CTS’s IP-PBX business phone systems are designed to meet the voice and data convergence requirements necessary to run your business. With its superior voice quality, CTS IP-PBXs can help your employees connect regardless of where they are physically located. Using CTS’s Voice-over-IP (VoIP) solutions can keep your employees connected with your customers and each other. Below are some frequently asked questions about IP-PBX, Voice-over-IP, VoIP, and IP telephony.
An IP-PBX is a customer premises business phone system that manages telephones throughout the enterprise and acts as a gateway to both voice and data networks. An IP-PBX allows you to place calls using a network instead of standard telephone infrastructure. Telephones can be connected to the IP-PBX via the network and calls can be routed via the network instead of the standard public switched telephone network.
IP Telephony or Internet Protocol Telephony is the transmission of voice signals over the Internet/ wide area network (WAN) or local area network (LAN). IP Telephony uses voice-over-IP to break down voice transmissions into packets of data and transmitting them across a network.
Voice-over-Internet-Protocol or Voice-over-IP or VoIP allows one to send a voice transmission via a network instead of the standard telephone infrastructure. Calls can be routed via the Internet/ wide area network (WAN) or local area network (LAN).
CTS has an evolutionary approach to IP versus a revolutionary approach. We provide a migration strategy that allows our customers to implement both traditional voice and new IP-based services. Other vendors require their customers to move immediately to a pure IP infrastructure for both voice and data. This is a much riskier and more expensive approach and usually means that organizations must upgrade their entire network infrastructure and retrain personnel on operational functions. CTS has taken a different approach that allows its customers to migrate to IP when they are ready and focus on the applications they need today. This approach provides better reliability while still taking advantage of new technology. The system also combines the full support of an IP-PBX with application capabilities. By combining applications within the voice platform companies can more easily affect and manage customer interactions as well as understand customer calling patterns through network-wide reporting. Example application modules include: call routing and queuing; directed marketing messages; store service response; interactive voice response (IVR); connections to backend databases and enterprise applications.
Companies which require IP solutions with the installed LAN/WAN infrastructure can be initially designed with voice-grade Quality of Service (QoS) and a single cabling system can be installed for all communications needs. Pure IP solutions are not cost optimized for deployment in many environments though as these solutions usually require gateways/ additional servers/ and careful network engineering to ensure proper operation.
Multiple Branch Offices With VoIP- expanding your business phone system to multiple branch office sites is easy. Integrated IP Gateways allow you to traffic calls between offices over the Internet and save on long distance charges. Dialing branch offices is as easy as calling an extension down the hall. Make certain that your IP-PBX has an administration tool that simplifies the process of configuring IP gateways between remote systems. Toll Bypass IP-PBXs enable businesses to reduce the cost of long distance calling by routing calls inexpensively over IP networks. If you have overseas facilities- using an IP-PBX could reduce your businesss costs significantly. Remote Office Even if your business has a single remote office- an IP-PBX can give you the flexibility to pick an affordable solution. Purchasing a solution that allows for a small or large number of IP trunks might be right for you. Work From Home CTSs sophisticated IP-PBX software extends easily and seamlessly to your telecommuters/ contractors and consultants and makes them part of the corporate phone system.
The CTS platform can host both custom and third-party applications managed locally or remotely. CTS also provides a simple script-based development environment for custom applications to address specific customer needs. The CTS solution can also be tightly integrated into backend applications and databases enabling companies the ability to provide new customer-facing applications like inventory look-up. Other vendors require additional servers (dedicated for some applications) again adding to the cost of the solution.
The platform should be fully application-ready with the processing power and memory to support third-party applications. The system should be standards-based and use standard application programming interfaces like VoiceXML and TAPI.
Support of legacy and analog and digital handsets should be a top requirement for most IP-PBX installations. Why throw away your existing phones and wiring when the right IP-PBX solution can work with legacy handsets as well as IP. CTS has implemented Koretel IP phone system in front of legacy PBX and is able to route the calls through a T1/PRI. This type of implementation allows for the client to keep the old system while they are adding new IP equipment and phones in a different part of the company of just simply investing slowly on new technology.
The emergence of voice-over-IP networks presents todays business manager with a tough choice when making a long-term phone system purchase decision. Maybe you are not ready to standardize on a one-wire network requiring an expensive network upgrade. Perhaps you have no need for multiple branch communications but want to plan for your future expansion. How do you leave your options open? The right IP-PBX should offer a practical solution providing the flexibility to use your phone system as a traditional PBX/ IP-PBX or a combination of both - the choice (and timing) should be completely up to you.