centralinos

Centralinos are telephony systems that function as a private telephone exchange for an organization. They connect internal extensions to each other and to external networks, provide call routing, and manage trunks and features such as voicemail and conferencing. The term is used broadly in Spanish and Italian contexts as equivalent to a private branch exchange (PBX).

Historically, centralinos began as electromechanical systems with relay switches and dedicated lines; from the late 20th century they evolved to electronic and digital PBXs, and in the 21st century many have become IP-based. Modern offerings include on-premises IP-PBX solutions and cloud-based hosted PBX services, as well as hybrid configurations that combine local infrastructure with remote servers.

Typical capabilities include auto attendant/IVR, call routing and queuing, extension management, call conferencing, voicemail, call recording, call forwarding, and integration with e-mail, calendars, and customer relationship management systems. They support multiple external trunks and can scale to hundreds of extensions in larger organizations. They connect to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or Internet telephony via SIP trunks.

Deployment decisions involve factors such as scalability, reliability, total cost of ownership, security, and maintenance. On-premises systems require hardware and IT skills, while cloud-based solutions reduce on-site equipment and are managed by the provider.

Centralinos remain common in offices that require centralized call management, but the market has shifted toward IP-based and hosted models, which offer greater scalability and integration with digital communication channels.