Ancient PBX evolves
into new capabilities

Remember PBX? If you do, you were probably involved in running a business in the ebbing days of the last century. Or you recall waiting patiently at a reception desk while staff frantically fielded calls on the cumbersome company switchboard.

Public Branch Exchange, to give its full name, was a phone network for a business’s internal and external communication. And usually, it was a big investment. Today most of those machines are in landfills.

The once-ubiquitous switchboard gradually disappeared as it went virtual and migrated to a computer screen. In the last decade, it completed its transformation into cloud PBX. Now, it is evolving again, as it takes advantage of digital transformation and all the capabilities that come with it.

Rob Lith, chief commercial officer of leading South African communication solutions company Telviva, says it is not just about convenience, but has become crucial to competitiveness, “especially with being able to give customers the ability to communicate how they want – and demand – while enhancing team collaboration”.

As such, it has for some time no longer been about routing calls, but about “unified communication” (UC). One could be forgiven for thinking that smartphones would have made such solutions redundant but, ironically, they are severely limited in their capacity for this role.

“To date we have not seen a comprehensive cellular service where the company has full sight of all the communication and interaction with customers, suppliers and stakeholders,” says Lith. “This is required, for example, when having to comply with regulations in financial services or for recording calls where financial matters are concluded. Integrations with CRM (customer relations management) and business systems are key.”

Now UC is evolving further, into unified communications as a service, or the ungainly acronym of UCaaS.

“This has transformed business communications by offering a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems,” says Lith. “It ensures that technology is up to date, because UCaaS, by its very nature, is continually evolving with feature and functionality upgrades, and not at risk of reaching end of life with minimal support. In other words, by managing communications over the internet there is no need to incur significant hardware, servicing and replacement costs.”

That does not, however, make UCaaS a no-brainer. Last week’s global computer outage that resulted from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sending out a faulty automatic update showed that too much integration can be as bad as too little. UCaaS, in other words, can make a company vulnerable to a single point of failure. Lith says Telviva is keenly aware of the danger.

“We design our service so that the core services, voice and interconnects, are as redundant as possible and set up for high availability within the data centres and cloud services we use across the country.

Remember PBX? If you do, you were probably involved in running a business in the ebbing days of the last century. Or you recall waiting patiently at a reception desk while staff frantically fielded calls on the cumbersome company switchboard.

Public Branch Exchange, to give its full name, was a phone network for a business’s internal and external communication. And usually, it was a big investment. Today most of those machines are in landfills.

The once-ubiquitous switchboard gradually disappeared as it went virtual and migrated to a computer screen. In the last decade, it completed its transformation into cloud PBX. Now, it is evolving again, as it takes advantage of digital transformation and all the capabilities that come with it.

Rob Lith, chief commercial officer of leading South African communication solutions company Telviva, says it is not just about convenience, but has become crucial to competitiveness, “especially with being able to give customers the ability to communicate how they want – and demand – while enhancing team collaboration”.

As such, it has for some time no longer been about routing calls, but about “unified communication” (UC). One could be forgiven for thinking that smartphones would have made such solutions redundant but, ironically, they are severely limited in their capacity for this role.

“To date we have not seen a comprehensive cellular service where the company has full sight of all the communication and interaction with customers, suppliers and stakeholders,” says Lith. “This is required, for example, when having to comply with regulations in financial services or for recording calls where financial matters are concluded. Integrations with CRM (customer relations management) and business systems are key.”

Now UC is evolving further, into unified communications as a service, or the ungainly acronym of UCaaS.

“This has transformed business communications by offering a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems,” says Lith. “It ensures that technology is up to date, because UCaaS, by its very nature, is continually evolving with feature and functionality upgrades, and not at risk of reaching end of life with minimal support. In other words, by managing communications over the internet there is no need to incur significant hardware, servicing and replacement costs.”

That does not, however, make UCaaS a no-brainer. Last week’s global computer outage that resulted from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sending out a faulty automatic update showed that too much integration can be as bad as too little. UCaaS, in other words, can make a company vulnerable to a single point of failure. Lith says Telviva is keenly aware of the danger.

“We design our service so that the core services, voice and interconnects, are as redundant as possible and set up for high availability within the data centres and cloud services we use across the country.

“When it comes to the different unified communications services that are integrated to the central service, we design them as micro services, so that when one has an outage it does not impact others.

“It is then important for the customer to carefully consider the provider they are choosing, not just from the features and functionality view, but the provider’s business stability and their business continuity planning, security policy, how they are regulated, licensed and their support capabilities.

“Then of course they need to have a product that is capable, scalable, robust and reliable, with the expected features that are intuitive to use.”

If a company still has a traditional PBX and it works for them, they are probably on borrowed time. As the machines become obsolete,  vendors adopt an “end of life” strategy and no longer support them. The support for changes, repairs and moves become increasingly costly.

Before long, staff will begin expecting AI services with digital assistants, transcription services, analysis, and other advanced services now emerging. UCaaS is ready for this next phase of communications.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media on @art2gee.

“When it comes to the different unified communications services that are integrated to the central service, we design them as micro services, so that when one has an outage it does not impact others.

“It is then important for the customer to carefully consider the provider they are choosing, not just from the features and functionality view, but the provider’s business stability and their business continuity planning, security policy, how they are regulated, licensed and their support capabilities.

“Then of course they need to have a product that is capable, scalable, robust and reliable, with the expected features that are intuitive to use.”

If a company still has a traditional PBX and it works for them, they are probably on borrowed time. As the machines become obsolete,  vendors adopt an “end of life” strategy and no longer support them. The support for changes, repairs and moves become increasingly costly.

Before long, staff will begin expecting AI services with digital assistants, transcription services, analysis, and other advanced services now emerging. UCaaS is ready for this next phase of communications.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media on @art2gee.