We first need to address the general (mis)perception that VoIP offers poor voice quality and the technology is difficult to implement. The fact is, most small businesses that implement a VoIP system report that the call quality is superior to that of regular phones.

All IP PBX systems are basically exchange and extension managers for calls based on Internet protocol – also known as VoIP and Internet telephony. The essential advantage they offer to small- to medium-sized businesses is the ability to add features that have only been affordable or available to large businesses up to now. VoIP and Internet telephony are usually also more cost-effective when looking at long-term operating costs, due to lower monthly fees and much lower costs to connect and complete calls.

Premise-based IP PBX systems provide a relatively easy way for businesses of any size to move to VoIP and get a wide range of new features and capabilities for their phone systems. If your company is upgrading from a traditional phone system, the savings can be substantial, and the new service will pay for itself almost immediately. In addition, businesses will want to take the time to then understand the new system and perhaps invest resources to integrate its capabilities into existing business processes such as sales and CRM tools.

Premise-based IP PBX systems are cheaper and far more capable than their predecessors. They also integrate much better into business networks and data communications which, in turn, enable new applications that are still being discovered and applied to common business practices. Modern premise-based IP PBX systems deliver multinational enterprise capabilities to even small businesses, often at a cost lower than the far more basic systems they’re replacing.

Hosted systems take most of the switching and intelligence of the system and move it offsite to a remote location. There it is managed by the service provider. Equipment at an organization’s site is limited to the phones themselves as well as some dedicated routing equipment and perhaps a switch to provide emergency access to the older traditional TDM telephone network. As a result, hosted systems are usually quicker and cheaper to install and set up. They offer a standardized set of services. Because they are hosted remotely, there is less maintenance for a business and no need to perform upgrades at each location.

In contrast, premise-based PBX's are more complex to install and maintain than hosted VoIP services, requiring servers and more switches to be located at the business site. But, they are still far simpler and simultaneously more powerful than previous incarnations of PBX systems. Moreover, the organization can upgrade to new features at will and has full ability to configure and customize the system any way they like, which can be particularly important when thinking about integrating voice and data networks to create new applications and extensions of old applications.

The traditional assumption is that hosted IP PBX's are a better solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses, while premise-based solutions are better for medium to large companies. But this isn’t as much the case as it was in the past, and the boundaries are becoming blurred. There are premise-based solutions aimed at companies with as few as 20 employees, and there are hosted IP PBX's that can scale up to thousands of users. But this is a crucial area of differentiation; Maxsip works with each customer to find a solution that matches up with your requirements in terms of size, usage and cost.

Other main reasons that small-to-medium-sized businesses are adopting VoIP include access to features that are either not available or are cost-prohibitive on older phone systems. Examples of these include integration with desktop and office software such as Outlook, call routing features, and IVR (interactive voice response) features, all of which used to be extremely hard to set up and prohibitively expensive for small businesses.

Toward a Unified Corporate Communication System

IP-based PBX systems are fast becoming just one component of a larger unified corporate communication system that includes e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing, etc. Any business that expects to experience growth needs to seriously consider implementing an IP communications strategy towards a unified communications platform that’s flexible, scalable, easy to manage and cost-effective.

In sum, IP-based communications – beginning with VoIP (whether it is premise-based or hosted) offers a simpler infrastructure, lower operating costs, simplified equipment and maintenance, unified communications, improved scalability, a broader range of features for business operations and additional capabilities.