I think I may have seen the future of the PBX recently….and it looks to radically shake up the status quo.

I’ve always found it amusing that the first IP PBX manufacturers boasted about putting voice on an IP network. That seemed to be a big “feature” at the time. However, in and of itself, it really didn’t deliver much value to the buyer. In fact, it brought an unknown onto the customer’s data network and required them to replace their Ethernet switches with new switches that supported POE. The biggest feature of buying a new Cisco system was that it alleviated excess cash in the buyer’s bank account.

There were the claims of easier administration and being able to move phones just by unplugging them and plugging them in at a new location. Oh yeah, and Unified Messaging. However, the big secret that the IP manufacturers never shared was that all of this was available on the lowly TDM system.

I always thought that we’d have really arrived at IP PBX nirvana when voice became a true part of the data network. With the arrival of the SIP standards, we are rapidly getting to this point. I call it the 2^nd generation of IP PBX.

The low hanging fruit in adopting SIP is SIP trunking and telephones. So, you can save money on your phone bill and use Polycom phones on your new PBX. Both options are quite welcome and provide true value for moving to IP telephony.

However, the sea change coming is from SIP-based applications that are just starting to arrive. Once we can truly integrate voice, data and mobile devices, we’ll start seeing some huge productivity and communications gains.

Recently, I’ve gotten very familiar with the SIP-based Digium Switchvox and have been mightily impressed.

Here are a few of the things I like:

Free Upgrades -Switchvox software releases are free to any user on a current maintenance agreement. Most manufacturers charge a substantial fee for software upgrades.

Video calling – Switchvox supports video phones on the desktop. A great example is the Grandstream GXV300 that we use here at Teledynamic.

Instant messaging – Switchvox includes a private chat server that uses the open XMPP protocol.

Centralized presence – Presence and status details for call and chat activity are visible across multiple peered Switchvox PBXs.

Switchboard - Switchboard is a real-time, web-based call control panel.  It provides call recording, phone book drag n’ drop transfers, click-to-call, and screen pops among many more features.

Google Map – See the physical location of an incoming call via a pop-up Google map. Now just how cool is that!

Call Queuing – Switchbox has a built-in ACD, with monitoring, recording and reporting features.

CRM Integration – Swithvox integrates with CRM programs such as Salesforce and SugarCRM.

All-in-all, this is a very impressive product. Something the traditional IP PBX manufacturers such as Cisco and Shoretel (and yes we can call these proprietary IP system providers “traditional”) do not want to see. I’ve seen the future of the office PBX and it’s from the most unlikely of places, Huntsville, Alabama, home of the Digium Corporation.

Please share your thoughts.

Randy Kremlacek

Randy is the President of Teledynamic Communications. The company specializes in premise-based and hosted SIP PBX’s, pbx monitoring and Unified Communications.