"VoIP Telephony: Benefits for Businesses"

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly more important for businesses to leverage technology to run efficiently and cost effectively. As we've started to see in 2004, Voice Over IP solutions are allowing leading companies to trade their traditional PBX systems for Internet Protocol based systems.

Hosted IP voice services (also known as IP Centrex) move the PBX telephone system out of your office and onto a managed subset of the public Internet, which can dramatically reduce your company's total cost of ownership while maintaining enterprise-class reliability. By eliminating the need to purchase PBX hardware, hosted IP solutions minimize up-front and ongoing capital expenditures. Hosted IP systems can also significantly reduce annual operating costs by linking numerous remote locations into a single centralized system with a simplified web-based interface to manage moves, adds, and changes. Because there is no system to buy and all software and hardware upgrades are managed by the service provider, there is also a reduced risk of technology obsolescence.

In most companies with fewer than 1000 employees, the decision to move to a hosted IP system can lead to annual savings of up to 30%, with full payback in 12-18 months. Add in free on-net calling, Optional Automated Attendant/Voice Mail unified messaging & voice/web conferencing, combine that with employee productivity improvements, and the move quickly translates into a positive Return On Investment. All of this for a basic business service that starts as low as $ 20.00 per month.