PBX-Telephone Systems
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On Site PBX.
What is it, how is it changing, is there still a place of on-premises?
Given all the adverts proliferating through Social Media you’d be forgiven for thinking that the whole world had gone cloud and the trusted on-site telephone system was confined to the history books but is that really the case?
What is a PBX?
Coined in the 1970’s, PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange (and sometimes referred to as Private Automatic Branch Exchange or PABX) is a telephone system that a business uses to manage inbound and outbound telephone calls. The PBX aggregates external exchange lines connected to the public telephone network, and internal extensions using a set of rules to ensure that the calls are routed correctly. As with all technology these machines grew in complexity and added new features as the technology evolved, adapting to customer demand whilst also driving business transformation.
Eventually the PBX morphed from a physical device with physical components to become more of a software application, creating a more versatile solution and bringing hitherto expensive features into the realms of smaller business budgets. Where voicemail once cost the same as the telephone system itself, it soon became a standard feature.
So what makes up a PBX telephone system has 3 key components:
- The brains or call control unit (CCU)
- The connectivity to the outside world be that SIP, ISDN, PSTN, etc
- The endpoints or handsets.
When we talk about how these might be deployed we are essentially talking about where the brains are located in relation to the users. This will also largely affect which connectivity option is chosen.
On-Site
As the name suggests, the CCU is located on the customers premises. In days gone by this was a physical box manufactured by vendors such as Avaya, Mitel, Panasonic, etc and would have swappable components such as line cards and extension cards. Just before the emergence of Hosted/Cloud services, Software based PBX’s began to emerge and now most PBX solutions would be a dedicated server with the PBX software installed upon it that lives in the comms or server room.
Hosted/Cloud
This solution has come a long way since its infancy just a few short years ago and is now the most popular option for new telephone systems. The CCU is “hosted” in a datacentre where many instances can be deployed on a single server through virtualisation and multi-tenanting.
Virtual
The best of both worlds some would say. Your own PBX to manage and control as you like, allowing better integrations with other and often bespoke applications is housed in your own dedicated datacentre server or rack which also provides the mobility benefits of a hosted solution.
How the PBX Has Evolved.
Technological development is often cyclical with evolution driven by the changing needs of its consumers as they adopt the technological innovation and the trusted PBX is no exception. In the 1970’s the PBX was developed to help larger organisations manage the increasing demand of customers’ access to telephones and were manual switching boards requiring operators to patch calls through to the right extensions. This was then automated as mechanical and electronic technologies were adapted and additional features were added such as voicemail and automated attendant.
During the 1990’s,
So why would you choose one option over the other? Cost maybe, feature set, integrations or control over the solution?
