The concept of hosted services has gained much attention in the last year as organizations have recognized the need for streamlining operations and reducing the costs associated with running a business. One area that offers significant improvements in cost is that of communications as companies can leverage a virtual PBX to gain greater capabilities and lower overall costs.

This recent Telecom Reseller (News - Alert) piece focused on the partnership between Smoothstone and Sprint (News - Alert) which will enable Smoothstone to expand its target market for its virtual PBX and unified communications services for companies in the small-medium business market, as well as large enterprises. This move is viewed as reflecting the maturity in the cloud-based market and a wider acceptance of services that are available through hosted options.

When organizations can leverage a virtual PBX, they gain access to services that are scalable, unified, cost effective and fully managed, delivering benefits far beyond mere cost reductions. Solutions can include collaboration, conference calling, telephony, presence and even mobile functionality, which are all in high demand in this current market.

With a virtual PBX in place, SMB users have enjoyed access to a single number that allows them to be reached whether they are in the office, or out in the field. This single number can also be used for voice mail and other communications, while the company enjoys extended capabilities such as abbreviated dialing plans, personal call controls, conferencing and more.

Smoothstone’s (News - Alert) partnership with Sprint will help the company to extend its offerings to the larger enterprise. Of course, this does leave some speculation as to how big the enterprise can really be to leverage the capabilities of the virtual PBX (News - Alert), yet both Sprint and Smoothstone claim there is no limit to what the network can do.