The Apple switchboard

Nov 01, 2011 12:52 pm | Macworld.com

by Joel Mathis

When Brent Albert went searching for a new phone system to serve his Oklahoma motorcycle dealership, he didn’t end up with the fanciest, cheapest, or most technically dazzling. He went with aFacetPhone system that uses the Mac mini ($570-770; ) as a hub for routing calls, storing voicemails, and keeping his salespeople connected to their customers.

Why? Because Albert, the owner of Fat Albert’s Motorsports, loves Apple products.

“That it was on a Mac, to be honest with you,” he said of his March decision to go with FacetPhone. “We’ve been looking at phone systems for about two years, and didn’t even know it was an option. We were out at Macworld [Expo] and got to talking to these guys.”

Albert isn’t alone. Companies that offer private branch exchange systems—known as PBX, the multi-extension phone systems for routing calls within businesses and other institutions—have identified Apple products like the Mac and iPhone as a growing frontier in the market. They are targeting new- and small-business owners who, like Albert, increasingly use those devices at home and see the new systems as easy-to-use, low-cost ways of getting a company running.

“We think Apple products have made a phenomenal inroads in that particular market,” said Mike Storella, chief operating officer of Snom, whose Snom One PBX software can also be run on a Mac mini. “There’s a natural tendency in those small companies, when they’re building infrastructure, they go with what they know.”

There are different ways of getting the job done. Products like FacetPhone and Snom One use the Mac as the platform, often—but not always—letting business users save additional money by tying into VoIP services like Vonage instead of traditional telephone landline companies. Other products, like AltiGen’s iFusion phone system, put the iPhone at the center of a more extensive business communication system.

The advantages

Apple-based PBX systems offer advantages beyond mere familiarity:

They’re inexpensive Albert said he saw systems—including non-Mac options—priced at anywhere from $3,500 to $7,500 for his 10-extension setup at the motorcycle business. The FacetPhone came down on the lower end of that price range, he said, at around $4,600. “The cost was very competitive to all the other systems we looked at,” he said.

Indeed, The Maynard Group—a California consulting company that helps businesses choose their communications systems—suggests that the base phone system for a small business can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 for hardware installation. After that, a VoIP-based system will cost the business at least $50 per employee per month; that’s far cheaper than Maynard’s minimum estimate of $800 per employee per month for a traditional PBX system in a small business.

Mac minis, meanwhile, start at around $600. “It’s priced right,” said Snom’s Storella.