Johannesburg, 14 Jan 2011
Vox Orion, the managed voice services provider within the Vox Telecom Group, has launched a hosted PBX service, Verto, that promises to bring all the benefits of cloud computing and hosted services to South Africa's corporate telephony market.
“Verto takes the traditional PBX out of the box and puts all that intelligence into the network,” says Vox Orion MD Jacques du Toit. “It's based on robust and reliable commercial open source technology that's already supporting more than 550 000 extensions.”
Du Toit says Verto is a natural progression of the Vox Telecom Group's strategy to become a complete alternative telecommunications provider. “It's a perfect fit with our Cristal Vox converged voice and data network, and our customers have responded with enthusiasm to this development of our managed services.
“The first organisations to have expressed interest are national companies that have a single large head office and a wide network of small branches,” says Du Toit. “Installing an advanced PBX at each branch has never made financial sense, and as a result the smaller branches have been restricted from a lot of services,” he says. “With Verto, every person, in every branch, has access to exactly the same services, at the same price.”
Other clients have included those wanting to take the first step into IP telephony. “The financial and efficiency benefits of IP telephony are very persuasive, but it's a new field for many people. Several of our clients have installed Verto to test unified communications, presence management and fixed-mobile convergence.”
Verto is particularly attractive, adds Du Toit, because of the exceptionally low risk to the client. “Provided we have conducted a full LAN audit to ensure that the client's network is voice-ready, we guarantee that if they are not happy with the quality of the service they can cancel at any time.”
The basic Verto feature set for Level 1 users includes conference calling, call forwarding, call waiting, alerts, a 'do not disturb' setting, dial-by-name functionality, redials, return calls and pick-up groups. Level 2 users also get access to voicemail, voicemail to e-mail conversion, call recording, hunt and page groups, call screening and summary call histories.
Verto can also integrate easily with external applications, including voice loggers, predictive diallers and telephone management systems. “It combines all the functionality of a traditional PBX and an advanced IP telephony platform,” says Du Toit. “Verto is future-proof as the software is constantly being upgraded and developed to include new technology developments.”
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