If you've had any recent interest in moving your insurance business from a regular phone to a more business-oriented system, chances are you've heard the term "virtual PBX." Being the type to perform your due diligence, you do what any of us do these days – pop on your favorite search engine and type the words in the appropriate box. With or without the quotation marks.

While that seems to work for most things, the odds are by the time you're finished clicking on a few links and reading the results you're more confused than you were when you started. Because unlike Gertrude Stein's famous rose, the term "virtual PBX" is being used interchangeably with "hosted PBX" to describe two very different technologies.

While the net outcome is often similar, the way they approach it is worlds apart. And not understanding the differences could lead you to purchase a PBX system that's wrong for your insurance company – a mistake that will be not only costly, but time-consuming.