Hosted PBX

Overview

Business customers, faced with obsolescence of their traditional PBX or key system, invariably look to IP-based solutions to meet their ongoing telephony needs. Given a choice between deploying an IP-PBX or opting for a hosted PBX service, many businesses would choose the hosted service. Effectively outsourcing their PBX operations can not only save businesses the capital cost of deploying PBX equipment and the operational costs of running it, but can also open up the possibility of leveraging network-based services to substantial advantage.

For example, business customers can obtain VoIP services for main offices, branch offices and telecommuters that connect phones in all these different locations with a common extension numbering plan, and support features such as Busy Lamp Field and Multi-Line Hunt Groups across locations – capabilities which are difficult, if not impossible, to deliver via PBXs. Businesses can also leverage network-based services such as Simring to route business calls to cell phones in parallel with desk sets, and unified messaging to deliver vastly greater convenience of voicemail access.

Hosted PBX represents the last great untapped opportunity for incremental voice service revenues, but service providers worry (quite reasonably) about the operational costs of supporting these services. The Metaswitch Hosted PBX solution addresses that challenge with a combination of easy-to-use Web-based self-service functions that enable customers to manage their telephony services themselves, taking the strain off the service provider’s customer service reps, and highly automated remote management of phone firmware and configuration that takes the pain out of mass deployment of SIP phones.

Metaswitch's Hosted PBX solution is equally suitable for deployment by ILECs, CLECs and over-the-top service providers.

Features And Benefits

• Feature sets that emulate both key systems and PBXs, enabling service providers to meet the needs of all types and sizes of business customers
• Support for integration of PBXs into business groups, enabling multi-site enterprises to evolve their existing PBX-based systems to hosted PBX on a site-by-site basis
• Interoperability with a wide range of SIP business phones, giving business customers an excellent choice of price points and feature sets to meet their precise needs
• Self-service configuration of features such as auto-attendant, hunt groups and pickup groups via CommPortal’s easy to use Web interface provides businesses with immediate control over their services
• CommPortal applications including Widgets and CommPortal Assistant help maximize user productivity by providing quick and easy access to the most often used telephony functions
• Optional applications running on selected business phone models to support voicemail access, contact lists and hot-desking provide even greater convenience of use
• Voice Quality Monitoring enables service providers to proactively identify VoIP network issues before they impact business customers

Solution Elements

The Metaswitch solution for Hosted PBX is available in two different configurations to suit network environments with and without existing back-end SIP connectivity.

For network environments which already have SIP connectivity to trunking gateways, the following elements are required:

• MetaSphere, configured with Local and Business Calling Features, Voicemail, Easy / Premium Attendant, Music-on-Hold, Session Control and Lawful Intercept
• CommPortal and CommPortal Widgets, to provide the subscriber-facing Web interfaces for hosted PBX services
• MR2510 Media Resource Server, to provide interactive voice response and announcement capabilities needed to support hosted PBX services
• MetaView, configured with Service Assurance Server, Voice Quality Monitoring and SIP Provisioning Server, together with SIP Provisioning Device Packs to suit the phone types being deployed

For network environments that do not have existing SIP connectivity to trunking gateways, the elements above must be augmented with the addition of MetaSphere Gateway Control and one or more MG2510 or MG3510 Universal Media Gateways. Since the UMG incorporates media server functions, the MR2510 Media Resource Server is not required in these environments.

Both configurations also require Session Border Controllers to protect the service provider’s VoIP network and to handle network issues such as NAT. These may be supplied by Metaswitch, or service providers may choose to deploy their own SBCs.

The Hosted PBX solution may be enhanced with the addition of the following elements, which provide additional service features and capabilities for subscribers:

• MetaSphere applications including Conferencing, Incoming Call Manager and Live Message Screening
• CommPortal applications including CommPortal Mobile Voicemail and CommPortal Assistant

The capabilities of Hosted PBX may also be extended further to integrate mobile phones. For more details, see the Metaswitch Fixed Mobile Convergence solution.