Hosted Virtual PBX Systems

The kind of installation is what differentiates hosted PBX systems from traditional premise based phone systems. Hosted PBX systems are not installed at the customer’s premises like the latter ones. The service providers maintain them at their sites itself. Since these devices are implemented in a virtual environment, they are also referred to as virtual PBX systems.

The hosted/virtual PBX systems are more advantageous compared to traditional ones and the benefits include:

•    Ease of installation
•    No expensive switching equipments required
•    Cost of operation is low
•    Facilitates easy management
•    Greater scalability

A hosted/virtual PBX system has all the features such as auto attendant, virtual receptionist, find me follow me call forwarding, voicemail, fax mail, and so on that are found in a modern phone system. The auto attendant greets the callers with a professional sounding greeting message and then routes the calls to the right person according to the extension selected by the caller.

With a hosted PBX system, it is possible to have a single telephone number for the entire firm even if it has many branches spread over different geographical locations. On the other hand, even if you have no company premises for your small business, you can still receive the same features of a conglomerate phone system through a virtual IP phone system.

In a hosted (virtual) PBX system the extensions are associated with individuals and not any phone. Thus the user can receive calls from anywhere irrespective of his present location. The user can program a list of phone numbers including his cell phone number and residence number, where he will be available, in the virtual PBX systems. The hosted system associates these numbers with the user’s office extension number.  Any call to this extension number will be automatically redirected to the alternate phone numbers utilizing the call forwarding facility. In this way the hosted (virtual) PBX systems empower business personnel to operate their business from anywhere.

Since these systems are scalable to a large extent, additional phone lines and extensions can be added as required at a later period. As the hosted phone service is shared among a number of users, the expense involved is also low.