Next-Gen Offers Adopt Classic Feature Sets

While VoIP can offer cost savings and productivity-enhancing tools, business customers – particularly the small ones – are less than eager to part with features of their familiar – albeit outdated – key systems, PBXs or Centrex services. With this in mind, hosted and software-based IP PBX vendors are beginning to roll out offers that preserve many of these functions while enabling businesses to move to a more flexible VoIP platform.

One example is found in Whaleback Systems’ new release of its managed CrystalBlue Voice Service, which was announced this week (see story) The offer combines Whaleback Systems’ SMB 1500 IP PBX with a managed broadband service. In its initial release last February, CrystalBlue offered some key system features, such as intercom groups, and shared and bridged line appearances for both local and remote phones. The new release adds page all, page zones, handsfree answer back, call diversion, call screening, multilevel automated attendant and multiple operator services.

“It’s an architectural advantage that we have where we can deliver these things because there is a premises-based PBX that’s provided as part of the model,” said Don Hausman, senior director of product management and marketing for Whaleback Systems, challenging hosted IP telephony service providers to mirror these capabilities. “If you are provisioning 10,000 users across 20 customers or 200 customers, it’s very difficult to deliver a service [like call screening, which requires recording and playback of caller names] in a hosted model … because it is bandwidth-intensive to be processing those types of messages and playing them out to the callers. That’s something we can do because we control the pipes, because we control the network side of things from the Sonus gateway all they way down to the handset.”

Features like paging and page zones that are commonly used by SMBs such as car dealerships can be impacted by latency and jitter and are performed on the local customer site through the IP PBX. “From a hosted standpoint, where you are trying to send a broadcast voice announcement to 10,000 phones or a subset of those phones is very difficult to do across different media – bandwidth pipes that is. This is something we can do for our customers.”

A few new hosted IP telephony offers are rising to the challenge. One of these is Harmonica Complete from VoxPath Networks. Introduced in October, the service claims to emulate familiar telephone system features, such as call forward, call transfer, call hold, call waiting, mute, redial and conferencing. It also offers music on hold, which can be programmed for the user, group or global organization. Group call distribution, forwarding, coverage and voice messaging also are available.

Unlike many hosted IP offers, Harmonica Complete was not based on common platforms from Sylantro or Broadsoft, but built from the ground up with small businesses (1-99 users) in mind. “Many small business customers are so entrenched with how they use their phone systems today that when you move to a true IP hosted Centrex service that’s a SIP-based platform or Skinny-based platform and you put that Polycom or Cisco phone in front of them, they don’t know what to do with it. It’s too much of a technology switch for them,” said Michael Fair, vice president of sales for VoxPath.

In particular, companies that have had a key system are looking for a simple key set with programmable keys and blinking lights that show the status of their lines, explained Paul Brown, VoxPath’s vice president of marketing. They want to be able to monitor an extension and see that someone is on a call, or be able to put a call on hold at one station and walk to another and pick it up on the same line, he said.

“We have added on top of that the features that they have not had in the past, like auto attendant and voice mail, group call routing and direct inward dialing,” Brown said.

Intelliverse is the author of another new hosted offer designed for small businesses with anywhere from two to 30 users per location. Dubbed callEverywhere, the service officially will launch in January and includes many key system features. Although it does not provide for intercom paging, it includes call screening, message waiting lamps, two-way transfer, call forwarding, hunt groups, extension numbering among other many others.

“We copied all of the relevant features but have not yet gotten around to building some of the less-used, obscure features of the key systems,” said Frank Paterno, Intelliverse’s vice president of marketing. He added that VoIP also eliminates some drawbacks of key systems. In the case of callEverywhere, for example, there is no need to purchase proprietary phones since it works with any analog phone available at an office supply store. He also noted that the feature sets of key systems and PBX systems don’t work from remote or home-based offices. “With a VoIP system, users are connected through a true virtual office and every single feature applies regardless of the user’s proximity to the other users in the group,” he said.

Among the value-adds of VoIP then is the ability to extend some of these capabilities, like abbreviated dialing, among disparate sites. Although many of its features are premises-based, Whaleback also is taking advantage of the hosted platform in its new release, which ties locations together logically and supports Multisite Integrated Dial Plans, allowing users to dial a three-digit extension to reach colleagues based in remote locations. This service also includes multilevel automated attendant routing between sites. External callers can dial by name across sites, and receptionists can transfer calls to users located at different sites. And DIDs can be assigned across workgroups even if the employees are located at different sites.

Intelliverse www.intelliverse.com
Voxpath Networks www.harmonicaphones.com
Whaleback Systems www.whalebacksystems.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines