The concept of the "virtual office" has become very popular in recent years, and has been made possible primarily through the availability of VoIP and IP PBX systems. To carry the concept of the virtual office even further, the on-premises IP PBX is replaced with a virtual PBX, which does not require any physical equipment to be maintained on-premises. Instead, the actual PBX technology is hosted in a third-party location.

A virtual PBX solution offers the same feature set as an on-premises PBX. In fact, it is very likely to offer more. A small businesses with limited resources may go with a lower-end on-premises solution with fewer features—but the same small business can take advantage of a virtual PBX offering and gain easy and inexpensive access to high-end features that were available once only to the largest organizations at great expense. Because the equipment is hosted and maintained by a third party, small businesses can take advantage of high-end equipment that would not otherwise be available to them.

The virtual PBX solution functions just like a standard PBX.  Building on business VoIP technology, the virtual PBX establishes a VoIP connection with the hosted PBX center off-site. With a standard on-premises PBX, calls come into the PBX and are then routed to various extensions as needed. A virtual PBX works the same way, except that the calls actually first come into the off-site location instead of the on-premises PBX. They are then routed in the same manner to each extension. There is no noticeable delay, and it works exactly the same.

The virtual PBX solution then allows for the virtual office to be extended to multiple locations. Because it uses VoIP as opposed to standard circuit-switched telephony, extensions can be located anywhere; they do not need to be in the same office. A virtual PBX could route a call to a branch extension in the same office, or halfway across the country.

This type of solution is very well-suited to small business, because it overcomes much of the management overhead and up-front capital expenditure that would be required for a sophisticated on-premises solution. Virtual PBX solutions are feature-rich, offering small businesses access to high-end features including call routing, interactive voice response, fax management, call conferencing, and call queuing. Another advantage of the virtual PBX is that it is instantly scalable, allowing for easy growth. Adding an additional line, whether that line is in the office or across the country—or even overseas—is straightforward, and requires no hardware installation. As such, it is an ideal solution for a remote call center that allows call center personnel to work from home or remote locations.

The features available from the virtual PBX solution are truly ground-breaking, allowing businesses of all sizes to compete in the global marketplace and gain access to the most sophisticated features on the market—with very low up-front costs.