
Because of the bandwidth efficiency and low costs that VoIP technology can provide, businesses are gradually beginning to migrate from traditional copper-wire telephone systems to VoIP systems to reduce their monthly phone costs. Hosted IP PBX is a great solution for companies that need to trim Cap-Ex and procure better functionality and features.
VoIP solutions aimed at businesses have evolved into "unified communications" services that treat all communications—phone calls, faxes, voice mail, e-mail, Web conferences and more—as discrete units that can all be delivered via any means and to any handset, including cellphones. Two kinds of competitors are competing in this space: one set is focused on VoIP for medium to large enterprises, while another is targeting the small-to-medium business (SMB) market.
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The first step toward a unified communications platform
We first need to address the general (mis)perception that VoIP offers poor voice quality and the technology is difficult to implement. The fact is, most small businesses that implement a VoIP system report that the call quality is superior to that of regular phones.
All IP PBX systems are basically exchange and extension managers for calls based on Internet protocol – also known as VoIP and Internet telephony. The essential advantage they offer to small- to medium-sized businesses is the ability to add features that have only been affordable or available to large businesses up to now. VoIP and Internet telephony are usually also more cost-effective when looking at long-term operating costs, due to lower monthly fees and much lower costs to connect and complete calls
Premise-based IP PBX
Premise-based IP PBX systems provide a relatively easy way for businesses of any size to move to VoIP and get a wide range of new features and capabilities for their phone systems. If your company is upgrading from a traditional phone system, the savings can be substantial, and the new service will pay for itself almost immediately. In addition, businesses will want to take the time to then understand the new system and perhaps invest resources to integrate its capabilities into existing business processes such as sales and CRM tools.
Premise-based IP PBX systems are cheaper and far more capable than their predecessors. They also integrate much better into business networks and data communications which, in turn, enable new applications that are still being discovered and applied to common business practices. Modern premise-based IP PBX systems deliver multinational enterprise capabilities to even small businesses, often at a cost lower than the far more basic systems they’re replacing.
Hosted IP PBX
Hosted systems take most of the switching and intelligence of the system and move it offsite to a remote location. There it is managed by the service provider. Equipment at an organization’s site is limited to the phones themselves as well as some dedicated routing equipment and perhaps a switch to provide emergency access to the older traditional TDM telephone network. As a result, hosted systems are usually quicker and cheaper to install and set up. They offer a standardized set of services. Because they are hosted remotely, there is less maintenance for a business and no need to perform upgrades at each location.
In contrast, premise-based PBX's are more complex to install and maintain than hosted VoIP services, requiring servers and more switches to be located at the business site. But, they are still far simpler and simultaneously more powerful than previous incarnations of PBX systems. Moreover, the organization can upgrade to new features at will and has full ability to configure and customize the system any way they like, which can be particularly important when thinking about integrating voice and data networks to create new applications and extensions of old applications.
The traditional assumption is that hosted IP PBX's are a better solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses, while premise-based solutions are better for medium to large companies. But this isn’t as much the case as it was in the past, and the boundaries are becoming blurred. There are premise-based solutions aimed at companies with as few as 20 employees, and there are hosted IP PBX's that can scale up to thousands of users. But this is a crucial area of differentiation; Maxsip works with each customer to find a solution that matches up with your requirements in terms of size, usage and cost.
Other main reasons that small-to-medium-sized businesses are adopting VoIP include access to features that are either not available or are cost-prohibitive on older phone systems. Examples of these include integration with desktop and office software such as Outlook, call routing features, and IVR (interactive voice response) features, all of which used to be extremely hard to set up and prohibitively expensive for small businesses.
Toward a Unified Corporate Communication System
IP-based PBX systems are fast becoming just one component of a larger unified corporate communication system that includes e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing, etc. Any business that expects to experience growth needs to seriously consider implementing an IP communications strategy towards a unified communications platform that’s flexible, scalable, easy to manage and cost-effective.
In sum, IP-based communications – beginning with VoIP (whether it is premise-based or hosted) offers a simpler infrastructure, lower operating costs, simplified equipment and maintenance, unified communications, improved scalability, a broader range of features for business operations and additional capabilities.
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SIP TRUNKING
Features Works with any PBX 
Web provisioned in seconds not weeks!
Reduce the need to purchase additional hardware to interface IP voice to the PSTN Eliminate the need for expensive and un-flexible traditional voice circuits
Easy integration with gateways or IP-PBX equipment.
Cheaper long distance on a SIP trunk when compared to traditional rates
Free local and office-to-office calling
Disaster recovery options
Number portability (keep your number)
Web based telephone number management
Geographic Redundancy in our network
Detailed call accounting - call history and logs
Supports high-call capacity without voice degradation
Benefits
Save
- Converge your local, long distance and broadband Internet services onto a single pipe with dynamic bandwidth allocation
- Reduce toll charges on long distance calls and eliminate them on local and on-network calls
- Reduce hardware costs and leverage your existing legacy system investment with seamless integration
- Leverage dynamic bandwidth allocation to maximize your network
Scale
- Instantly, incrementally and infinitely scale your business communications as demand dictates
Simplify and Consolidate
Bring all of your communication needs into one location with one bill and one point of contact.
Choose DIDs from anywhere in the country and serve them to the central PBX simply and efficiently
Survive
Disaster recovery is faster and more efficient through the use of our IP network’s distributed architecture. Our trunking features reside in the network and not at the customer’s premise. Therefore, in the event of a disaster, calls can be easily redirected to another unaffected location.
Our new “layered-on” feature set empowers your communication solution with reliability, redundancy and survivability. We make SIP trunking simple. Provision siptrunks in 60 hours rather than weeks. Manage your registration, trunk group services and even powerful user base services at the service provider level.
Productivity Pak Includes:
Voice Portal Calling —Use any phone as if calling right from your VoIP phone. All calls will be charged to the VoIP phone and not to cell phones, home phones, etc.
Remote Office —
Enable any phone at any location to operate as your primary office phone
Simultaneous Ring —
Ring several devices at the same time
Call Manager —
Access and change phone features from your personal Web interface
Call Forwarding —
Always, Busy, No Answer
One-Click Dialing —
Highlight a number from the web browser and right-click to call
Outlook™ Integration —
MS Outlook™ contact pop-up call notifications and more
14-Way Instant Conferencing —
Add up to 14 users instantly without a conference deck
SimpleToolbar —
Control call functions from one simple interface that integrates with Internet Explorer™ and Outlook™
Voicemail to Email —
All voicemails are sent to your email inbox
Additional Ala Carte Features:
Burstable Trunk Groups —
Place or receive calls even though all of your circuits are busy. Trunk channels are temporarily provisioned to accommodate bursts of traffic
Auto Attendant —
Provides a personalized message to callers with options to dial by name or extension
Account Codes —
Enables the tracking of calls by prompting users for an account code
Hunt Groups —
Sends calls in a specified order to the first available person
Music on Hold —
Upload audio files to be broadcast to parties on hold
Automatic Call Distribution —
Call queuing for call centers
Custom Ringback —
Specify custom audio files such as music, corporate greetings for ringback tones instead of a standard ring tone
New! Enhanced SimpleSIP Features:
Burstable Activity on Trunk Group
SIP trunks are now available with an enhanced "burstable" feature, temporarily allowing for more trunk channels than provisioned to accomodate bursts of traffic, thus increasing the call completion rate.
Unreachable Trunk Disposition
This enhanced feature allows for specifying alternate routing rules when the trunk is unreachable, thus improving trunk survivability.
Busy Trunk Disposition
This enhanced feature allows for specifying alternate routing rules when all trunk channels are busy, thus improving trunk survivability.
Unreachable/Busy Trunk Alerting
This enhanced feature allows for reporting conditions where trunk users are unreachable or busy.
Bulk Trunk Provisioning
Configure an entire trunk in a single step and configure a range of numbers against a trunk group.