Rent an IP PBX by model VPBX, or how to organize a modern telephone in the office

Hello!

Today we would like to talk about the possibilities of office IP-telephony and the ways of its organization.

In the understanding of many modern companies, there are two standard ways of organizing office IP-telephony: this is either installing your own office IP-PBX, or using the broad functionality of the Virtual Office.
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On the Habrahabr pages there were several materials telling about the possibilities of organizing office IP-telephony based on Asterisk, the configuration files were described in detail. Also numerous solutions of the “Virtual Office” were presented. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages (if the community is interested, we can put it in a separate material with a comparative analysis).

But very often there are situations when a company cannot afford, as a rule for financial reasons, installation and maintenance of its own IP-PBX - the average budget for such implementation will be from 30,000 rubles. with the equipment, but with the functionality of the "Virtual Office" is clearly not enough. Based on this practice, our company was one of the first among telecom operators to offer a compromise solution to the market - renting an office IP PBX using the VPBX model with already connected telephone numbers. What is this decision?

The VPBX (Virtual PBX) model implies deploying multiple virtual machines with installed IP-PBX software distributions, for example, based on Asterisk. All virtual machines are located in the data center of the telecom operator, connected to transit VoIP servers within the same physical network in order to reduce losses during data transmission and are configured to work for receiving / making calls (number capacity in code 495 or 499 is highlighted).

In fact, we have the same IP-PBX as in the office, only physically rendered outside the office. VPBX capabilities allow you to configure it in accordance with the personal tasks of each company, connect remote offices to a single network, set up your call distribution routes, keep records of telephone conversations, refine the platform for your specific business processes and many other features that are not available within “ Virtual Office.

The main consumers of VPBX are companies that have already “grown” from the “Virtual Office”, but cannot afford to maintain their own IP PBX. As a rule, these are companies of 5-20 people who need a personal approach to setting up office telephony.

Advantages of the VPBX model

• No cost for the purchase of the IP PBX itself - we buy all servers for virtual machines independently and at our own expense,
• Installation, configuration and maintenance of VPBX is carried out by our technical department - payment is included in the subscription fee,
• Personalized IP-PBX settings - the client chooses an internal numbering plan, the procedure for landing calls, individual route cards for different incoming numbers and modes of work on a schedule,
• Independence from the location of the subscriber - you can connect both from the office and from any other place where there is Internet,
• When moving all settings are saved,
• Assistance in setting up remote client equipment, leaving the office if necessary,
• Remote monitoring of operability and prompt resolution of problems in case of detection of any failures,
• Ability to build secure telephone networks using VPN tunnels, confidentiality of data transmission between extension numbers,
• Ensuring and monitoring security - timely software update on the platform,
• Isolation and connection of own numbering capacity (495) or (499), organization of outgoing trunks - complete call quality control throughout the entire route chain,
• Work “from the first person” - we ourselves are a telecom operator, not a traffic aggregator or “owner” of the “Virtual Office” platform,
• If your office has turned off the Internet or electricity, VPBX will continue to receive calls, will include a voice greeting and automatically redirect calls to employees' mobile phones in automatic mode - you get a backup communication channel compared to an IP PBX in the office.

Disadvantages of the VPBX model

Among the shortcomings of the solution, it can be noted: the possibility of disconnecting the communication channel in the data center (for example, damage to the city collector) or other other force majeure circumstances, the occurrence of which is probably no higher than in the company's office. A prerequisite is the presence of a fairly stable and wide Internet access channel at the client's office - otherwise the quality of the conversation will not be as high as it could be. In addition, there are frequent cases when many unscrupulous providers block the passage of SIP-traffic in their networks. But this is a topic for a separate material, how to deal with it.

Technical implementation

If we talk about the technical side of the issue, then on virtual machines we install the FreePBX distribution kit with our own modifications to the call distribution module, API and other unique features that you, as a rule, cannot get within the “Virtual Office”. For example, one of our customers, owners of an online store with remote operators (about 10 people working at home), needed control over each operator and dynamic distribution of calls depending on the degree of operator employment - so that the load on answering calls was evenly distributed between operators . This module was added and implemented for all our clients and other VPBX for free. Often, our customers are generators of improvements that we are happy to implement for them.

Our VPBX allows you to integrate with various company business systems. For example, through the API, we have the ability to send information about incoming calls in XML format to any CRM, where the call will be recorded and processed by the employee. Through Callback, we can make calls from CRM through the click-do-dial mechanism. One example of such a project is the full integration of all VPBX capabilities with SugarCRM - the project was implemented with the integrator and developer of this CRM in Russia (by the way, access to this solution can be obtained using the SaaS model).

Yes, such an approach to work requires constant interaction with the client, you need to be aware of all changes. In this regard, we assign a personal technical specialist to each client, who will be able to restore the entire picture of your telephone network in the shortest time possible and make the necessary adjustments to the work of VPBX. All infrastructure information is documented and implemented in flowcharts.

Summing up, it can be noted that if your company wants to get unique opportunities for personalizing telephone services to ensure continued growth and development of business, you should pay attention to modern models of such services. If at some point you decide that you have “grown” before installing your own IP-PBX, we will be able to transfer the system image to your server for several hours, minimizing the time it takes to deploy an office telephone network.

We will be happy to answer all your questions in the comments.