Opportunities for significant growth in the uptake of cloud-based private branch exchange (PBX) systems are expected in South Africa, open, unified voice communications solutions provider Connection Telecom MD David Meintjes tells Engineering News.

According to research undertaken last year by research firm BMI Tech cloud-based service solutions are only servicing about 2% of new installations globally.

“The growth of this service will be fuelled by the cost effectiveness of using a cloud-based system to augment customer relationship management, sales automation and debt collection systems,” Meintjes explains.

If one calls a MTN or Vodacom network user using the Connection Telecom’s service, the cost is 64c while the going market rate is between 85c and 95c, notes Meintjes.

“Calls between customers who use the company’s system to phone one another, are free. This is very beneficial to customers who have multiple branches or have to make calls regularly to head office. Also, for different companies that are on the Connection Telecom service, who call one another, calls are also free of charge, greatly reducing their operating costs,” emphasises Meintjes.

Using the cloud-based PBX system enables more control over a company’s service, because there is one version of the application running at the company’s sites.

“One of our customers, from just managing abuse of networks is saving R500 000 a month; previously they could not manage it effectively without a centralised system,” points out Meintjes.

Budget limits can be monitored using the system and if the budget is exceeded an email can be sent to inform supervisors. This ensures that costs can be closely monitored.

Challenges

“The reality, as a telephony-based service, is that if the networks are not up to standard you cannot offer a good service or bandwidth, while down networks, owing to challenges such as stolen power cables do have a negative impact on the service we can deliver,” notes Meintjes.

However, Connection Telecom has a product called Vibe to help overcome such challenges. It has five functions. Firstly, it prioritises voice over data. Secondly, it strips the headers and footers off the system, allowing for three times the throughput of what one would have had if they tried without using the Vibe system.

Thirdly, a core access control can be set up, which prevents calls from exceeding the capacity of the access line. Therefore, users will never oversubscribe the line and cause a deterioration in the traffic throughput, explains Meintjes.

Forthly, he adds that it detects the lines which are down, enabling the company to automatically reroute those calls from a site through a backup router automatically. Fifthly, it can push the connection into the environment of telecommunications group Telkom, if it is required, states Meintjes.

“Unlike a premise-based system, a PBX system is not on site but based at a data centre. The PBX can be designed with more scalability and has a complete parallel redundancy safeguard to ensure that there is an uninterruptible power supply to the system, commonly known as the N+1 system design,” says Meintjes.

From the data centre, a managed access circuit is run directly to the customer’s premises using various means; but primarily, Telkom’s diginet lines and cyber servers, which run into customers’ premises, are used to relay the feed.

A terminating device is installed at a customer’s premises and links to the local area network, in which there are various workstations with end points, says Meintjes.

“The phones, which plug into the area networks link to the PBX in the cloud, the phones register with the cloud-based system and the customer can then log into a Web-based interface and set themselves up. Alternatively, and most commonly, customers are set up using a Web interface,” states Meintjes.

At any point in time the customer has a real-time view of who is on a call and who is not on a call.

The application has the foundation of a basic unified platform of which there are several key components, states Meintjes.

“Voice mails will be sent to your email account so you can view and listen to them. Mobile phones can also be integrated into your PBX to make use of this feature. For example, if you are running a wireless local area network cloud into your office, you can upload a software client onto your mobile smartphone, which becomes an extension to the PBX,” explains Meintjes.

Typically, at this stage, the PBX would be able to run on all smartphone devices, except for BlackBerry’s, which use generic top-level domains such as Biz or the BlackBerry Enter- prise Server. As there are complications with these server groupings, a BlackBerry is unable to connect to the PBX system, he adds.

The third key feature of the integrated server is that it has the concept of presence, Meintjes explains, which means that clients can see if a person is available or unavailable through the Web interface. The fourth key concept is that the system is very strong with the interface of underlying systems, as it is an open standard system, “so, if you want to import or export information out of your core applications such as from your PBX system to your human resources system or customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can. For example, at Old Mutual Finance we have integrated the solution into the company’s CRM system so it is easy for it to build up interoperability,” says Meintjes.

Additionally, if conference calls need to be scheduled those events can be pushed into one’s calendar and it will give you an automatic view as to your events schedule, he adds.

“In short, our system is a high-end PBX, which functionally compares with most of the standard top-end systems available in the market while costing much less,” stresses Meintjes.

Further the system is compatible with multiple types of industries.

“Our major clients include refined petroleum company Engen Petroleum, banking group First National Bank, retailer Lewis, authorised financial services provider RMB Asset Management, systems and services business UCS Solutions, Old Mutual Finance and telecommunications operator Vox Telecom,” notes Meintjes.

The company also has a contract with online company TakeAlot.com and services the shopping service’s call centre from the cloud.

“We do not only offer the PBX system but we also work in the field of assisted contact centres. Basically, a call centre is needed on site, and we manage it in the cloud. This bene- fits our customers, as we are a company that can assist them on a variety of platforms,” says Meintjes, who adds that Connection Telecom is activating a cloud-based call centre for delivery company Mr Delivery.

He notes that the core applications of the PBX cloud system are used by over 50 companies worldwide, mainly in North America and Europe, and adds that there are over 500 000 extensions which are supported by this solution.

“Currently the company supports about 20 000 extensions for over 1 600 websites,” concludes Meintjes.