Rise Of The Cloud Hosted PBX

The days of the in-house PBX or Private Branch Exchange may be numbered. AireSpring, one of the fastest growing and most innovative of the competitive carriers, is now offering a cloud hosted PBX system they call AirePBX. With AirePBX, the PBX disappears but the phones remain.

In a way, we're going back in time to move forward. In the beginning, all switching was done at the telephone company central office and all phones were connected to the telco switch. Then came in-house telephone operator switchboards and later automated switchboards called Key Telephone Systems (KTS) and Private Branch Exchanges (PBX). What a cloud hosted PBX does is move the switching system back to the service provider.

So, how can you save money by going back to an earlier network architecture? A lot has changed in the last century. For one thing, the monolithic “Ma Bell” no longer exists. There are a lot of competitive carriers vying for your business. That alone offers better pricing options. Technology has also changed. Phones no longer need their own network. With VoIP, the telephone shares the same network as all the company computers, printers and other devices. The fact that you don’t need special proprietary wiring to connect to your phone service provider further increases competitive offerings and available features.

The idea behind a hosted VoIP system or cloud hosted PBX is that the expensive PBX system and its need for constant attention is taken over by a supplier who is in the PBX telephone business. That’s not the business you are in, is it? In fact, having to buy, install and maintain this equipment doesn’t really give you a competitive advantage at all. It’s just one more thing you pay for to get the communications services you need.

This is why companies are more than happy to ditch their venerable PBX in favor of a cloud solution. They are especially open to this alternative if their PBX is temperamental, nearing capacity, too old to be maintained, or too limited in features. Sure, you can go out and buy a shiny new model and do a “forklift upgrade.” Stop and think, though. Do you really want to shell out the thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of dollars needed for a new PBX, or would you rather pay as you go?

Let’s take a look at what AirePBX has to offer. You don’t have a PBX system in-house anymore. You just have IP phones plugged into your network and AireSpring provides those. No capital investment required. Each phone has its own voicemail. You can even get visual voicemail. Even though the PBX is hosted remotely, your internal call routing is still free, as are local outside calls. An auto-attendant is included to direct incoming calls. You can set up hunting for workgroups, add toll free numbers and virtual private numbers, have conference calls, and enjoy all the features you’d expect in a modern business phone system.

All of this is fully managed by AireSpring on their next generation IP backbone network to ensure voice quality and system availability. Compared to the often dicey performance of Internet VoIP implementations, this is head and shoulders better. AirePBX is an enterprise VoIP solution that scales easily for small and medium companies, too.

Are you in search of a better business telephone system for your company? If so, you may be surprised and delighted by the capabilities and low costs of the new cloud hosted PBX solutions. Why not get a quote for hosted VoIP phone services and see if you can have the business communications you need without the cost and aggravation of maintaining your own in-house telephone system.