Article: China IP PBX market-entering the fast lane.

China IP PBX market enters the fast lane.

Not only in developed countries, but also in China, many companies find that the traditional telephone system is not only expensive to maintain, but also has limitations in supporting employees to work in different places, and it does not support the emerging CTI (Computer and Telephone Integration) and VoIP. Moreover, the traditional PBX adopts special technology and lacks openness and standardization.

In 2003, due to the epidemic of SARS, the importance of working in different places and multi-point communication became more prominent. In order to make all communication unimpeded, IT administrators began to deploy IP PBX, which is an enterprise telephone exchange system based on IP. These systems can fully integrate voice communication into the company's data network, thus establishing a unified voice and data network, which can connect offices and employees distributed all over the world.

First, the characteristics of IPPBX

1. Maintain consistency between different office locations.

Employees scattered in different offices often encounter some common problems, such as the inability to complete simple call transfer between offices, and this function can prevent users from calling another office again. Sometimes, employees want to extend the company telephone function to other office locations, which is also limited. Every office cannot use the same telephone system functions, such as voice mail and company address book.

The old PBX office telephone system was inflexible, single-purpose and expensive. Although the data network may be connected to multiple office locations, the old PBX system needs a separate voice network (private line), and each private line is dedicated and charged by distance. In addition, upgrading and managing the old PBX system and adding necessary business applications are very time-consuming and expensive.

IP PBX adopts a completely different concept to solve the problem of connecting multiple office locations of the company. Essentially, IP PBX converts voice conversations and messages into data packets that can be sent and received on data networks. Each telephone has its own address on the integrated voice data network, and voice can be transmitted to any place where the data arrives. Using data network, IP PBX system can reduce the long-distance communication cost of enterprises, connect all office locations and form a "virtual connection" without paying long-distance telephone charges.

2. Closer to customers

Because IP PBX system supports centralized communication system connecting employees in many offices around the world, it helps to improve customer service level and improve customer affinity. The IP PBX system provides a unified dialing scheme. By dialing a 4-digit extension number, the call can be transferred to another office anywhere in the world. More importantly, the IP PBX system eliminates the risk of customer churn caused by neglecting customers. Before employees answer customers' phone calls, IP PBX system can display customers' relevant records on employees' computer screens, thus providing better real-time customer service.

The IP PBX system also strengthens the communication between employees. In the past, employees in telecommuting locations, especially those working in branch offices and at home, often complained that communication was not timely, or they became "outsiders" who did not understand key business information. IP telephone system solves their worries, so that every user who uses the system can get information at the same time. At the same time, IP PBX supports the industry standard of voice protocol (VPIM) for e-mail, so users in different office locations can exchange voice messages even if they use different vendors' message systems.

3. Reduce the burden of system management

When enterprises use the traditional telephone system, they are often shocked by the actual cost of their telephone system management. At the same time, the cost of system maintenance and management is also very expensive.

The best IP PBX system can provide direct "one-stop" management for ordinary IT technicians in design, so that enterprises can make full use of existing technical talents. Administrators use web browsers to remotely manage systems in multiple office locations, including from headquarters, other office locations, and even at home.

The perfect IP PBX web browser interface also provides an isolated area for each system user, who can use IT to customize preferences and move, add or replace their mobile phones quickly and conveniently, without asking IT staff for support or waiting for technicians to come to the door. Employees can work at home or on the road as long as they connect IP phones or laptops to broadband and connect to the headquarters network, and this phone retains all customized functions.

4. Low cost and good expansibility.

Because IPPBX is based on open IP standards, all products follow the same standards and have strong interoperability, while traditional PBX contains special technologies from various manufacturers, so the interoperability and compatibility between products are poor. Therefore, using IPPBX can greatly save the cost of maintaining proprietary equipment when using traditional products. When it is necessary to expand multiple branch telephones on the existing PBX, most of the old PBX devices do not support this expansion, and the internal modules must be replaced, which is not a small expense, while if IPPBX is adopted, only about half of the money is enough. Moreover, IPPBX can directly use cheap ordinary analog phones, unlike traditional PBX which needs to be equipped with expensive dedicated digital phones.

Another attractive advantage of IPPBX is that it can use its VoIP function to make long-distance calls at local telephone prices, which greatly saves long-distance communication costs.

Second, the future development direction of IP-PBX

1, IPPBX is an ideal platform for building a new generation of call centers. The development trend of call center is the diversification of service objects and means, the deepening and integration of computer technology application. Therefore, when developing a new generation of call centers, at least the following problems should be solved:

(1) can provide services to users from the Internet (dial-up or WWW), fax, telephone, etc.

(2) It can reduce the cost and let small and medium-sized users have their own call centers;

(3) It can provide more and better performance;

(4) It should have the networking function between call centers to effectively allocate resources among call centers.

The call center based on IPPBX completely solves the above problems. IPPBX products have higher cost performance, which will certainly bring more market opportunities to call centers. Many people traditionally think that CTI=C+T, especially those who are familiar with the call center think that CTServer plays the role of plus sign. They believe that although CTI improves the performance of the call center, it also increases the operating cost. Undoubtedly, IPPBX is another development of CTI. It is no longer a simple addition of two networks, but a set of expensive PBX networks and connecting equipment between the two networks are completely removed. The telephone network is just a means to get close to the clients. The design of this architecture reduces the cost of the call center by at least 30%, and at the same time, because the open IPPBX can provide many functions, it greatly improves the cost performance of the call center.

2.IPPBX is an effective way to construct the future integrated information system.

In the early 1990s, the successful popularization of Internet commercialization and the revolutionary changes in the way of life and business caused by it directly led to two explosive growth: the number of netizens and various websites.

Moore's Law in the Internet world has been shortened from 18 months in the chip age to half a year, and the bandwidth of Internet backbone links of major ISPs will double every six months. On the other hand, new business models are constantly emerging, and people are no longer satisfied with the transmission of single data or text files. The demand for image, sound and video transmission intensifies the demand for bandwidth. The emergence of TCP/IP protocol makes it possible to integrate traditional telecom services and network data services. Therefore, in recent years, the major telecom companies in the world have carried out strategic restructuring and adopted high-speed broadband IP switching routing technology to build telecom business networks. The conventional definition of broadband network transmission rate in the industry is at least 2 GB/s. In such a broadband network, many services can be effectively integrated and connected to this network through limited interfaces. This is the comprehensive information network that everyone pursues. Adding MCU function to IPPBX will be one of the ways to build an effective switching node in this network, especially suitable for the construction of small and medium-sized network systems.

3.IPPBX can replace some group telephone systems.

IPPBX can provide comprehensive network and voice solutions for group users, and can meet the all-round needs of maintaining the continuous operation and vigorous development of enterprises. From complex call control and call center functions to integrated voice mail and computer/telephone integration; From caller identification to multi-level and multi-level automatic operator, and then to the easy addition, movement and replacement of terminal phones; Able to connect to the Internet from local area network and wide area network (LAN/WAN). Enable enterprises to obtain all functions in an economical and manageable way. The most prominent feature of IPPBX communication system should be flexibility. It adapts to the way enterprises operate.

Third, the IP PBX market in China is entering the fast lane.

According to IDC China Asia-Pacific IP PBX Market Quarterly Tracking Report (the third quarter of 2006), the shipment of PBX system in China in the third quarter of 2006 was close to 6,543.8+0 million lines, of which pure IP PBX accounted for 654.38+05.654.38+0%, mixed PBX accounted for 30.9% and traditional PBX accounted for 54%.

Although there are still many obstacles in China's IP PBX market, so that the current IP PBX penetration rate is only 32%, which is at a low level compared with other Asia-Pacific countries (Note: Singapore is 68%, Australia is 64%, and New Zealand is 63%), there are still some driving factors in the market to ensure the future growth potential:

1. Promotion of leading manufacturers

At present, the leading manufacturers in the domestic IP PBX market mainly include AVAYA, Alcatel, Cisco and Nortel. They use their technical advantages, user advantages and unified communication capabilities to attract enterprise users.

2. Promote emerging industries

The main users of IP PBX are concentrated in government, finance, electric power and other industries. In the past year, with the increasing integration of IP PBX with the needs of industrial applications, hotels, manufacturing and retail industries have gradually become emerging industries in deploying IP PBX.

3. The offensive of unified communications

Since the second half of 2006, with the cooperation between Nortel and Microsoft and the promotion of Cisco unified communication solutions, more and more manufacturers began to pay attention to the application of unified communication. As unified communication involves the unified communication platform of e-mail, instant messaging, mobile phone, Internet phone and video conference, more and more manufacturers of software, services and hardware equipment have entered this market, and * * * is developing and promoting the industrial application of IP voice.

According to the research report released by market research company In-Stat on June 9th, 2006, China will be the world.

One of the fastest growing markets for IP-PBX.

According to TMCnet website, In-Stat predicts that the sales of IP-PBX in China will surge from 1.645438+0 billion dollars this year to 479.5 million dollars in 20 1 year. At the same time, the sales of traditional PBX will decrease at an annual growth rate of 365,438+0.8%.

In-Stat analyst kevin lee said in the report, "Corporate customers in China regard VoIP as a basic function of IP PBX products. Now there are many solutions to deal with various risks, which are gradually eliminating the concerns of potential customers about the reliability and security of voice transmission through open standard data networks. "

It can be seen that in China, the IPPBX market is entering the fast lane.