of doing business - the Virtual Office. Many users of hosted PBX services do away with the expense and commuting required by a central office and do all there work through distributed employees.
Lower up-front costs:
There is no capital expense for starting a hosted PBX service. This is especially important to new companies on tight budgets, but can also apply to established firms that outgrow their existing PBX equipment.
Lower support needs:
Telecommunications is a large branch of technology with its own terms, equipment, and tribal lore. With a hosted PBX, the service provider does the complex system management. Customers save on both headcount and headaches.
Scalability:
Customers of premise-based PBX systems spend a lot of money buying systems of either fixed or limited size. Many of these customers opt for small systems that they quickly outgrow. (Typical small businesses replace their PBX hardware every two years, until they reach maturity.) Other companies buy larger systems, paying for more than they need right now but hoping to get full value out of the system at some future time. Hosted PBX services are offered on the basis of the number of users, not the size of the system, and can scale up or down at any time. Customers pay only for what they need - with no future penalty.
Call capacity:
Hardware PBX systems can only handle as many calls as the number of incoming lines in the system. When more calls come in, callers get a busy signal and the company loses business. Adding more lines means costly and difficult equipment upgrades or new systems. Hosted PBX services typically use systems with far more lines than an affordable premise-based system. If the service provider manages capacity well, callers should never hear a busy signal. If you are a hosted PBX customer and your callers get frequent busy signals, it's time to change service providers.
Full feature set:
Almost any PBX feature available today can be provided by either a premise-based PBX system or a hosted PBX service. However, getting full features in a purchased system is usually very expensive, while getting full features in a hosted service is just a matter of picking the right provider. Additional costs for a full-featured hosted service are very low, so customers can usually afford to get the best. A good hosted PBX can give even small businesses all of the functionality of a PBX system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for just a small monthly fee. (Note: be careful to choose the right service provider.) Also, premise-based equipment can't provide the breadth of routing options needed by modern distributed companies.
Fault tolerance:
A well-designed hosted PBX incorporates redundant components and multiple PBX systems with automatic fail-over. (Again, it is important to choose the right provider.) No single component can bring the system down, and even failure of an entire system simply rolls calls over to another system. While this level of fault tolerance is expensive, sharing the cost over a lot of users makes it affordable. It is possible to get some of these capabilities in premise-based systems, but it is usually prohibitively expensive for all but the largest companies.
Distributed administration:
A well-designed hosted service lets users manage their own extensions. The users can log in or out of ACD queues, change phone numbers, and configure the system to their own needs. With premises equipment and lower-end hosted systems this type of activity often requires time and knowledge from a system administrator.