The economic environment and the improving quality and reduction of cost of broadband connectivity is tipping hosted iPBX products from early adoption in to the mainstream within the UK; there is still a way to go but all indicators point to this movement.

Driven by the demand of small and medium sized businesses to have a flexible and mobilised workforce, companies are seeking out new technologies to help bolster their bottom line. Technologies such as Hosted iPBX and Unified Communications.

Its not just the SMB; the (cash strapped) public sector is also showing a keen interest in deploying their next generation telecoms and unified communications in the cloud in order to further reduce their operational costs.

While this shift is taking place, the Microsoft Communication Server 2010 – single tenant version – is readying for launch and in less than a year later a multi-tenant version will be released.

Just A few years ago most single tenant server software would be deployed at a customers premise. However due to the maturing of virtualisation technology from Microsoft and others the deployment options are now somewhat different.

It is expected that many single tenant dedicated deployments will be placed in the cloud under the control of Dynamic Data Centre and other competing technologies.

MCS 2010 (Microsoft Communication Server) will essentially replace the function of the on-premise PABX and even many functions of the advanced hosted iPBX systems currently on the market.

So if it will be possible to deploy a dedicated Customer Unified Communications System that replaces a company PABX and adds many advanced capabilities using very low cost hosted software low cost handsets and soft-phones – what will this do to the Telecoms Industry ?

The jury is still out, but one thing is for sure, change is coming!

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