With the cost of ownership becoming more affordable and companies getting a chance to invest in a technology that is growing and has never become obsolete, scope of the PBX market has widened. Besides collaborating with overseas partners, business commercial applications and sharing of data has become critical in a business house. The increasing mobile workforce, presence in different locations, increased thrust in cost control over communication spend, etc are the main reasons for the spurt in demand.

Growth Story
The India growth story can be attributed to phenomenal growth in IP-PBX. Large enterprises have started implementing this two years ago, and at present small and medium enterprises are testing waters. With the implementation of IP-PBX, mobile roaming charges can be brought under control.

A leading player in this field has done a RoI (return on investment) analysis on an infotech company, which used IP-PBX system, with 5,000 employees in four offices-one in North America, one in Europe and two in India. According to the analysis, the software company had achieved 40% return on their investments.

In the US, the trend is moving toward unified communications with new vendors coming into the market. The main sectors targeted for IP-PBX include banking, software, defense and retail. Though IP-PBX players are betting big on India, regulatory issues are still at large.

Fuelling Factors
The very fact that the cost of PBX systems has plummeted in the recent past is one of the biggest factors contributing to their adoption by enterprises. Despite the costs coming down, the PBX systems have grown 'intelligent' over the years in terms of features on offer. With hybrid and IP-PBX systems gaining ground, businesses can make use of their converged IP networks to transport voice along with data and video (leveraging on VoIP technology) resulting in higher RoI. Also, hybrid and IP-PBX offer greater scalability advantages as compared to TDM PBX. The communication between offices of an organization-local or remote offices-is much better and the TCO (cost of acquisition plus recurring costs) is also much lower. IP-PBX systems have the capability of routing voice, data and video and therefore have become an important part of the network. Businesses can offer their employees the freedom to comfortably work from home or remote locations. All these factors put together have fuelled the demand for advanced PBX systems in the recent past.

Enterprises Demand More
Demands from enterprises vary with the size and spread of the organization (high, LME & SME). High-end enterprises need "Intelligent Communications," which will help them integrate communications applications with business applications and business intelligence, while business continuity is the "critical success factor".

Low and medium-end enterprises need investment protection to leverage existing technology investments and safeguard future choices. According to them, migration to IP telephony is to be viewed as a part of an integrated IT strategy including migrations to MPLS-based WANs and QoS-based LANs. Although IP telephony does save a lot for organizations, hybrid systems remain an option for smaller enterprises.

IP telephony technology has gained a strong mindset in the mainstream market. More and more enterprises are deploying hybrid and IP-PBX systems even for PSTN network. In fact, the demand has percolated from large enterprise networks down to SMBs since they too have realized the immense benefits that these systems can offer. Reduction in equipments costs and the lower TCO has made them adopt these systems with greater vigor.

The best part about hybrid and IP-BPX systems is that they are backward compatible. This means that they can accommodate existing TDM technology based PBXs, existing unified messaging platforms like voicemail and other business applications in an integrated manner. Not to forget the flexibility they desire-they do not have to re-wire the entire place in case they wish to move workstations across or add new people overnight. Hybrid and IP PBX systems are also in accordance with their strategy to cut costs as in the longer run turn out to be very cost effective.

Cost Effective Systems
Though the initial costs of acquisition of a hybrid or IP-PBX system may be higher than that of a conventional TDM box, the recurring costs on many aspects are lower, thus lowering the total cost of acquisition. The savings are in terms of better inter-office and intra-company communication, lower support costs (travel and training costs are reduced significantly), and lower staffing costs (less or no need for deployment of technically skilled manpower). IP telephony, unified messaging including voicemail, conferencing-audio, web and video, and business applications can be integrated on a single platform. What's more, there are costs involved in changing seats or adding seats that get circumvented as well with advanced PBX systems in place.

Can we Reduce Implementation Costs?
The quality and cost efficiency can come through investments in new technology. It is pertinent for large, medium and small enterprises to buy systems that provide for not just their current needs but also for their future needs. Collaborating across locations and in larger volumes requires businesses to equip themselves with the advanced PBX systems. The trend is to move away from TDM boxes to an efficient service on the network especially when backward compatibility and migration paths are available and well laid out.

Every new technology is to be understood well before implementation and IP-PBX implementation need not be attached with any additional costs. As such IP-PBX shall reduce the maintenance costs.