Cloud Computing - Centrex, they both start with a "C". Coincidence or not?

Telecommunications has moved a long way in the last ten years and is headed to the Cloud like everything else. Is this a coincidence? I think not. It was about forty years ago that a service for business arrived on the scene called "Centrex" which took all of the telephone switching equipment and put it off premises in a central location. This did exactly what VoIP and hosted telephone services are doing today in the Cloud for phone systems. Its now called IP Centrex by some which is a perfectly accurate description. However, it is a little like referring an Aston Martin as a Model T.

Things that have happened between then and now made this just an eventuality. Like the rise of computing and the Internet. Centrex with all of it short comings did provide some of the some of the value that small growing businesses needed. It gave them the flexibility to add and take away phones easily. Being able to scale for your needs easily made it a clear choice when this was a priority. Also, the low CapEx made the decision making for a Centrex phone system something that was affordable by more companies. One of the major barriers to entry was removed. It became the classic "simplest" telephone system the business could choose. It allowed several offices to be linked together without special equipment and extra costs. There's also the fact that it took away the on site maintenance issues and expertise that was demanded when a phone system was put on premises.

In the evolutionary process more than the letters "IP" have been added to make the new generation of Centrex systems an important part of our business landscape. Some of things that make the new wave offerings even more attractive are the number of choices, the number of suppliers and number of features that have been thrown into the mix making it simpler and cheaper than ever. It might seem sort of lame to call what has happened a major improvement over the offerings of the past, but most technologies that stick are 90% evolutionary and 10% revolutionary don't forget.

Maybe we should call these new offerings IP Simplex and not IP Centrex. Simpler is always better and if you haven't looked into what is available then maybe you are missing out?