The
BCR Manual of PBXs
Introduction (2006)
The BCR Manual of PBXs
grew out of the seminar, Understanding
Modern PBX Systems, which, with Jerry Goldstone, I did from the
fall of 1977 to the last public performance in November, 1987. Jerry
dropped out after the first year because Business Communications
Review, which he had founded a couple of years earlier, and its
family of seminars and other activities, was growing rapidly and
required more of his time for managerial work.
The PBX seminar could be visualized as a
gigantic matrix, with horizontal lines for each feature and function
a PBX had to perform, and a column devoted to each PBX, showing how
well it performed on each line. I would go down the list first,
explaining what had to be done, and then across the columns,
explaining how well each PBX did its job. I built just such a matrix
to go with the notes handed out at the seminar, and it occurred to
both Jerry and me that an expanded version of the table would make a
useful document as the "Age of Interconnect" developed. I prepared
the technical material, and Jerry took on a far more complicated job
of tracking down the numerous vendors in each state from whom PBXs
could be obtained.
We published three editions of the manual,
the first in 1980, the second in 1982, and the third in 1985. The
first two editions were stand-alone volumes, but for the third, I
did quarterly updates through 1990 (see "The
PBX Scene," elsewhere on this web site, for my commentary during
those years). During that time, PBXs, along with electronics in
general, went through a rapid transition as advances in solid state
physics allowed device manufacturers to explore a whole new
universe, bring it under control, and drop its prices through the
floor. Optical Fiber also came of age in that interval, doing the
same for communication bandwidth. Thus today, communications
technology has advanced so much that it is hard to even imagine what
the world was like just 25 years ago.
Although people now have pocket telephones,
hand-held computers, and instant access to other people and a
variety of data bases, they, themselves, have not changed all that
much. Even the newest technology still has to provide long-standing
needs. For that reason alone, portions of the Manual of PBXs
are still relevant. As with Background for Telephone Switching,
my objective was to describe what needed to be done--not how to do
it. Thus detailed descriptions of earlier PBXs are not included
here, but what a PBX does and the questionnaire I used to specify
customer needs and obtain information about how individual PBXs met
those needs, the centerpiece of the Manual, are still
relevant.
Also included, a sample RFP or request for
proposal, intended as a guide for PBX customers, may still have
value for customers and vendors alike. The chapters omitted concern
Most Needed Features (circa 1985), and The Office of the Future.
Both subjects are covered in some detail elsewhere on this web site,
along with many descriptions of specific PBXs. Also omitted are
Jerry Goldstone’s "Channels of Distribution." The volatility of
these listings has been such that now, 15 years after the last
updating, they would be nearly meaningless.
At the moment (May, 2006), it appears that
VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, an outgrowth of ARPA Net and
packet switching, is poised to take over telecommunications as it
used to be, using the internet to make the appropriate
interconnections. But it would be a great mistake for the designers,
vendors and users of this new technology to assume, as in 1975, that
new technology alone will capture the market. Just because it is
"state of the art" does not mean it can do the job.
Electronic switching, as of 1975, had many
advantages over the then-dominant electromechanical systems in
place, but designers of the new generation had no idea what
customers expected. They assumed (I was aware of their limited view
because I knew many of them, and had been one myself somewhat
earlier) that all a PBX had to do was connect one phone to another.
They had never been in a business office where some people had to
have several lines to handle their needs, secretaries screened calls
for their bosses, and interaction with specialized groups had to be
considered. They made a wonderful product, but it cost twice as much
as ancient systems in place, and couldn’t provide even the basic
services such systems had rendered for decades. New services such as
automatic route selection and call detail recording, greatly
improved in electronic central offices, were also omitted as
unnecessary for a PBX, and nobody was interested in handling data as
well as voice.
It took about 20 years for the electronic
designers to correct their course and produce a useful product. It
also took that long for them to realize that the magic word
"digital," although successful in advertising, was not enough in the
real world. I made an enormous effort to explain that all digitals
are not created equal, and eventually, possibly due in some small
part to my efforts, the kind of digital used in transmission also
dominated in switching systems, both Central Office and PBX. Thus a
signal (voice, data, or whatever) could go from end to end without a
number of conversions which could reduce information to garbage.
Alas, by that time it was too late. The internet had taken over. I
understand that almost all new PBXs being installed today are
VoIP-based, and come from internet suppliers rather than traditional
telephone manufacturers.
I hope at least some of the internet-trained
PBX designers, if they have not already run into the ideas I have
written about for the past 20 years, will at least stumble on this
web site and see my version of what a PBX is supposed to do.
Otherwise, we will replay the 1975 scene, with angry customers
complaining about their expensive new toys that can’t even help them
make phone calls. With long distance costs reduced almost to
nothing, it may not be too important if call detail recording is
forgotten, but remote administration and maintenance, and
after-sale-support in the land of the hackers, may turn out to be
more important than ever.
Further, it should be remembered that a
sophisticated machine exists for the purpose of serving
technologically unsophisticated people. It is there to help them do
their jobs and not squander their time and energy trying to make the
darn thing work.
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