IP Telephones – Smart Answers for Small Business

What is much required to handle a small business? Is it capital, business idea,

employees, the employer or a modern business communication system? Though the

first four are important, lack of proper communication can kill your business. Today, an

IP telephone system turns out to be a very crucial component of a modern business,

playing a critical role in the field of any business. Whether you need to contact an

employee, reply back to your clients, or to support your customers very effectively, only

a powerful telephone system can do the job correctly.

Look for IP Phone System Types

A smart business owner will look at ways of subscribing to an upgraded and modern

communication system. As your business grows, your business phone system must be

able to reach out nationally and internationally and grow with you.

Pure IP System

A pure IP system such as Toshiba’s IPedge gives you powerful features including

messaging, voice mail, and computer data interface. IPedge works exclusively on IP

digital data channels. In other words you can make a call from one IP address to

another. Pure IP business phone systems save a lot off your communication expenses.

You can make unlimited call to another IP address and impress your clients with

advanced unified communication. When the client calls back and you are busy, you will

get a message. Depending upon what settings you have, the system can convert the

customer’s voice message to an email and send it to your email address. Using IP

mobility, you can get the incoming call transferred to your mobile devices including

smart phones, laptops, and tablets.

Hybrid IP System

A Hybrid IP system is ideally suited for a business that is a call center or has dedicated

staff for answering calls. In a Hybrid IP system such as Toshiba’s Strata CIX, you can

mix IP telephony with traditional PSTN line. At the end user level, you can use IP

phones, digital phones or even old analog phones. When you make or receive a call on

your traditional PSTN line, a convertor will transfer the call to your IP address. Similarly,

if you get a call on you IP digital circuit and that is meant for a person who uses a

traditional phone line, the call can be transferred.

Hybrid systems such as Strata CIX allows you to keep your existing phone line and, at

the same time, move slowly and carefully to IP based business communication. It is

kind of getting the best of both worlds.

Hosted IP System

In a hosted IP system, a vendor hosts a pure IP phone system in a cloud and offers you

connections. At your end you need a good internet connection and a few IP capable

phones. A hosted IP system, such as VIPedge from Toshiba, offers you all the benefits

of an advanced pure IP-PBX without the hassles of capital and maintenance

expenditures. Using either a laptop or IP phone, you can use all the advanced features.

Since something like VIPedge is hosted on enterprise grade data centers, you can be

assured of 100% connectivity all the time. In addition, hosted IP systems offer you

Unified Communication and other advanced features.

Based on your requirements and capital adequacy, you can choose one of these

modern business phone systems. The days of traditional PSTN lines are numbered,

and the quicker you move away, the better it is.