8 x 8's Virtual Office Has It All For Less

The high cost of PBX-based telephone technology has prevented many small businesses from adopting advanced telecommunications solutions, despite the potential of advanced phone systems to boost their competitiveness.

Solution providers have had some success in “downsizing” enterprise-level solutions for their smaller clients. Leveraging offerings from Avaya, Cisco Systems and 3Com, integrators have brought advanced technology into smaller businesses, yet the return on investment has remained hard to demonstrate.

That difficulty helped bring VoIP technology to the forefront of small-business deployments. The combination of low-cost VoIP calls and PBX functionality can now yield significant savings to most any business.

Yet, there still is a dark cloud obscuring the sales process—startup costs.

One solution is the managed services option. Solution providers are finding that the combination of managed services offerings with broadband Internet and VoIP technology can be used to build a virtual PBX, which offers low initial startup costs, ongoing revenue streams and long-term integration opportunities.

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What’s more, a virtual PBX introduces a customer to the benefits of a managed service, which can lead to other managed services opportunities ranging from security to support to disaster recovery, all of which can be highly profitable to a solution provider in the long run.

While it is easy to see the merits of a virtual PBX, a number of solution providers are still scratching their heads about how to turn the concept into reality. The complex answer is to build a service from scratch, but the simpler answer is to partner.

With that in mind, CRN Test Center engineers examined the VoIP services market to find a company that offers channel opportunities and advanced, reliable technologies. While there are many contenders, few have all the elements in place to quickly assist solution providers in marketing a virtual PBX solution. The Test Center, though, found one company that does: 8x8, Santa Clara, Calif., which offers a virtual PBX in its Packet8 Virtual Office solution. Simply put, Virtual Office is a hosted PBX based on VoIP technology.

Virtual Office requires little more than a reliable broadband Internet connection for VoIP service. The product is built around hardware and software. The hardware consists of a broadband phone adapter (basically a VoIP router) and a VoIP telephone—in this case, 8x8’s own 390 series VoIP telephone. The product has a one-time hardware cost of $99 per extension and a $39.95 monthly service fee per user with a minimum of three extensions.

On the software side, customers can run the optional Switchboard application, which is a management interface for monitoring and programming 8x8’s Virtual Office service. It has click-and-drag simplicity and provides a receptionist-style interface for directing calls. After a solution provider configures the software on a PC, a receptionist can manage incoming calls using a mouse to connect callers with single extensions, groups of extensions or voice mail. Switchboard costs $19.95 a month.

Virtual Office provides a smaller company with enterprise-class PBX features while eliminating large long-distance phone bills. The service works like any other telephone system: Direct-dialed calls can be made to or from any conventional phone in the world.

Virtual Office’s Auto-Attendant eliminates the need for a receptionist, transferring calls by extension, name, company directory or workgroup. It can automatically transfer calls to voice mail. Password-protected voice mail features message forwarding and up to eight prerecorded greetings. And a conference bridge enables calls among multiple participants. Solution providers will find the product easy to install and configure. An integrator simply specifies the number of extensions needed and provides the names of the users. 8x8 then ships the necessary equipment.

The company says it prefers to have Virtual Office sold and set up by experienced resellers. The offering can be quite lucrative. Solution providers are entitled to either a $75 one-time fee for every extension they sell or a 15 percent to 20 percent residual commission on the monthly service fees paid by their customers, including fees for add-ons such as the Switchboard package.

The company provides presales, post-sales and marketing support and training. Technical support is available 24x7 by phone with priority lines for solution providers. 8x8 also supplies co-op funds, marketing data sheets, sales brochures, trade show support and co-sponsorship.

With 8x8’s Virtual Office product and a little marketing savvy, most any solution provider can sell and deploy an advanced virtual PBX to any small business. Broadband connections are usually less than $50 per month, and when combined with the basic fees of the Virtual Office service, a comprehensive PBX with unlimited national calling becomes a reality for most businesses for less than $100 per month, a fraction of the cost of traditional POTS-based PBX systems.