By Ashley Caputo, TMCnet Web Editor

The virtual office has begun to take over work environments thanks to trends like bring your own device and new technologies in the digital space. But just how important is it for businesses to have such virtual capabilities?

To answer that question TMCnet got the chance to sit down with Phone.com (News - Alert), a provider of communication solutions, and its vice president, Joel Maloff, to discuss the changes in the modern day office.

Virtual phone services are changing the business world as dramatically as mobile phones. Fax services also continue to evolve with technologies like Fax over IP, which is not limited to geographical locations. 

“A ‘virtual office’ can include teleworkers in many different cities or even countries yet continue to have the appearance of a single phone number or telephone system,” says Maloff. “As twenty-first century businesses, we need to cast aside the constraints of twentieth century communications and learn how to take advantage of a truly mobile, diverse, and distributed work environment.”

Phone.com offers virtual business phones with a unique combination of assets that include extremely high quality service, robust features and functionality, very competitive pricing, and an interest in continuing to find complimentary services and partners focused on small businesses.  Unlike other phone companies Phone.com pays mind to small businesses looking for a competitive edge to play against larger competitor. “This drives us to find ways to help them succeed,” says Maloff.

And with the benefits of the virtual office parallels the BYOD trend, which allows employees to connect their mobile devices to their offices and fulfill their daily operations out on them. Today you can do almost anything from a mobile device like send and receive faxes, create PDFs, participate in a video conference and recording finance and accounting information.

There are many benefits to be had from this type of work environment, as it saves businesses the cost of purchasing new computers or phones and creates more opportunities to work from home.  It is easy to see how mobile devices are taking over the traditional office, but Maloff believes that it will not fully happen right now, despite the benefits of using mobile devices as an extension of the corporate network environment.

 “This, however, is not without risk. Dissimilar devices can become a nightmare for enterprise network technical support and can bypass perimeter network defenses to introduce malware, viruses, and other methods of attack,” says Maloff. “Networking manager will need to learn how to live in the BYOD world but it is unlikely that these will replace core elements of enterprise networks in the near future.”

Although it is unclear whether there will be a mobile takeover, right now it is important that offices are equipped with these virtual tools in order to stay ahead of the competition. For more information on Phone.com’s virtual phone service, click here.