Still using an old telephony solution with an on-prem PBX? Unify many of your communication needs in the cloud instead

Learn how a cloud PBX provides unified communications, modernizing your phone system while cutting costs and complexity.

If you have a medium to large business, you probably have a private branch exchange (PBX): hardware that connects your business directly to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). It’s what allows you to make phone calls both within and outside of your organization. And it also provides you with a slew of familiar features, like call transfer, voicemail, recording, and call queues to name just a few.

But as crucial as a PBX is, it’s also costly to buy and maintain—and not just in terms of money, but in terms of effort and expertise as well, requiring professional installation and upkeep by a PBX technician. Furthermore, while a PBX may offer unlimited capacity for you to add lines and extensions, doing so will come with additional hardware and carrier costs.

So, that’s just the cost of doing business, right? Not anymore.

You can now eliminate the hassles and expenses associated with a traditional PBX by replacing it with a non-physical one hosted in the cloud, making your PBX functionalities available to you over the internet for a predictable monthly fee. In other words, you can modernize a major aspect of your phone system with what is essentially a cloud unified communications solution while retaining the features you’re used to.

Just like a traditional PBX, a cloud PBX supports the following phone systems:

Landlines

A PBX enables the use of traditional landline systems, which connect to telephone networks via copper wires. While these systems are obviously reliable, having been around since 1877, they’re not common among businesses these days. Nonetheless, if your organization still uses analogue lines, that doesn’t mean you have to keep using an analogue PBX. And if there’s any hesitancy among senior leadership about moving away from such a tried, tested and true phone system, a cloud PBX is a cost-effective and painless way to upgrade the infrastructure that system uses to connect to the PSTN, making it a comfortable first step into the cloud for apprehensive decisionmakers.

Primary Rate Interface (PRI)

Becoming the standard for business phone systems in the 1990s, PRI provides digital, rather than analogue, access to the PSTN, allowing for different types of traffic, including voice, data and video, to travel across multiple channels—23 to be exact—in one copper-based circuit. Like a landline system, it too uses a PBX to connect to the PSTN. This means the same advantages that a cloud PBX can provide landline users applies to PRI users as well. (Alternately, SIP trunking allows you to connect your traditional PBX to the internet for a more flexible and cost-effective option than PRI. Learn more here.)

Cloud Unified Communications from Rogers for Business is a cloud PBX solution that offers a full range of telephony features, including basic ones, like conferencing, voicemail to email, and visual call waiting; advanced ones, like custom call routing, virtual fax (receive faxes in your email); and administrative features, like multi-level auto attendant, line hunting and simultaneous ring. You’re also offered as many legacy call flows as possible to minimize any impact to your business.

It’s also easy to add new connections or expand your services without additional costs or technician visits—and you can manage everything through an intuitive online portal because it all resides inside the Rogers cloud.

To learn more, contact a Rogers for Business representative today.