Telecom Market to Be Revolutionized by Virtual PBXs

At a time where companies require an easy, fast and flexible way to communicate, the implementation of virtual PBX systems is becoming extremely popular. Rob Lith, director of Connection Telecom, recently added to this sentiment in a statement revealing, “Things change, sometimes very quickly and not always out in the open. So it is with hosted or cloud PBX solutions.”

It was back in April that BMI-TechKnowledge published the most recent SA PBX market report that showed the steady increase in cloud-based PBXs. Some of the indications that this trend would explode over the next coming years pointed to the fact that many organizations have begun to rely on converged PBX, better known as CBX, solutions.

According to a recent piece, some interesting facts were highlighted in the report. For example, at large enterprises that utilize more than 128 ports, CBX solutions have started to dominate the market as unit shipments have increased significantly.  Also, at medium-sized companies that utilize 32 to 128 ports, CBXs showed an increased growth rate in comparison to analogue and digital platforms. In addition, CBXs have continued to increase in overall shipments as digital PBX sales have decreased.

Although it is clear that more businesses are adopting CBXs, it is still too early to see exactly which type of CBX will reign over the competition. Currently, the report revealed that Cisco was ahead in the enterprise VoIP arena, while in the medium-sized segment Mitel and NEC-Philips came out ahead.

In the past, the PBX market has been segmented into number of ports; however, due to the dramatic increase in flexibility that is provided via cloud solutions, this categorization method could be completely eliminated. Also, due to the wide amount of organizations seeing the crucial importance of PBXs within the next year, the excluding of PBX spend from total market spend in telecoms will be altered, as PBX/CBXs have become a vital segment of telecoms spend, Lith added.

Looking ahead at next year, it is no secret that the virtual PBX and CBX market all around the world but specifically in South Africa, will change dramatically. Once other countries see the multiple benefits associated with the widespread use of this innovative technology, you can be sure the trend will spread like wildfire.