Do you remember PBX? If so, you were probably involved in running a business in the waning days of the last century. Or you remember waiting patiently at a reception desk while staff frantically answered calls on the cumbersome corporate switchboard.

Public Branch Exchange, to give it its full name, was a telephone network for a company’s internal and external communications. And it was usually a big investment. Today, most of those machines are in landfills.

The once ubiquitous switchboard gradually disappeared as it went virtual and migrated to a computer screen. In the last decade, it completed its transformation into a cloud PBX. Now, it is evolving again, as it benefits from digital transformation and all the opportunities that come with it.

Rob Lith, Chief Commercial Officer of leading South African communications solutions company Telviva, says it’s not just about convenience, it has become critical to competitiveness, “especially as we can give customers the ability to communicate the way they want – and demand – while improving collaboration within teams.”

So for a while now, it’s not about routing calls anymore, but about “unified communications” (UC). You might think that smartphones would make such solutions obsolete, but ironically, they are severely limited in their capacity for this role.

“Until now, we have not seen a comprehensive mobile service where the company has full visibility into all communications and interactions with customers, suppliers and stakeholders,” says Lith. “This is required, for example, when complying with regulations in financial services or for recording conversations in which financial matters are being handled. Integrations with CRM (customer relations management) and business systems are essential.”

Now UC is evolving into Unified Communications as a Service, or the clunky acronym UCaaS.

“This has transformed business communications by providing a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems,” says Lith. “It ensures that the technology is up to date, because UCaaS, by its very nature, is constantly evolving with feature and functionality upgrades, and does not run the risk of reaching end of life with minimal support. In other words, by managing communications over the Internet, there is no need to incur significant hardware, maintenance and replacement costs.”

That doesn’t make UCaaS a no-brainer, though. Last week’s global computer outage, which was caused by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sending out a faulty automatic update, showed that too much integration can be just as bad as too little. In other words, UCaaS can leave a company vulnerable to a single point of failure. Lith says Telviva is well aware of the danger.

“We design our services so that the core services, voice and interconnects, are as redundant as possible and are set up for high availability within the data centers and cloud services that we use throughout the country.

Do you remember PBX? If so, you were probably involved in running a business in the waning days of the last century. Or you remember waiting patiently at a reception desk while staff frantically answered calls on the cumbersome corporate switchboard.

Public Branch Exchange, to give it its full name, was a telephone network for a company’s internal and external communications. And it was usually a big investment. Today, most of those machines are in landfills.

The once ubiquitous switchboard gradually disappeared as it went virtual and migrated to a computer screen. In the last decade, it completed its transformation into a cloud PBX. Now, it is evolving again, as it benefits from digital transformation and all the opportunities that come with it.

Rob Lith, Chief Commercial Officer of leading South African communications solutions company Telviva, says it’s not just about convenience, it has become critical to competitiveness, “especially as we can give customers the ability to communicate the way they want – and demand – while improving collaboration within teams.”

So for a while now, it’s not about routing calls anymore, but about “unified communications” (UC). You might think that smartphones would make such solutions obsolete, but ironically, they are severely limited in their capacity for this role.

“Until now, we have not seen a comprehensive mobile service where the company has full visibility into all communications and interactions with customers, suppliers and stakeholders,” says Lith. “This is required, for example, when complying with regulations in financial services or for recording conversations in which financial matters are being handled. Integrations with CRM (customer relations management) and business systems are essential.”

Now UC is evolving into Unified Communications as a Service, or the clunky acronym UCaaS.

“This has transformed business communications by providing a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems,” says Lith. “It ensures that the technology is up to date, because UCaaS, by its very nature, is constantly evolving with feature and functionality upgrades, and does not run the risk of reaching end of life with minimal support. In other words, by managing communications over the Internet, there is no need to incur significant hardware, maintenance and replacement costs.”

That doesn’t make UCaaS a no-brainer, though. Last week’s global computer outage, which was caused by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sending out a faulty automatic update, showed that too much integration can be just as bad as too little. In other words, UCaaS can leave a company vulnerable to a single point of failure. Lith says Telviva is well aware of the danger.

“We design our services so that the core services, voice and interconnects, are as redundant as possible and are set up for high availability within the data centers and cloud services that we use throughout the country.

“When it comes to the different unified communications services that are integrated into the central service, we design them as microservices, so that if one goes down, it doesn’t affect the others.

“It is therefore important that the customer carefully considers the provider they choose, not only based on the features and functionality, but also on the provider’s business stability and business continuity planning, security policies, how they are regulated, licensed and their support capabilities.

“Then of course they need to have a product that is capable, scalable, robust and reliable, with the expected features that are intuitive to use.”

If a company still has a traditional PBX and it’s working for them, they’re probably living on borrowed time. As the machines become obsolete, vendors adopt an “end of life” strategy and stop supporting them. Support for changes, repairs, and moves becomes increasingly expensive.

Soon, the workforce will expect AI services with digital assistants, transcription services, analytics, and other advanced services now emerging. UCaaS is ready for this next phase of communication.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and Editor-in-Chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media at @art2gee.

“When it comes to the different unified communications services that are integrated into the central service, we design them as microservices, so that if one goes down, it doesn’t affect the others.

“It is therefore important that the customer carefully considers the provider they choose, not only based on the features and functionality, but also on the provider’s business stability and business continuity planning, security policies, how they are regulated, licensed and their support capabilities.

“Then of course they need to have a product that is capable, scalable, robust and reliable, with the expected features that are intuitive to use.”

If a company still has a traditional PBX and it’s working for them, they’re probably living on borrowed time. As the machines become obsolete, vendors adopt an “end of life” strategy and stop supporting them. Support for changes, repairs, and moves becomes increasingly expensive.

Soon, the workforce will expect AI services with digital assistants, transcription services, analytics, and other advanced services now emerging. UCaaS is ready for this next phase of communication.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and Editor-in-Chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media at @art2gee.