Firstly, one’s Virtual Private Branch exchange manages phone calls. Sounds simple? Not even slightly. Simple for the user, but utterly bewildering in terms of the amount and type of variations one can use. A simple voice to voice call, of course – but how about routing that voice through the Internet, and chatting hands free in the office or better still conferencing the call to multiple workstations? Then there’s the vPBX function for diverting the call to a mobile number – or even translating it into text and having it conducted through a form of online messenger service. With virtual PBX, the options are as endless as the technologies.

Even though the idea does not look simple this new species of business exchange allows employees to communicate seamlessly and effectively, across what used to be the boundaries of different technology. One’s first thought, when encountering the awesome power of the vPBX for the first time, is: who needs to have a phone conversation with an email account? But then why not? It’s all communication: all the virtual PBX is doing, is streamlining that communication into its most appropriate form. It is, certainly, more appropriate to have an answering message left via email because it can be read and digested properly. So why not route the call recording through to a business email account? That’s exactly what this technology can do. And it does it easily, because everything is routed through the same server.

It’s the latest in multimedia technology, with the same kind of cross application capabilities as one of those modern phones. The ones that can get onto the Internet, have touch screens, have all these astonishingly powerful application? Yes, you know the ones. A vPBX is like that, but for a whole business. And then some. The virtual PBX makes domestic, or non business oriented multi application communications technology look like one of those old wooden telephones on wheels one used to have when one was a baby.

The vPBX is basically a software technology, which converts one’s existing hardware (i.e. phones and computers) into a more streamlined animal, it costs very little. One would think, looking at the multiplying applications of the virtual PBX, that it would set one back hundreds of thousands of pounds: in actual fact, it costs as much as the licenses one needs to have the software installed on one’s business computers. Getting a virtual business exchange installed is no more costly or time consuming than updating one’s operating system on the business PCs and laptops. In fact, that’s a very good way to think about it. vPBX is basically an operating system upgrade for the business phone system – feature packed, user friendly, and cheap. What more is there to say?

Virtual Private Branch exchange is a fancy way of saying, have your own business switchboard. Now, that might not sound like a particularly futuristic leap: until one considers that virtual PBX (as it’s also commonly called) is an Internet based, all singing all dancing bit of communications software that allows seamless integration between all types of business messaging.