By Natalie van der Merwe, senior product manager for Voice Solutions at Vox Telecom

While hosted PBX solutions have been available to businesses for some time, never has the time been more right for this product to enter the mainstream as a voice solution for businesses of all sizes, says Natalie van der Merwe, senior product manager for Voice Solutions at Vox Telecom. But why now what has changed and how is this likely to affect take up and adoption?

The answer is twofold. Firstly, it is really related not only to availability, but also to the take-up of fibre.  Fibre offers stability on the last mile, which means that the poor quality of calls experienced over IP are a thing of the past. Secondly, the drop in last mile access pricing has made the uptake of a hosted PBX solution more cost effective for customers who previously had limited telephony budgets but who wanted an enterprise grade quality IP solution.  The opportunity for customers to port and keep their existing numbers becomes even more attractive too.

The good news however is, that a hosted PBX solution, whether on fibre or other types of fixed-line connectivity, offers redundancy to businesses, and with the lowered costs to connect, it makes more sense to put it into the cloud.

This PBX technology has existed for quite some time, but now, because the infrastructure and cost structures support it from a connectivity and stability perspective, hosted PBX is a viable option. Taking your PBX requirements into the cloud also means businesses take away the technology investment costs and CAPEX required ensuring that an onsite solution does not get outdated.

It is kept up-to-date by your services provider, taking away a lot of hassles, especially for smaller businesses. Aside from the cost and connectivity opportunities for a hosted PBX solution, other benefits include scalability and a strong self-service ethos.

The hosted PBX platform can accommodate an unlimited number of users, making it easy for growing businesses to add users as required.  The opposite is also true - reducing the number of users, at any given point in time, and the costs associated with unused lines, should also give businesses peace of mind.

The strong self-service ethos associated with a hosted PBX solution enables customers the flexibility to do their own basic administrative functions via a customer admin portal. Hosted PBX’s time has arrived, and more and more vendors and service providers are promoting it as a cost effective voice (telephony) offering for businesses of all sizes.   Isn’t it time you considered moving your PBX to the cloud?