Called “NextPBX” the new Unified Communications platform, available today from www.voicenation.com, allows entrepreneurs and small businesses to access rich communications services taken for granted by larger firms.

The UC (Unified Communications) capabilities of the NextPBX are highlighted by the user-friendly Presence Management tools that enable the virtual PBX to adapt to individual workdays. Jay Reeder, President of VoiceNation, explains, “We don’t feel that technology companies should ask their customers to adapt their lives to their services, so we developed the NextPBX to adapt to our customers instead. That means that they can worry about their responsibilities and not their service.”

“When I’m in a critical meeting yet still need to allow a few people to reach me,” says Lisa Calhoun, President of Atlanta business writing agency Write2Market, “I can let the service screen calls, and turn that feature off as soon as I’m out of the meeting.”

Reeder explains, “It’s like having your own personal communication assistant for taking dictation, screening calls, and routing calls appropriately whether you’re on the road, in a meeting, or on vacation.”

The NextPBX features include all of the standard virtual PBX capabilities, such as message delivery to email, virtual inbound and outbound faxing, find me follow me features and much more. In addition, users can also benefit from the groundbreaking Presence Management (PM) capabilities that allow them to set their service to follow them wherever their business day requires. Users also have access to business intelligence reports, a feature unique to VoiceNation, allowing them to stay ahead of the game.

Another industry feature first delivered by VoiceNation that users won’t find anywhere else, is the flexibility to choose between four different service applications. This allows users to change their NextPBX extensions or SimplyONE service to a Virtual Personal Assistant, a standard Voicemail service, a Hotline greeting, or a simple Redirect service, all for the same monthly price.

VoiceNation uses this same technology with the single user in mind with SimplyONE. It provides all identical features to the NextPBX without the auto-attendant and extensions.

VoiceNation is the first in the industry to shape a product like the PBX into a full featured Unified Communications and Presence Management service. Business owners can now abandon nondescript services that lack the essential tools that the NextPBX can provide in one complete package.

“The NextPBX is a new model and a true evolution of virtual PBX solutions that we think customers will immediately find compelling because it delivers practical value while providing next generation capabilities,” says Reeder. “We’ve really worked to go beyond the call.”

New customers can get NextPBX just by going to the VoiceNation web site at www.voicenation.com and signing up. Pricing starts below $10/month.

About VoiceNation
VoiceNation is committed to helping small businesses succeed by providing creative, cost-effective, full service Unified Communications. With over 100,000 clients nationwide, VoiceNation defines what’s next in virtual communications, freeing businesses to focus on their customers–not their calls. VoiceNation is the only full service voice and virtual PBX provider in all 50 states, with options that include voicemail-to-email, fax-to-email, voicemail, on hold messaging, Virtual PBX, answering services and disaster recovery voicemail, fax, and email back up solutions. For more information contact info @ voicenation.com.

* PABX - Private Automatic Branch eXchange
* EPABX - Electronic Private Automatic Branch eXchange

A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a small telephone switch owned by a company or organization. These organizations purchase PBX’s to reduce the total number of telephone lines they need to lease from the telephone company. Without a PBX, a company will need to lease one telephone line for every employee with a telephone.

With a PBX system, the company only needs to lease as many lines from the telephone company as the maximum number of employees that will be making outside calls at one time. This is usually around 10% of the number of extensions.

In a PBX system, every telephone is wired to the PBX. When an employee takes the receiver off hook (i.e. picks up the telephone) and dials the outside access code (usually 9), the PBX connects the employee to an outside line (often, though somewhat incorrectly, referred to as a trunk). Because they incorporate telephones, fax machines, modems, and more, the general term “extension” is used to refer to any end point on the branch.

PBXs are differentiated from “key systems” in that users of key systems manually select their own outgoing lines, while PBXs select the outgoing line automatically. Hybrid systems combine features of both.

Initially, the primary advantage of PBXs was cost savings on internal phone calls: handling the circuit switching locally reduced charges for local phone service. As PBXs gained popularity, they started offering services that were not available in the operator network, such as hunt groups, call forwarding, and extension dialing. In the 1960s a simulated PBX known as Centrex provided similar features from the central telephone exchange.

Two significant developments during the 1990s led to new types of PBX systems. One was the massive growth of data networks and increased public understanding of packet switching. Companies needed packet switched networks for data, so using them for telephone calls was tempting, and the availability of the Internet as a global delivery system made packet switched communications even more attractive. These factors led to the development of the VoIP PBX. (Technically, nothing was being “exchanged” anymore, but the abbreviation PBX was so widely understood that it remained in use.)

Hosted PBX

Many companies realized that handling their own telephony was not their core competence. These considerations gave rise to the concept of hosted PBX. In a hosted setup, the PBX is located at and managed by the telephone service provider, and features and calls are delivered via the Internet. The customer just signs up for a service, rather than buying and maintaining expensive hardware. This essentially removes the branch from the private premises, moving it to a central location.

What is a Hosted PBX?

A hosted PBX system delivers PBX functionality as a service to the end user by an established telecom carrier. The PBX equipment is housed on the premises of the carrier rather than the customer location.

The hosted PBX relieves the business owner of the cost of purchasing and installing PBX equipment. The carrier can (in some configurations) use the same switching equipment to service multiple PBX hosting accounts. Users typically contract PBX services through a lease agreement with the carrier.

The first hosted PBX service was very feature-rich compared to most premise-based systems of the time. Some features such as follow-me calling were available from hosted services before they became available in hardware PBX equipment.

Hosted PBX systems can handle far more capacity than customer premise equipment - and it can change as the customer’s needs change as well.

Advantages of a Hosted PBX

The most obvious advantage could be the fact that a hosted PBX eliminates the need for companies to manage or pay for on-site hardware maintenance. No large capital outlay is required for hosted PBX services. Extensions can be added (or deleted) as the business grows. In short, hosted PBX customers pay only for what they need. This can be a huge economical advantage for a small, fast-growing company.

When phone traffic is high, on-site PBX systems can ring busy. A hosted PBX, however, generally has a lot more available lines and can handle a much higher number of simultaneous calls.

Today, it is possible to get hosted PBX service that includes far more features than were available from the first systems of this class.

The following are just a few of the features that make a hosted PBX solution attractive to a small or medium sized business:

1) It can allow for a single number to be presented for an entire company even if the company is geographically distributed. A company could even and have no central location at all. A hosted PBX can be set up so that home workers are connected using their domestic telephones and still take advantage of the same features as any PBX user.

2) A hosted PBX allows for multimodal access. Employees have the ability to access the network via a variety of telecommunications systems, including POTS, ISDN, cellular phones, and VOIP. This allows one extension to ring in multiple locations (either concurrently or sequentially).

3) It supports integration with custom toll plans (that allow intra company calls, even from private premises, to be dialed at a cheaper rate) and integrated billing and accounting (where calls made on a private line but on the company’s behalf are billed centrally to the company).

4) A hosted PBX can evenly distribute calls to a department among available employees through Automatic Call Distribution (ACD). A menu of options can be set up for directing the call. The possibilities are endless.

5) It can provide detailed call records and real-time system management. This ability is not only convenient but can help cut costs with the proper monitoring and management of calls and traffic.

Keep in mind that all features are not available with every hosted PBX service. It is up to the customer to determine the features they need and choose a carrier based on those specific needs.

Next time your company considers a telecom system upgrade or change, be sure you check into hosted PBX solutions.

Submitted by: TelCon Associates, Inc.

That is a question that more and more businesses are asking themselves. The use of sophisticated PBX systems by a growing number of organizations provides fertile ground for hackers and those bent on committing what can result in serious toll fraud.

How bad can it be? Here are just a few samples of charges incurred due to PBX fraud (source:police records)

• New York City Human Resources - $704,000
  

• Proctor and Gamble - $300,000
  

• Sumitomo Bank - $97,000
  

• Tennessee Valley Authority - $65,000

What is a PBX?

A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a telephone switch that is installed on the premises of a medium to large size company. The PBX allows many users to share outside lines, significantly reducing the number of lines needed to be leased from the local phone company.

The on-site PBX provides more telecommunications services control to the organization. Today, even the most basic PBX systems have a wide range of capabilities that were previously only available in large scale switches.

Unfortunately, more control also brings with it the opportunity for a variety of fraud and unwanted intrusions to your PBX.

The Many Types of PBX Threats

The ongoing threats to your PBX phone system are many. Some are more common than others and the threat is dependent on the goal of the attackers or hackers. Almost all will fall into one of the following types:

Theft of Service
Toll fraud is by far the most common threat to your PBX. Remote access features allow employees who are away from the office to call into the PBX to gain access for placing outgoing calls.

These calls are billed to the outgoing telephone line connected to the PBX. Unauthorized individuals who obtain access to the PBX itself and the authorization codes to make long distance calls can obviously rack up huge bills for their corporate victims.

Once in possession of this valuable information, professional toll fraud crooks can place calls to anywhere in the world - all at the company’s expense. Some will sell this information to others only to further compound corporate telecom losses.

Many cases of toll fraud result from insiders or vendors who disclose the phone numbers, IDs and passwords necessary for breaching PBX security.

Disclosure of Information
This includes data disclosed without authorization, either by deliberate action or by accident. Examples could include eavesdropping on conversations or unauthorized access to routing and address data.

Modifying Data
This threat includes data altered in some meaningful way by reordering, deleting or modifying it. For example, an intruder or hacker may change billing information, or modify system tables to gain access to additional services.

Unauthorized Access
Includes actions that permit an unauthorized user to gain access to system resources and/or privileges.

Denial of Service
Includes actions that prevent the system from functioning in accordance with its intended purpose. For example, a piece of equipment or entity may be rendered inoperable or forced to operate in a degraded state. Also, operations that depend on timeliness may be delayed.

Traffic Analysis
This threat is a passive form of attack in which an intruder observes information about calls and makes inferences, e.g. from the source and destination numbers, or frequency and length of the messages.

For example, an intruder may observe a high volume of calls between a company’s legal department and the Patent Office, and concludes that a patent is being filed.

The threat of PBX fraud is real. To effectively prevent losses you need a contingency plan for keeping your PBX safe and secure. Download this free-66 page PBX Security Report for help in setting up your plan.