If you are not familiar with Hosted PBX, then you might find yourself bemused by all the attention that this phone system receives. Can a telecom solution really be a life changing experience? For some businesses, the answer is yes. The thing you have to understand about this solution is that it specifically addresses some of the major pain points for organizations in regards to telecom technology. Now, while the specifics of the solution do differ depending on such things as the service provider, there are some general claims that can be safely made about it. For instance, the solution eliminates much of the complexity associated with a premise-based solution. As a hosted alternative, the major hardware required to run the service is managed by the provider at a remote location. This eliminates the end user business’ responsibility for purchasing, managing, and upgrading equipment. Such a setup also makes the service more secure as essential hardware is in a protected datacenter that is separate from your physical office location. In addition, turning over responsibility for the hardware to a service provider takes a large expense off your plate. You only have to pay for the service itself, not the equipment needed to make it all possible.

While complexity is reduced, Hosted PBX also beefs up things on the feature side. Functionality is vastly expanded in comparison to a traditional phone solution with new features that increase employee productivity while saving time and money. Many of these features are easy to learn and employees can be using them in no time at all. Among the features potentially available with this solution include separate extensions for every employee, hunt groups, auto attendant, seamless transfer between devices, voicemail transcription, find me/follow me, and many more. Furthermore, an online portal provides instant access to make adjustments and changes without requiring you to contact the provider or internal IT staff for every little thing.

For a small or mid-sized business in particular, a phone solution with reduced complexity, a lower price, and advanced features can indeed be a life changing experience. Beyond these immediate benefits, Hosted PBX also sets an organization up for future success by paving the way for unified communications or BYOD. For businesses that rely on employees that are either mobile or working at multiple separate locations, this solution is a perfect fit. If you weren’t familiar with this technology before, hopefully this brief overview now has you grasping why so many people are excited about it and its many possibilities.

There are many different sides to Hosted PBX, but one of the most important is the incredible level of flexibility that it gives businesses in terms of controlling their own communications. Since this solution uses the Internet rather than the traditional telephone network for services, it can be used anywhere with an Internet connection. That means that phone calls can be made from your office number without you actually having to be in the office. You can have calls forwarded to any phone to be received, allowing you to pick up calls on a mobile device, at home, at another office, or in a hotel room while on the road. Another option for increased flexibility is plug-and-play phones. These phones can be moved between locations and simply need to be plugged in to be used. All contacts, settings, and features are available with no need to configure the phone each time, though an online web portal makes it easy to do so if necessary.

Another side of this solution is the way in which it future-proofs businesses against telecom hardware losing value and falling behind the technological curve. This is accomplished by Hosted PBX essentially eliminating hardware from the equation for the end user. Users don’t need to worry about anything other than the actual phones and possibly a router; all the major equipment is owned and managed by the service provider and service is delivered via IP connection. What this means is that a business doesn’t have to buy the hardware, doesn’t have to maintain it, and doesn’t have to worry about replacing it as it ages. This lowers the cost for organizations and lets them have the latest services without investing in the effort of constantly updating their systems.

Despite not having the equipment onsite, a hosted model suffers no loss of features and functionality. In fact, functionality is often expanded by moving services to the cloud and, at the very least, new features can be deployed quicker without a lot of downtime. Features are, of course, a whole other side of this solution and one that unfortunately we won’t have time to cover here. While we have only been able to look at a few aspects of this multi-faceted solution, this glimpse should be more than enough to illustrate the amazing potential of Hosted PBX. From flexibility to future-proofing and more, this solution has many valuable capabilities that make it a must for businesses looking to succeed.

There’s a lot of talk about disaster preparedness for businesses and if you don’t have Hosted PBX already, then you might find it worthwhile to stay a while and listen. Admittedly, disasters are rare occurrences, but then it only takes one to potentially bring your business to a screeching halt and, in a worst case scenario, cause so many lost scenarios that it’s hard or impossible to recover. These risks are why organizations invest in business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. Since a phone system is central to operations, it makes sense to make it a core part of a recovery plan.

IP phones offer several advantages that work well in terms of maintaining continuity. For instance, plug and play phones can be transferred among locations with all settings and contacts intact and work perfectly as long as there is a connection available for them. This allows employees to relocate to a new location or even work from home simply by bringing their phone set with them.

Of course, it’s not always possible to make sure you have your phone with you when a disaster strikes. For that reason, it’s important to look at some of the other benefits of Hosted PBX. This solution has forwarding and routing capabilities that can be configured from any computer with an Internet connection so that you can instantly forward your calls to an alternative number if your office phone is unavailable. This alternative number can be anything you choose, from a cell phone to a home or hotel phone. This ensures that you are always able to get your calls no matter what and helps businesses keep operating and stay in touch with customers.

What makes all these benefits and features even better is that this solution isn’t limited to just being for emergencies. It can be a hard sell to invest a lot of money in something that you may never need. Fortunately, this phone system works every day to reduce expenses and improve productivity through its advanced next generation features. Call forwarding and mobile device integration is useful for working outside the office while traveling or just for keeping up with important calls while popping out for lunch. The ability to take your phone with you and use it wherever is useful for working from home or for making reorganization easy as employees can take their phones with them when moving to new desks. All things considered, Hosted PBX is extremely useful in any situation.

It’s time to tear down the barriers holding your business back from next generation telephone service. Whether you use old TDM solutions or an in-house PBX, it’s time to take a moment and consider Hosted PBX as an alternative. There are many different areas of this solution and it’s important that we take the time to look at each one. Let’s begin with the feature set. Features available with this solution include a single business number from which extensions allow routing to all departments and employees, custom music and messages for a personalized hold experience, auto attendant to professionally direct front desk calls and ease the load, and conference calls. Additional advanced features include voicemail to email transcription, e-fax support, hunt groups for call distribution within a department, and find me/follow me to forward calls when an employee is out of the office. There are many more possible features and the exact list of what your service will include will depend on the service provider.

The availability of these features makes this solution a big step up from traditional TDM offerings. When compared with in-house PBX systems, the feature list might not immediately seem to invite much contrast. The real difference is to be found in Hosted PBX eliminating the reliance on equipment kept on premises. This has long been the big barrier to entry as the upfront investment of on premises solutions is high enough to keep out small businesses. Even larger enterprises can find it a pain to manage the system and keep track of all the necessary updates and upgrades. There’s also a risk that the hardware will become outdated and need to be replaced by current equipment at great cost.

These problems can be solved by letting the service provider handle all hardware and just accessing the services themselves via IP connection. There’s no equipment to get outdated on your end and the service provider is responsible for keeping it up to date. This gives you a lower entry cost, lower ongoing costs, and increased flexibility in your communications, while also providing all the great features and benefits that you want from a PBX.

TDM solutions are increasingly being left behind and even the standard in-house PBX is finding itself challenged by the effectiveness of its fully managed variant. Hosted PBX offers all businesses the chance to have a professional and fully equipped phone system without the cost or headaches that commonly come with the hardware for such services.

If we were to lay out an argument for why your organization should adopt Hosted PBX as its business phone system, there are several key points which we would have to be sure to hit. The first of these is the lower cost. Since there will be variation in the specific services desired and the cost of the older services being left behind, it’s hard to give an exact amount for the savings that can be achieved with this solution. That said, some organizations have reported savings of up to fifty percent compared to what they had been paying for traditional telephone service. The lower cost is made possible by eliminating onsite hardware and locating services in the cloud, as well as by general savings on calls by using VoIP to route calls via IP networks.

Despite this lower cost, this is no loss of functionality. The next stage of our argument would be to point out that all the features you expect from a next generation phone solution are present and available for a lower cost than equivalent service from a traditional solution. Whether it’s the comfort of basic calling features or the excitement of advanced new capabilities, this solution has it all. There are far too many features included with and supported by this solution to cover here, but a few of them are VoIP, email notifications of messages, find me/follow me, call recording, automated attendant, popup notifications of incoming calls, and call jump.

To get the most out of Hosted PBX, it is important to make sure that everyone knows how to fully use all these new features. While it functions superbly just as a phone system, there’s much more that it can do. Service providers generally offer tutorials, training, and support to help organizations get all their employees up to speed. There are also many online resources to assist in the learning process and, of course, employees can always employ the traditional method of jumping in and just playing around with their phone.

Our argument would also have to make clear that this phone system isn’t defined by its feature list, no matter how impressive. This amazing technology has many benefits for businesses. Whether you want a phone system that is easily transferrable between offices or one that eliminates the need for physical offices entirely, Hosted PBX has what you need. This solution supports plug and play phones for easy mobility, while its cloud-based nature gives it independence from physical locations. If we were to make an argument for this solution and its adoption, these are the points we would cover.

Three things that everyone should know about Hosted PBX are its extensive features, its affordability, and its flexibility. Let’s begin with the latter. Since hosted services are, as the name implies, managed at a remote location and connected to through the cloud, they are not limited to being accessed solely from your office. In fact, it’s possible to connect from anywhere with a network connection. An additional benefit of plug and play phones is that they can be moved between locations and will work fine wherever they are plugged in. This allows you to easily move between desks within an organization or take your phone home with you at the end of the day and keep using your business number and features. For employees that work remotely or do a lot of traveling, the flexibility is great for keeping them connected to the rest of the business.

In a change from older PBX systems, this technology gets rid of the hardware investment and ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs. The service provider deals with all of those expenses, while the end business is just paying for the service. This can be thought of as the business renting services. There is no loss of features with this and all the great benefits of a PBX, such as voicemail, e-faxing, conference calls, hunt groups, and find me-follow me are all present. This is just the smallest hint of the features available, as the full list is too extensive to cover in this post.

The savings of Hosted PBX are achieved in the elimination of hardware from the office. The only hardware needed onsite are the actual desktop phones. Everything else is handled by the provider. What this means is that the large cost that serves as a barrier to entry is removed. This is especially important for small businesses that were previously denied professional phone systems due to the high cost. Now, with a lower price and no need to keep equipment on the premises, any organization can get these services.

An additional benefit of this service is that it serves as an effective way to future-proof your phone system. You don’t have to worry about equipment becoming obsolete because there is no equipment. At least for you; the provider must continually update their equipment, but they are much better positioned to do it. What you get is a Hosted PBX that delivers all the benefits of a key phone system without any of the cost or time distractions from your business’ core focus.

In life, you need partners you can rely on. The same is true in business, where the smooth operation of many different parts is crucial to a successful outcome. When it comes to dependable phone systems, Hosted PBX is at the head of the pack. A combination of many different components makes this solution one that you can count on to stand by you. IP communications services take advantage of network infrastructure and design to provide redundant routes that work around outages and decrease downtime. You never want to be missing out a sale or other opportunity because your phones went down at an inopportune moment and the difference between 99.999% and 99.9999% uptime could be the difference that makes or breaks your business. Even in the event of a natural disaster, this solution works to keep your business connected by routing and forwarding calls to alternative phones and locations.

To understand what makes this solution so reliable, it is important to look at the various parts that make up the whole. These parts are, to speak generally, the phone sets themselves, the network, and the datacenter where services are managed. For Hosted PBX to be a trustworthy solution, all of these components must be secure. Let’s begin with the network. A firewall or border management system is critical to keeping out unwanted intrusions, while letting calls pass through without interruption. The use of backups provides failover options so that, rather than the entire network failing if one component goes out, the system simply switches over to a replacement automatically. Data security can be maintained with appropriate steps, but it may be wise to use a virtual private network such as MPLS for your services. This provides an extra level of security by avoiding the public Internet and limits who is on the network. Such a service offers the greatest benefits for larger enterprises that maintain multiple locations.

That covers the network, so let us now turn our attention to the datacenter. As a hosted solution, services are managed at an offsite location to which you connect remotely. Aside from the lower cost of this setup, it also increases the reliability of the solution. For example, if your office is struck by a disaster, your communications remain safe and secure offsite and so it is easier to quickly get back up and running. The centralization of services under a provider’s auspices also allows them to deploy expanded support, both in terms of staff and systems, that would be too costly for an individual organization to attempt for itself. With all these things in place, Hosted PBX is a solution that you can count on to stick with you through thick and thin.

We’ve talked a lot about Hosted PBX already, so this seems like a good time to go into more depth on some of the individual features. Now, as mentioned, there are an astonishing number of features available with this service. Some come included with standard setups, while others may be considered as extra add-ons depending on the provider. Basic features such as voicemail, 411, 911, and caller ID are essentials and should be included with your service. The advanced features are where you need to figure out what you need, what you can get, and what can help your business. IP telephony has made many new features possible and there are likely capabilities that you didn’t even know existed. It would be foolish to overlook these features when they can potentially benefit your business.

One major feature available with Hosted PBX is the ability to designate Hunt Groups. What is a Hunt Group? Essentially, it is a designated group of employees, usually in one department, who are set to receive calls coming in to their group. If one employee is busy or unavailable, the call will automatically ring to the next phone in sequence until it gets answered. Customers dislike leaving voicemails and with good reason; often voicemail seems to be a black hole from which no reply is forthcoming. Hunt Groups help ensure that customers are connected to representatives who can help them and ensures their calls aren’t lost. This improves the customer experience. It also helps employees by directing calls to employees who are not currently busy in order to share the load. This feature is a must have for customer service divisions or call centers.

Another extremely useful feature available with Hosted PBX is Find Me, Follow Me. This feature is an advanced forwarding service that allows you to manage calls so that you never have to miss one (unless you want to, of course). When a call comes into your office number, you can have it forwarded to any number of your choosing. Calls can go to your mobile during lunch time, to home after hours, or to hotel room phones while you are on a trip. Calls can ring all listed phones at once or in a chosen sequence. With additional scheduling and specific number routing, you can forward calls different depending on the time of the day or week or on the number of the caller. Important numbers can be forwarded, while others go into voicemail for later.

From Hurricane Sandy to tornadoes and tsunamis, the past couple of years have seen several dangerous and destructive disasters. In light of such disasters, it is prudent to think about how your business would handle such a situation. One way to protect your organization is with a Hosted PBX. Communications are crucial to a business’ survival in this connected age and being cut off from your employees, partners, and customers for days or weeks means a serious loss of revenue and could even spell the end of your business. You may think that it could never happen to you, but that’s a big gamble. Perhaps you are all too aware of the risk and are looking for a solution that ensures business continuity no matter what nature throws at you. One of the best ways to protect your business is with a hosted phone system.

This affordable solution can help your business take a licking and keep on ticking. So how does it work? Well, the genius of a hosted solution is that, as its name implies, the hardware is hosted offsite at a provider’s location. This location should be at a distance from your office and also secured with redundant backups. Thus, when a catastrophe hits your offices, the phone system is safe and sound for the simple reason that it isn’t there. No matter what happens to your offices, the Hosted PBX system keeps running so your communications remain intact.

Of course, even if the heavy-duty systems are elsewhere, the physical phones themselves have to be in your office and are thus susceptible to disasters right? Even if the phone survives and you dig it out of the rubble, surely it’s useless without an office to put it in? As it turns out, this is not the case. Remember the services are separate from the actual phone. This means that you do not need to use those phones and can, in fact, have calls forwarded to any number that you desire. This allows employees to take calls from home, a hotel room, or an alternate emergency office that you set up. Hosted PBX even allows for plug-and-play phone sets, which means that, if the physical phone set does come through unscathed, you can take it elsewhere, plug it in, and it will work regardless.

There’s no way of knowing where a disaster is going to strike. Don’t risk losing everything on the chance that your business will be the one to escape. With a hosted phone system as part of a disaster recovery plan, you can be prepared for whatever the future brings.

For businesses looking to deploy VoIP, a popular choice is Hosted PBX. This system allows companies to connect to phone services managed by the VoIP provider at a remote location. This provides both small and large businesses with all the benefits of a sophisticated PBX phone system, including advanced features, without a heavy investment in hardware. Even the smallest businesses can get enterprise level features like call transfer, call holding with music, conference calls, and an automated attendant to route callers to different extensions. Since the system is hosted remotely, it’s possible to connect from anywhere as long as there’s an Internet connection. Whether it’s a hotel room or from a cell phone, VoIP service is available. This system can completely replace your existing phone service with newer VoIP service or work alongside it.

There are several ways in which a Hosted PBX can add to or replace existing business telephone systems. It’s possible to keep existing landlines and have calls forwarded to those lines by the PBX service. However, this setup is not recommended as it will be more expensive that pure VoIP and means you have to pay for both the PBX and traditional phone lines. Another option is to have calls forwarded to cell phones or other mobile devices. This is best used in tandem with office phones to allow employees to receive calls when out of the office. It is a great option for remote workers and also can help maintain business continuity in the event of a disaster. Some services also come with smartphone apps, to further integrate employee mobile devices into a unified communications plan for the whole company.

A Hosted PBX system offers both initial cost savings due to the absence of hardware and ongoing savings due to cheaper phone service. Geographical flexibility allows employees to work from anywhere, even other countries, and provides your business with the ability to keep operating even when the physical office is shut down. The professional auto attendant gives even the smallest business instant credibility, while DIDs in cities around the world let companies build local connections with customers. The solution is easy to get up and running and is extremely simple to use. An online interface gives anyone the ability to customize settings without technical experience or having to contact the provider each time. If additional lines are needed, they can quickly be added, allowing your business to adjust on the fly to changing traffic and customer needs.