With widespread proliferation of voice over IP (VoIP) in the telephony world, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are quickly tapping the benefits IP telephony. Consequently, legacy private branch eXchanges (PBX (News - Alert)), circuit-based automatic switchboards for telephone systems are being replaced by Internet Protocol-based hosted PBXs (IP-PBXs). By tapping the benefits of local- and wide-area network(LAN and WAN)-based communications, the IP-PBX is transforming the telephony landscape.

And one company that is spearheading this movement is the Montreal, Canada based Dialexia (News - Alert). Since its inception in 2001, Dialexia has been actively developing a suite of IP telephony software and applications for enterprises, service providers and telephony resellers.

In reality, Dialexia has readied three products for a variety of needs—Dial-Office, Dial-Gate and hosted IP-PBX. While Dial-Office is an Internet alternative to the traditional circuit-switched enterprise phone system, Dial-Gate is a carrier-class VoIP softswitch and billing application that brings telephony services to residential and enterprise users.

The company’s hosted IP-PBX based solution is called HERO or the Hosted Enterprise Remote Office, which is 100 percent session initiation protocol (SIP) based. Targeting SMBs and small office home office (SOHO) businesses, as well as corporations, and governments, HERO reduces long distance expenses without incurring the cost of ownership/maintenance of a high-end PBX. Thus, delivering productivity benefits and cost savings advantages to SMBs and SOHOs.

According to Dialexia officials, IP-PBX based HERO has been tailored for different geographical regions, with primary markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

SIP based HERO system comprises components such as SIP Proxy, Registrar, and Presence servers, Dial-Manager, and the SIP IVR server. These components allow real-time communication over IP networks and enable features such as seamless voicemail and media services (call park, call relay, presence), and an IVR for voicemail and auto attendant. Also included are the HERO database and an easy-to-use operations, administration, and maintenance (O, A and M) Web interface. Dial Console and Dial Com are two dynamic softphone components that can be used as a substitute for a SIP IP phone or a foreign exchange station (FXS).

In summary, Dialexia’s hosted IP-PBX solution is being aimed at three diverse groups—telecom operators, enterprises and government agencies. While telecom operators can benefit from its scalability and easy accessibility, enterprises can exploit hosted IP-PBX to deliver advanced calling features to their end users cost effectively. And government agencies can take advantage of the system’s superior billing capabilities and related expense control and management.