Johannesburg, 07 Feb 2011
Vox Orion, the managed voice services provider within the Vox Telecom Group, has added a critical plank to its converged communications platform with the launch of Verto, its hosted PABX service.
Verto will offer customers substantial cost savings as well as much greater flexibility and scalability than traditional physical PABX systems, says Vox Orion MD Jacques du Toit. “Until very recently cost has been the major barrier to fully IP-based telephony. Now, the full-featured commercial open source solution behind Verto allows us to offer the service from just R99 per extension per month, including the handset, telephony equipment and licence fees.”
“The move to cloud computing and hosted services is part of every CIO's top 10 priorities,” adds Du Toit. “Moving to the cloud not only promises cost reductions, it also enables greater agility and speed to market, as well as being more energy-efficient.”
Verto, the result of a partnership between Vox Orion and IP PBX experts Connection Telecom, provides all the features of a high-end PABX in a single integrated product.
“We've made detailed comparisons between this product and big-name PABX systems, and in terms of features and quality there is very little difference,” says Connection Telecom's Dave Meintjes. “The real difference is in the pricing: we offer a single price for everything, where all the other vendors charge per feature. Customers are tired of having to pay extra every time they want to turn on a new feature.”
Du Toit believes Verto, run over Vox Orion's Cristal Vox VOIP network, will allow customers finally to untether themselves completely from old-school service providers. “You won't need to have anything to do with Telkom ever again,” he says. “So long as you have a voice-ready LAN, you can get a fully managed voice and data service.”
Customers using an IP PABX typically enjoy savings of 30% to 50% per month on their line rental costs alone, says Meintjes. “Then you also have to add the savings that come from keeping calls on-network or routing them via the least-cost operator.
“Many companies have large bills for internal mobile-to-mobile calls because calling a mobile is the most reliable way to reach someone,” he says. “But most phones these days are SIP enabled, which means they can talk to the PABX: the calls can be routed over the internal IP network instead of via the mobile operator. That adds another massive potential saving.”
Meintjes adds that the application also enables seamless remote working, with employees able to receive calls to a single number regardless of their location.
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