How Can I Protect My Hosted PBX?

There are countless benefits to signing up for a Hosted PBX. You could benefit from cost savings and a significant leap forward in your organization's flexibility and scalability. You will unify your voice, video, fax, email, chat and other communications, gain integration with your applications and enjoy better management control over your phone system than you ever would have with the old one. For most businesses, it doesn't take long to look over what they have to gain from signing up for an IP Hosted PBX.

But there are few reasons why some businesses haven't rushed to adopt IP Hosted PBX technology. One of them is the fear the potentially unknown security problems often associated with IP-based telephony. While these security concerns are understandable, they can be addressed with the right planning and configuration, we would like to remove the "fear of unknown" element from them by elaborating on most commonly recognized security threats.

The Most Common Problem With IP PBX Hacking

Working with a business that performs important communication work every day it's natural to feel the number one problem associated with IP PBX hacking lies in someone else finding, and potentially selling, vital company communications. If you work in an organization that handles sensitive information, such as medical data, than this is a very real, and very legitimate, security and compliance concern.

However, most businesses aren't routinely handling highly sensitive information. Sure, if some of your less tactful emails went public you might experience some embarrassment, but overall most businesses aren't going to suffer a lot of damage, either to their reputation or to their client base, if a couple of internal memos slipped through.

No, the real problem with IP PBX hacking lies in malicious individuals cracking into your system in order to make fraudulent calls using your account otherwise known as "phreaking". Most of the time hackers aren't going to use your account to make their own personal calls. Most of the time hackers aren't interested in the outcome of the calls they make using your account at all. Instead, most of the time hackers are just looking to cause mischief, and when they break into IP PBX accounts this mischief takes the form of thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of illegitimate calls.

The primary problem with IP PBX hacking is impersonal by nature. It has very little to do with privacy, and a whole lot to do with protecting your bottom line. Which means IP PBX hacking isn't a problem for the small number of businesses handling truly sensitive information- it's a problem for any business looking to prevent a wholesale hijacking of their bank account.

Is IP PBX Protection Possible?

Yes, though you need to be very intentional with how you set up your system. Steps you can take include:

Isolating VoIP traffic by partitioning off multiple different components within your virtual LAN. Many modern phones compatible with these systems offer a quick and convenient Layer 2 network switch that pulls apart voice and data traffic, allowing a proper connection without opening up to potential data leakage.
Enabling a firewall on your PBX (most of them come with one these days) and requiring a VPN tunnel in order to establish an IP connection from unknown sources of IP addresses will significantly improve your security. The fewer direct entrances to your IP PBX from unknown sources, the better you can guard them and the less likely your system will develop an unnoticed, and easily exploitable, hole in its defences.
Secure your phones. Make sure your hardware phones don't have a web interface enabled on them. Hacking through the unprotected web interfaces is the simplest and most effective way to impersonate a legitimate connection to your Hosted PBX by supplying SIP secret that is stored in your handset. If you choose to leave the web interface on for your VoIP phone enabled - change your password to something only you will remember!
When using a web interface to manage your Hosted PBX, do NOT run rely on the default configuration settings within your system and then leave them alone. Custom configuration settings are much harder to mimic, whereas hackers have intimate knowledge of default settings and can emulate or exploit them with ease.

As you can see, none of these security solutions are particularly complicated, but they do need to be implemented properly, and they work best when they're put in place as soon as you set up your IP Hosted PBX. The sooner you beef up your system's security, the less likely it will encounter a potentially costly security problem.

Sam Rozenfeld runs DLS Internet Services and shares his insights into different aspects of the business VoIP service providers. He shares his thoughts and prospective on how hosted PBX and Unified Communications are being adopted by business community. Go to http://www.TelephonyYourWay.com/blog to see more.

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How Can I Protect My Hosted PBX?

There are countless benefits to signing up for a Hosted PBX. You could benefit from cost savings and a significant leap forward in your organization's flexibility and scalability. You will unify your voice, video, fax, email, chat and other communications, gain integration with your applications and enjoy better management control over your phone system than you ever would have with the old one. For most businesses, it doesn't take long to look over what they have to gain from signing up for an IP Hosted PBX.

But there are few reasons why some businesses haven't rushed to adopt IP Hosted PBX technology. One of them is the fear the potentially unknown security problems often associated with IP-based telephony. While these security concerns are understandable, they can be addressed with the right planning and configuration, we would like to remove the "fear of unknown" element from them by elaborating on most commonly recognized security threats.

The Most Common Problem With IP PBX Hacking

Working with a business that performs important communication work every day it's natural to feel the number one problem associated with IP PBX hacking lies in someone else finding, and potentially selling, vital company communications. If you work in an organization that handles sensitive information, such as medical data, than this is a very real, and very legitimate, security and compliance concern.

However, most businesses aren't routinely handling highly sensitive information. Sure, if some of your less tactful emails went public you might experience some embarrassment, but overall most businesses aren't going to suffer a lot of damage, either to their reputation or to their client base, if a couple of internal memos slipped through.

No, the real problem with IP PBX hacking lies in malicious individuals cracking into your system in order to make fraudulent calls using your account otherwise known as "phreaking". Most of the time hackers aren't going to use your account to make their own personal calls. Most of the time hackers aren't interested in the outcome of the calls they make using your account at all. Instead, most of the time hackers are just looking to cause mischief, and when they break into IP PBX accounts this mischief takes the form of thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of illegitimate calls.

The primary problem with IP PBX hacking is impersonal by nature. It has very little to do with privacy, and a whole lot to do with protecting your bottom line. Which means IP PBX hacking isn't a problem for the small number of businesses handling truly sensitive information- it's a problem for any business looking to prevent a wholesale hijacking of their bank account.

Is IP PBX Protection Possible?

Yes, though you need to be very intentional with how you set up your system. Steps you can take include:

Isolating VoIP traffic by partitioning off multiple different components within your virtual LAN. Many modern phones compatible with these systems offer a quick and convenient Layer 2 network switch that pulls apart voice and data traffic, allowing a proper connection without opening up to potential data leakage.
Enabling a firewall on your PBX (most of them come with one these days) and requiring a VPN tunnel in order to establish an IP connection from unknown sources of IP addresses will significantly improve your security. The fewer direct entrances to your IP PBX from unknown sources, the better you can guard them and the less likely your system will develop an unnoticed, and easily exploitable, hole in its defences.
Secure your phones. Make sure your hardware phones don't have a web interface enabled on them. Hacking through the unprotected web interfaces is the simplest and most effective way to impersonate a legitimate connection to your Hosted PBX by supplying SIP secret that is stored in your handset. If you choose to leave the web interface on for your VoIP phone enabled - change your password to something only you will remember!
When using a web interface to manage your Hosted PBX, do NOT run rely on the default configuration settings within your system and then leave them alone. Custom configuration settings are much harder to mimic, whereas hackers have intimate knowledge of default settings and can emulate or exploit them with ease.

As you can see, none of these security solutions are particularly complicated, but they do need to be implemented properly, and they work best when they're put in place as soon as you set up your IP Hosted PBX. The sooner you beef up your system's security, the less likely it will encounter a potentially costly security problem.

Sam Rozenfeld runs DLS Internet Services and shares his insights into different aspects of the business VoIP service providers. He shares his thoughts and prospective on how hosted PBX and Unified Communications are being adopted by business community. Go to http://www.TelephonyYourWay.com/blog to see more.

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Is a Hosted PBX System Right for My Business and Phone Needs?

Should your business consider a hosted PBX solution for your corporate phone system? If your company is facing any of the challenges mentioned below you might want to consider a hosted PBX solution, rather purchasing a premise based system:

• Your company's phones are aging and needs an upgrade and replacement

• Your current system is up for lease renewal

• Your company is considering a move

• Your business has multiple location which may include mobile workers

• Your business is struggling to get lease financing

• You want to cut costs, improve redundancy and minimize the time it takes your staff to manage your phones.

If you fall into any of the above categories, there are many reasons for going with a hosted PBX solution, and here are a few of the better ones. Of course if you have questions, you should talk to a PBX expert!

Save Time and Money

Businesses are increasingly opting for an enterprise-class hosted IP phone system and hosted call centers. Why? Because not only can hosted telephony be a more cost-effective option, cloud based telephony will often reduce your monthly communications expenses while eliminating the capital required to purchase new equipment.

Outsource Management of Your System and Network

You can eliminate having to deal with service issues and the finger-pointing that often occurs when you're trying to figure out where an outage or transmission issue may be coming from. Is it your phone system? The network? The Local Exchange Carrier? With a hosted phone system, you can hand this job over to a team of network and security professionals that monitor and manage your services 24×7.

Built-in Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity

The off-premise nature of a hosted PBX means that your business keeps running regardless of what happens at your physical location. Instead of having to install a costly back up network, you can allow your hosting company to provide the high level on redundancy that your business requires.

Additional Features and Enhancements

There are many features and enhancements that can be added to your hosted phone system which, again, eliminate the need to purchase and manage equipment on site. This will both reduce cost and free up valuable staff time that is spent configuring, managing and troubleshooting these features.

A few examples include:

• Unified messaging (voice mail/fax in email)

• Automated Attendant

• Call Center Management and Recording

• Integration of Outlook, Lotus Notes, Act! etc.

So there you have it, a bunch of reasons and justifications for why your business should consider a hosted PBX solution for your corporate communications.

Joan is passionate about hosted pbx phone systems, specifically how they help businesses communication needs.

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Shopping for Hosted PBX Systems Online

A PBX is a phone system that consists of two or many phone lines. It is a private phone system that is In a Hosted PBX the phone lines remain with the customer and the switches are at a central location. Hosted PBX Systems offer more advantages to the customer and less maintenance. The system is all hosted at the provider's location and the customer or business connects by ISP.

There are a number of benefits from using a Hosted PBX:

It costs less than a PBX phone system in house. Sometimes there is little or no set up fee, whereas it costs quite a lot more to set up this system at the customer's location. You just have to pay a monthly service fee for the Hosted PBX Systems, which is considerably less than having to pay for maintenance yourself.

It is also easier as the set up and maintenance of the PBX system is taken care of by the provider. This means that you do not need to hire an expert to take care of the PBX Systems it is all done for you.

You can coordinate all your computers and software with your PBX hosting. The provider will be able to maintain everything for you, so that your business will grow. Communication is important to your business and the PBX system will help you do this.

You can often choose the features that you need for your company. This means that your business can have its own toll free number and also your choice of area code. If you transfer your business you can take the number with you. This will save you a lot of time and money.

IVR and voicemail is also easy to set up on PBX Systems. IVR takes care of all incoming calls and routes them accordingly. This saves time and hassle and means that you will always route your calls correctly. Voicemail on the Hosted PBX will ensure that you never miss a call.

The PBX virtual system is good for big and solo companies. You can decide what you want and what you will want in the future. However you will need to choose the company you go with very carefully. Some Hosted PBX Systems companies will charge more for extra features others will only offer basic ones, so it is best to see which company will be able to fulfill your business needs.

For more information on phone systems visit Hosted PBX Systems.

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Shopping for Hosted PBX Systems Online

A PBX is a phone system that consists of two or many phone lines. It is a private phone system that is In a Hosted PBX the phone lines remain with the customer and the switches are at a central location. Hosted PBX Systems offer more advantages to the customer and less maintenance. The system is all hosted at the provider's location and the customer or business connects by ISP.

There are a number of benefits from using a Hosted PBX:

It costs less than a PBX phone system in house. Sometimes there is little or no set up fee, whereas it costs quite a lot more to set up this system at the customer's location. You just have to pay a monthly service fee for the Hosted PBX Systems, which is considerably less than having to pay for maintenance yourself.

It is also easier as the set up and maintenance of the PBX system is taken care of by the provider. This means that you do not need to hire an expert to take care of the PBX Systems it is all done for you.

You can coordinate all your computers and software with your PBX hosting. The provider will be able to maintain everything for you, so that your business will grow. Communication is important to your business and the PBX system will help you do this.

You can often choose the features that you need for your company. This means that your business can have its own toll free number and also your choice of area code. If you transfer your business you can take the number with you. This will save you a lot of time and money.

IVR and voicemail is also easy to set up on PBX Systems. IVR takes care of all incoming calls and routes them accordingly. This saves time and hassle and means that you will always route your calls correctly. Voicemail on the Hosted PBX will ensure that you never miss a call.

The PBX virtual system is good for big and solo companies. You can decide what you want and what you will want in the future. However you will need to choose the company you go with very carefully. Some Hosted PBX Systems companies will charge more for extra features others will only offer basic ones, so it is best to see which company will be able to fulfill your business needs.

For more information on phone systems visit Hosted PBX Systems.

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How to Use Hosted IVR Efficiently

Using hosted IVR services efficiently means getting better outcomes without needless effort. As an entrepreneur, the success of your business hinges on it. So how do you do it?

The first step when learning to use speech technology efficiently is understanding the relationship you have with your consumers. When your consumers are satisfied, then you will cement the longevity of your enterprise. But, we all know that consumer satisfaction goes beyond giving them what they want...

You must pamper them to make them feel valued.

Doing this without exerting extra effort can only happen if you establish proper communication channels to listen to and respond to their needs.

Now is a good time to compare and contrast the usage of traditional and hosted IVRs.

Traditional IVR solutions are designed to enable automated conversation with multiple telephone systems. Hosted IVRs on the other hand, are arguably more efficient because the "extra effort" is passed along to a third-party.

Here are some strategies that can help you use your call automation tools more effectively:
Only Train Your Staff Once.Never Pay for Overtime.Embed Answers to Yes/No Questions.Automate Dial-Out Services.Get Inside Your Caller's Head.

Hosted IVR service providers integrate their systems with your network, yet they maintain the equipment on their own premises. This arrangement works best for you if you lack a staff that's well versed in IVR management. Additionally, you can save on costs associated with installation of irrelevant infrastructure. In time, you can decide to shift from hosted IVR services to on-site IVR service if you wish.

Using your call automation tools efficiently means acknowledging that some clients seek your assistance at the dead of the night. If you decide a live agent staff is all that you need, you will have to pay extra fees to these people for their overtime. Granted, there are numerous channels you can use to connect with your consumers comfortably. Yet, only with IVRs, are you able to save on a lot of costs associated with the employment of customer care personnel. However, conversation automation saves your business from accruing such expenses.

Due to their automated nature, you and your consumers will both be satisfied. They come embedded with voice recordings, which makes answering simple yes or no questions easy.

Whether you opt for an in-house or hosted IVR, you still benefit by serving a lot of consumers in an instant. Now, contrast this to a situation where you depend on people to reach your clients. In such a scenario, you need a lot of employees to answer queries or take comments from your numerous consumers. This means that you have to pay these people; a fact that translates into more expenses.

IVRs could also come to your aid when conducting market research. Usually, such exercises involve printing of questionnaires and taking field trips. Understandably, all this is in a bid to discover what your consumers think about your products or services. However, IVRs are a great help in this regard. The systems usually place outgoing calls to your sample population to get their response. Thereafter, they record the answers on a keypad, which takes the shortest time possible. In contrast, taking field trips and questionnaires would encompass a lot of time and money.

The welfare of consumers is a pivotal concern for every business organization. After all, their loyalty is what keeps you in existence. However, the channels of interaction should not eat into your profits. Hence, the need for conventional methods of communication is paramount. Interactive Voice Response solutions like hosted IVR are the perfect way to achieve balance between your satisfaction and that of your clients.

When he's not writing about innovative hosted IVR design, Jay E. Coop consults with contact centers on how to effectively use hosted IVR.

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Is a Hosted PBX System Right for My Business and Phone Needs?

Should your business consider a hosted PBX solution for your corporate phone system? If your company is facing any of the challenges mentioned below you might want to consider a hosted PBX solution, rather purchasing a premise based system:

• Your company's phones are aging and needs an upgrade and replacement

• Your current system is up for lease renewal

• Your company is considering a move

• Your business has multiple location which may include mobile workers

• Your business is struggling to get lease financing

• You want to cut costs, improve redundancy and minimize the time it takes your staff to manage your phones.

If you fall into any of the above categories, there are many reasons for going with a hosted PBX solution, and here are a few of the better ones. Of course if you have questions, you should talk to a PBX expert!

Save Time and Money

Businesses are increasingly opting for an enterprise-class hosted IP phone system and hosted call centers. Why? Because not only can hosted telephony be a more cost-effective option, cloud based telephony will often reduce your monthly communications expenses while eliminating the capital required to purchase new equipment.

Outsource Management of Your System and Network

You can eliminate having to deal with service issues and the finger-pointing that often occurs when you're trying to figure out where an outage or transmission issue may be coming from. Is it your phone system? The network? The Local Exchange Carrier? With a hosted phone system, you can hand this job over to a team of network and security professionals that monitor and manage your services 24×7.

Built-in Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity

The off-premise nature of a hosted PBX means that your business keeps running regardless of what happens at your physical location. Instead of having to install a costly back up network, you can allow your hosting company to provide the high level on redundancy that your business requires.

Additional Features and Enhancements

There are many features and enhancements that can be added to your hosted phone system which, again, eliminate the need to purchase and manage equipment on site. This will both reduce cost and free up valuable staff time that is spent configuring, managing and troubleshooting these features.

A few examples include:

• Unified messaging (voice mail/fax in email)

• Automated Attendant

• Call Center Management and Recording

• Integration of Outlook, Lotus Notes, Act! etc.

So there you have it, a bunch of reasons and justifications for why your business should consider a hosted PBX solution for your corporate communications.

Joan is passionate about hosted pbx phone systems, specifically how they help businesses communication needs.

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Hosted Telephony Was the Last Game Changer - What's Next for Contact Centres?

Imagine what a contact centre may look like in ten years time. In the technological world, a decade is a generation. If you can remember the year 2000, consider what technology was like then. Hosted telephony was still just a dream, as was SIP, and social media wasn't even a proper term. It's amazing, albeit a bit scary, how rapidly technology progresses, with less focus on direct interaction and even less focus on the human being. Bearing that in mind, here are some of the advancements that will no doubt shape the call centre of the future.

The largest continuing change is, without doubt, investment in VoIP, or Voiceover Internet Protocol. Businesses have generally been utilising VoIP for one reason - to lower costs - while neglecting to recognise its full potential. Research is showing that investment in VoIP and, to a lesser degree, workforce optimisation and CRM systems looks set to increase.

The great platitude, which does hold some meaning, is that customers are either a phone call or mouse click away from finding another service. Whether true or not, it must be assumed: successful interactions are imperative. Thus, the emphasis on customer service is more important than ever. Multi-channel technology will be a step up in customer choice, allowing them to choose text messaging or video, personalising the way one-to-one and web interactions are accommodated and handled.

Further down the line, then, the total virtualisation of call centres isn't so hard to imagine. In fact, it's inevitable. It will be just as easy for agents to work remotely - from home, a personal office, hub buildings, or even on the go. High speed connections to the web are getting faster, more reliable and more ubiquitous - therefore, there is less need for agents to work in offices, as a team. This will ultimately lower already inexpensive costs, as firms will no longer have to consider commercial property and equipment. This immediately raises the question of whether customers' enquiries will be handled properly and professionally - although interactions would typically be monitored by workflow and CRM systems.

Another vital change will be call routing, which we see on a small scale now, but will eventually allow customers to be quickly matched to the most appropriate agent. Voice recognition software will let centres deal more efficiently with customer and security checks, such as questioning. Already in effect is social customer service, which proves a hit with consumers. The concept is simple: customers interact online, in forums and such, answering each other's questions and solving one another's problems.

It may be a decade away, but as companies vie for new customers, optimised service and lower costs, the call centre will inevitably evolve. Hosted telephony was the last game changer, and it will continue to shape the industry, but who knows what's next. But with the focus on customer service and retention bigger than ever, one thing is for sure: the integration of new technology will make interactions easier and more personalised, offering a better service for clients and even better results for companies.

Steve Alexander has been writing about the future of the contact centre. For more information on hosted telephony, as well as SIP services, go to btlnet.co.uk

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How to Use Hosted IVR Efficiently

Using hosted IVR services efficiently means getting better outcomes without needless effort. As an entrepreneur, the success of your business hinges on it. So how do you do it?

The first step when learning to use speech technology efficiently is understanding the relationship you have with your consumers. When your consumers are satisfied, then you will cement the longevity of your enterprise. But, we all know that consumer satisfaction goes beyond giving them what they want...

You must pamper them to make them feel valued.

Doing this without exerting extra effort can only happen if you establish proper communication channels to listen to and respond to their needs.

Now is a good time to compare and contrast the usage of traditional and hosted IVRs.

Traditional IVR solutions are designed to enable automated conversation with multiple telephone systems. Hosted IVRs on the other hand, are arguably more efficient because the "extra effort" is passed along to a third-party.

Here are some strategies that can help you use your call automation tools more effectively:
Only Train Your Staff Once.Never Pay for Overtime.Embed Answers to Yes/No Questions.Automate Dial-Out Services.Get Inside Your Caller's Head.

Hosted IVR service providers integrate their systems with your network, yet they maintain the equipment on their own premises. This arrangement works best for you if you lack a staff that's well versed in IVR management. Additionally, you can save on costs associated with installation of irrelevant infrastructure. In time, you can decide to shift from hosted IVR services to on-site IVR service if you wish.

Using your call automation tools efficiently means acknowledging that some clients seek your assistance at the dead of the night. If you decide a live agent staff is all that you need, you will have to pay extra fees to these people for their overtime. Granted, there are numerous channels you can use to connect with your consumers comfortably. Yet, only with IVRs, are you able to save on a lot of costs associated with the employment of customer care personnel. However, conversation automation saves your business from accruing such expenses.

Due to their automated nature, you and your consumers will both be satisfied. They come embedded with voice recordings, which makes answering simple yes or no questions easy.

Whether you opt for an in-house or hosted IVR, you still benefit by serving a lot of consumers in an instant. Now, contrast this to a situation where you depend on people to reach your clients. In such a scenario, you need a lot of employees to answer queries or take comments from your numerous consumers. This means that you have to pay these people; a fact that translates into more expenses.

IVRs could also come to your aid when conducting market research. Usually, such exercises involve printing of questionnaires and taking field trips. Understandably, all this is in a bid to discover what your consumers think about your products or services. However, IVRs are a great help in this regard. The systems usually place outgoing calls to your sample population to get their response. Thereafter, they record the answers on a keypad, which takes the shortest time possible. In contrast, taking field trips and questionnaires would encompass a lot of time and money.

The welfare of consumers is a pivotal concern for every business organization. After all, their loyalty is what keeps you in existence. However, the channels of interaction should not eat into your profits. Hence, the need for conventional methods of communication is paramount. Interactive Voice Response solutions like hosted IVR are the perfect way to achieve balance between your satisfaction and that of your clients.

When he's not writing about innovative hosted IVR design, Jay E. Coop consults with contact centers on how to effectively use hosted IVR.

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Hosted PBX Features Explained

How Can Auto Attendant Benefit a Live Phone Operation?

Automation is always a double-edged sword, and for many a necessary evil child of the unified communications technology.

On the one hand, programs like auto attendant provide your organization with a convenient solution for directing and queuing incoming calls, allowing a relatively small number of phone operators to handle a considerably larger volume of calls than they'd be able to tend to on their own.

On the other hand, most customers feel understandably unfavourable towards automated phone services. As much as phone automation services may assist the companies employing them, no customer wants to either talk to a robot or attempt to navigate a potentially confusing series of scripted inputs.

In a perfect world every organization would be able to afford a large enough phone staff to provide individualized attention to all of their customers as soon as they call. Yet even in that perfect world, even if your organization could afford to hire the appropriate size phone staff to handle all of your incoming calls every hour of the day and night, an auto attendant program would provide more than enough auxiliary benefits to justify its implementation.

Auto attendant systems aren't the sole domain of organizations with overtaxed phone staff- they are intelligent, powerful and efficient solutions that can take even the finest-tuned telephony system to the next level.

Employing Automated Systems = Extending Your Staff's Capacity

The capabilities of automated hosted PBX solutions go well beyond simply queuing and directing incoming calls- the right auto attendant system will provide your organization with powerful, effective and efficient management capabilities a traditional phone system could never offer.

An auto attendant program will provide centralized control over your entire phone system, consolidating your system into a single easily manageable command center. When you select to implement the right automated system, your secretary will be able to take advantage of a bird's-eye view of your organization's entire phone system with nothing more than a quick glance. With the right automated system, your secretary will gain the ability to see exactly what's going on with each separate phone line at that exact moment, allowing them to best direct all incoming calls.

The Power of Presence Management

Presence management provides one of the key beneficial features auto attendant programs offer fully staffed organizations. Presence management is a real time, web based tool that creates a digital command center that provides your organization with the ability to review and track the status of every single extension within your PBX system, all at once. With presence management, your secretary or office manager will be able to immediately see if another employee is available to take an incoming call or not, without having to put your callers on hold.

Your presence management software will tell your secretary, at a glance, whether a specific line is online or offline, ringing, idle, on hold, busy with another call, or completely unavailable.

Presence management software works so well because it streamlines and optimizes your existing system, providing an immediate benefit of saved time and spared frustration without necessitating a complete overhaul of how your organization's telephony system operates.

Sam Rozenfeld runs DLS Internet Services, a business VoIP service provider. He shares his thoughts and a service provider's prospective on how VoIP hosted PBX is being adopted by business community. Go to telephonyyourway website to see more of his blog...

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Hosted PBX Service Vs Premise Based IP PBX System Lifecycle

Hosted PBX Service Vs Premise Based IP PBX System Lifecycle

Understanding The PBX System Lifecycle

On average, a traditional lifecycle of premise-based PBX will lie between 7-10 years of use.

Traditionally, PBX technology only saw minor improvements within this time span. Even as early as a decade ago, upgrading your PBX system had more to do with replacing worn out products and receiving incremental improvements in the service you received.

However, PBX technology now evolves at a much faster rate than ever before, largely due to the development of all-software VoIP-based systems. While you can still own the same PBX system for 7-10 years, your system's technology will now reach obsolescence faster than ever due to technological advancement, and not technological breakdown.

The Benefits of VoIP Hosted PBX

Hosted PBX systems offer a wide range of significant improvements over traditional PBX, including the following:

Scalability. It's both easier and cheaper to scale a VoIP system than a traditional PBX system, removing a major limitation on the growth of your organization. Most Hosted PBX Service Providers will allow you to increase or decrease the number of extensions or features depending on your organization's needs.
Flexibility. VoIP hosted PBX allows your organization to use a fully connected outside customer service and sales team working from any location, whether you hire new remote staff or allow your existing employees to work from home.
Reduced Overhead. With little upfront cash VoIP hosted PBX also provides a cost-saving service in the long term- especially if you aim to grow your organization.
Exceptional Price-Performance. Hosted VoIP services are packed with advanced PBX features at a fraction of the cost of Traditional PBX licensing and hardware.

Why Some Organizations Haven't Upgraded their PBX Systems

Unfortunately, plenty of companies have delayed taking advantage of the benefits of VoIP hosted PBX. The reasons behind these delays are more due to historical circumstances than any problem with VoIP services.

First, remember that the traditional PBX lifecycle is 7-10 years long. Keep in mind the average organization will hold off upgrading their infrastructure as long as possible, even in the best of economic climates. That means most organizations upgrade their PBX system every 10 years, barring a massive potential crises necessitating a technological upgrade.

The average organization last upgraded their PBX system in the years 1999-2000 to safeguard their telephony systems against the Y2K scare. By the year 2000 VoIP hosted PBX wasn't a viable solution for most organizations, so most organizations upgraded their system to a slightly improved traditional PBX system.

By upgrading their PBX systems around the year 2000, most companies found themselves due for their next upgrade in either 2009 or 2010- right in the middle of the worst economic climate the country's seen in decades.

The Recession prevented many organizations from upgrading their PBX services. And some of those organizations who did upgrade their PBX services decided to continue to use traditional PBX services and opted out of upgrading to acquiring a superior (yet more familiar) VoIP hosted PBX system.

Making the Decision to Upgrade to VoIP hosted PBX

PBX technology may have remained largely stagnate for many years, but it has made a quantum leap over the last decade. What has your organization lost by using an obsolete and inefficient system? What will your organization gain by upgrading to the newest, most beneficial telephony technology?

Rather than waiting for the "perfect" time to upgrade your phone service, it's wiser to upgrade to VoIP hosted PBX as soon as it's practical to no longer deny your organization the infrastructure growth and improvements offered by this superior technology.

Sam Rozenfeld runs DLS Internet Services, a business VoIP service provider. He shares his thoughts and a service provider's prospective on how hosted VoIP is being adopted by business community. Go to http://www.TelephonyYourWay.com/blog to see more.

More review at www.sourchengine.info and www.latestsearchengine.info.

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