Page 4 - 3CX DrillDown October November 2016

4 3cx Drilldown
October/November 2016
No Scary Feat - Moving from Traditional PBX to a VoIP solution
ASBURY
continued from page 1
is makes the 3CX Enterprise Edition the perfect solution for large companies and organizations who cannot a ord a minute of downtime in their communications.
e standby license works hand in hand with the inbuilt failover, which is also available in the PRO edition. How does the inbuilt failover work? e Failover feature in 3CX allows you to create a replica of your PBX. In the event that your PBX fails, your replica PBX will become active minimizing downtime and data loss. Activating this functionality is ever so easy!
In a nutshell the inbuilt failover allows you to: l View active server from standby server.
l Act immediately upon detection of failure. l Guaranteed minimum amount of
downtime and data loss.
And all of this at no additional cost.
In addition to the inbuilt failover and standby
license the new Enterprise Edition includes all the advanced call management and reporting features that are included in the PRO edition.
IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY WITH CRM, ERP & AIS INTEGRATION
3CX PRO integrates with popular CRM systems out of the box. Sta can save time using click- to-call from customer records and customer call history. Management can view sta activity with detailed automatic inbound and outbound calls
journalling.
l Click-to-Call – Launch calls straight from
the CRM application
l Call Pop-ups – Calls are automatically
linked to a customer record
l Call Journals – All calls are logged as call
records in the CRM
l Call Center Features, Failover, Remote
Bridges and More
3CX PRO o ers advanced contact and
call center technology. Get additional queue strategies and WebRTC web conferencing for free for up to 25 participants.
l Customers can hang up and keep their position in the queue
l Inbuilt Fail Over functionality
l View the presence of colleagues in remote o ces
l Implement a full blown Contact Center at a fraction of the cost
3CX PRO is an easy “in place” license upgrade that unlocks powerful features to allow businesses to run more e ciently. It improves customer service experience with contact center features as well as increased agent productivity.
Take a look at our edition comparison http://www.3cx.com/phone-system/edition- comparison/ and nd more information about upgrading to the 3CX Enterprise Edition on our website. n
A
a business from taking the leap from their trusty, old-style PBX to a newer, more modern phone system with a myriad of new features to boot. Without a doubt every reseller has faced a stubborn IT Manager unwilling to budge
on their stance. But since it’s mainstream introduction, VoIP has drastically developed to overcome any setbacks that may have made it less appealing to the business or IT decision maker.
ere are many points that a company
or organisation must address, however,
there are two main factors that play a role
in their decision to stick with a traditional xed telephony solution. Firstly, there would be concerns over the time, work and cost associated with the deployment of any new system. But with VoIP so ware solutions, this is fast becoming more simple and pain-free to carry out.
New systems should be easily implemented without the need for additional network infrastructure or costly hardware installations.
s with any innovative technology, VoIP has faced plenty of preconceptions and hindrances that have prevented many
Elliott
by Amy Elliott
Marketing Executive, 3CX
An appliance-friendly so ware solution can be installed on existing servers reducing down time and money spent on installation to an absolute minimum.
When it comes to security, it’s no secret
that so ware or web-based solutions carry
a risk of VoIP hacking and data leaks. But
this shouldn’t discourage businesses from upgrading to a newer, better communications system. Vendors like 3CX are developing their products with the latest security protocols and features, such as automatic blacklisting and voice tra c encryption, which are standard amongst top-class solutions.
No doubt there would also be concerns over the cost of additional lines and extensions and the cost of licensing.
e word licensing o en conjures up thoughts of a pricey investment that
Your Own 3CX PBX Appliance – Run3CXona $150 MiniPC
So you want to run a professional PBX in your of ce but don’t have the server for it? Well, we have a solution, a machine
that runs 3CX , ts in the palm of your hand and costs less than $100. Let me introduce you to “The miniPC”.
THE NEW GENERATION OF MINIPC’S
MiniPCs run on Intel architecture. The main bene t of using a MiniPC is that they consume 60% less power than a desktop with a total consumption of below 30 Watts. This means a yearly saving of $150 on energy compared to
a laptop or a desktop. Now that’s something noteworthy, especially for small businesses! Obviously, the smaller the device the less power it consumes. MiniPCs are available from several manufacturers such as Nexbox, Wintel etc. and have different specs. Before purchasing look out for these specs:
l Processor Intel Example Z8300 4-core 1.84GHz
l 64 bit
l 2GB RAM or higher
l For now, Windows 10
l Minimum 64GB HDD
One of our favorites is the Nexbox – A
little sleek black box which is the size of an Apple TV. It houses Intel’s Latest 14nm Quad Core Intel Cherry Trail Z8300 Processor, 64
bit architecture and includes Windows 10 Home. 4GB Ram, and 64GB ash drive with a slot where you can insert an SSD Drive at the bottom by just unscrewing 2 little screws – ideal for expansion purposes.
OPTIMIZING WINDOWS: PRELIMINARY TWEAKS BEFORE INSTALLING 3CX
The rst thing to do is optimize Windows to disable unnecessary startup processes, in an effort to leave all the power available for 3CX to run on.
Disable Startup processes: Default Windows Home comes with a lot of functions running in the background – things that
you would not normally nd on a server OS, for example: Onedrive, Skype etc. Disable these completely from the Task manager. (Control+Shift+Escape > startup)
Disable Shadows and animations: We don’t need any eye candy here. We want performance. (Type sysdm.cpl > Advanced > Performance and enable the option “Adjust for Best Performance”)
Perform >report – this will give you a performance report of your system.
Click on system > Noti cations and actions and disable noti cations, news feed etc.
Power and sleep: Turn off screen after 1 hour and set the pc to never go to sleep.
Of ine maps – OFF
Devices > Bluetooth – disable
Update and security: Perform all available Windows updates.
INSTALLATION OF 3CX
All 3CX installation prerequisites installed like a charm. This was more time consuming than installing 3CX itself. Once Windows
is updated, and .NET Framework installed together with a couple of Visual C++ redist, the main 3CX install took 2 minutes to install and show the 3CX PBX Con guration Command line tool. After that it takes another 5 minutes to con gure 3CX and the management console was displayed on the screen.
SO WHAT CAN THIS DEVICE DO? (SOME PERFORMANCE DATA)
We have tested this device by running a series of automated tests. In this test we made normal calls, IVR Calls, Calls to queues and ring groups and also connected clients to make this more realistic.
32 sim calls were initiated at random. Some direct, others to a queue, ring group and IVR.
Call scenarios were initiated and remained connected for a random time between 3
mins and 15 mins, dropped and automatically restarted again.
Clients were also logged in with different rights. The amount of rights have an impact on
the amount of packets that are sent and requested. A queue manager will have more load than a normal group user.
When IDLE the NEXBOX took up 10% CPU Usage During operation, CPU rose to 56%
A 1 hour performance test looks like this
As we can see the spikes are under
control and there are no sudden high rises
– everything is below 60 %. This means that the NEXBOX handled this load smoothly and had 40% CPU unused for Windows OS. That 40 % is important in case, for example, you want to perform an unexpected operation that consumes more CPU; such as generating a report.
Plus you can plugin in the SSD by unscrewing 2 little screws at the back. The NexBOX is perfect for a small of ce of 25 users that want a PBX and 1-2 VoIP Trunks and it can also be used to connect to the main HQ.
How Can I Get my Hands on One of These?
You can check out this catalog: http:// downloads.3cx.com/downloads/misc/wintel_ nexbox_catalog.pdf which includes the devices that are recommended by 3CX, basic specs and contact information.
We really liked the performance of this device so try it out for yourself and let us know what you think! n
Borg
by Nick Borg, Product Manager, 3CX