What is the best phone solution for my business?

Businesses of all sizes have used Private Branch Exchange or PBX systems for many years.  Traditionally PBX's have used various forms of Analog and Digital technologies to perform the task of routing inbound and outbound calls to telephones within a business location(s). 

Over the past few years, the trend among small and mid-size businesses has been to chose an IP PBX solution.  Today, sixty or more percent of all new PBX installations are an IP PBX solution.  An IP PBX is actually a computer that uses software to perform the functions and provide the features found in a traditional PBX environment.  An IP PBX uses "VoIP Gateways" to pass calls between the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the Internet, thus reducing or in some cases eliminating toll costs.  Therefore, an IP PBX can provide a business with a more economical way to route calls to phones anywhere in the world.

Some legacy PBX's can be "IP enabled" to extend their useful life and that of other existing end-user equipment such as traditional telephone sets, fax machines, modems, postage machines, credit card terminals and other analog devices.  Although the may technology exists to IP enable a legacy PBX, a cost-benefit analysis is essential to determine whether doing so is better than installing a complete IP solution.

One distinct benefit of an IP PBX is that it resides on the company's data network allowing telephones to share information with applications that are running on the data network.  This "convergence" can assist employees in communicating more efficiently with customers and co-workers enabling small and midsize businesses to better compete in their industry.

An IP PBX solution can be provided as a hosted service where only the phones are located at the customer's site and calls are "hauled" over an external digital circuit to a common PBX at the provider's site.  In this environment all calls including calls within the office as well as calls to services such as voice mail are routed off-site and back.  Although this process is usually very efficient, it can affect the availability and quality of phone service in the event of congestion or trouble on the external circuit between the customer's site and the provider's site.

An alternative to a hosted solution is to install a dedicated on-site IP PBX.  The advantage to this solution is that calls to other on-site phones and services such as voice mail remain on-site and do not depend on an external circuit for completion.  With a dedicated on-site IP PBX, only off-site calls use an external circuit.  However the disavantage is that contracting for and maintaining separate services with a telecom carier(s) and a PBX vendor are more complicated and usually result in a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

A third and better alternative is Whaleback System's CrystalBlue Voice^TM which combines the simplicity of a hosted solution with the robust architecture of an on-site IP PBX.  CrystalBlue Voice^TMprovides the "Best of Both Worlds", thus giving you better control of your PBX environment without the headaches of dealing with separate PBX and telecom service providers.  CrystalBlue Voice^TM is a one-vendor solution for all of your wired voice communications needs.  You can find out click here to go to our Whaleback CrystalBlue Voice Service page.