Office Telephone – What is a Cloud PBX?

Today businesses are torn between two options when it comes to a business communication solution. The constant battle between traditional telephony and VoIP phone systems leaves business owners confused to which solution to go for. Everyone is quite familiar with a traditional PBX; often the case is it is the VoIP solutions that are not known.

A business grade office telephone using VoIP solutions is called a cloud PBX. Basically cloud means the internet, similar to what cloud computing is, and PBX stands for private branch exchange or simply phones. Combine them together and it means internet office telephone systems. At first glance you may think that both options are just the same but in reality is a big difference separates the two. A cloud PBX uses servers and a network instead of hardware. This means that all the PBX components except the handsets are located in the cloud and is accessed using the internet. You can somehow compare it to a website.

By using servers and network instead of a hardware, the system is able to offer flexibility and cost effectiveness to customers. Flexibility because you can literally customized a cloud PBX based on your requirements. Think of it like one of the open source programming software where you can literally command the computer do what you want, the same way the system can be custom programmed to tell the phones what you like to happen. Additionally, since there is no hardware involved you can adjust your phone system capacity as needed.

Cost effectiveness because instead of using traditional trunk lines in routing a call it uses a SIP trunk. On average businesses can save up to 70% on phone bills depending on the usage and the size of the system. Apart from cheaper calls, line rentals and also relatively cheaper compared to traditional solutions. Pushing the savings even further is the features. Traditional Telecommunications Company may charge you monthly even for the most basic feature like caller ID and call forwarding, but with the latter, all features are already included and complex requirements may just require a one-time set up fee.

However, a cloud PBX doesn’t work like magic. For a successful deployment business need to secure one of the most important requirement and that is the internet. Frankly speaking, if you are unable to secure a fast and stable connection then the solution might not be for you. All VoIP solutions are reliant to the quality of the internet. If you are able to secure this one requirement then you can expect business grade call quality every time you make or receive a call.