Hosted PBX Trends

Over the past few years there have been numerous online discussions and articles on the subject of “cost” and “price/performance” of the Hosted PBX. Today these discussions are sounding more and more like outdated statements of the obvious. Yes, it is obvious that Hosted PBX is far more feature rich and cost effective than traditional PBX or outdated Centrex services, but that isn’t the point. Appropriately chosen communication technology very directly impact ways and speed with which business is being conducted, more important than ever in the current economic climate.

Recognizing the Value of Hosted PBX

For most businesses, however, communications does not fall into realm of their core competencies. Conventional school of thought preaches that you are not going to be a better law firm, architecture firm, pizza shop, etc by running a better phone system than the competition. But that simply isn’t true any longer. With Hosted PBX services reaching beyond simple voice or SIP trunking and becoming full Unified Communications solution, we see promotion of Hosted PBX as a smarter strategic play for SMBs. The value of converging — or integrating — data, voice and video communications over a single IP network comes in the improved ability of people to share, discuss and develop ideas with colleagues anywhere in the world. Voice itself can become a “killer app.” The new standard environment integrates voice mail, global telephone network, directory, presence, unified messaging capability, text-to-speech, conferencing, online phone, address book and more. Enterprises adding voice to other IP-compliant applications really begin to see what the technology can do for them.

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Android As Your Desk Phone

Android gained huge popularity with smartphone manufacturers, so it should come as no surprise that the desk phones featuring Android operating platform would start appearing. Lots of companies have been rumored to be working on Android tablets this year in the wake of the iPad 3 launch. What we haven’t heard much of until now is an Android-based desktop handset. Some have recently begun working on Android-powered desk phones.

Why put Android on a desk ? For one: plenty of apps, including visual voicemail, calendars, SMS, and email. Android-based technology offers you the first phone that gets smarter over time instead of obsolete. The other reason is that Google has broad plans for Android. In May of 2011 as it was shipping its new 3.1 version of Android at the company’s annual developer’s conference, Google announced that the next release of its operating system will offer features that would make it more suitable for use on a a big-screen, multi-touch desktop computer. And this, my friends, could have far reaching consequences for Apple and even Microsoft.

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