The render you have shown that was done in Max looks to be achieved using Indirect Lighting, through a GI render engine like Vray, MentalRay, FinalRender, or perhaps Brazil.  3dsmax has a wide selection of render engines at it's disposal, and although similar in function, each one has it's own strengths.

Stewer is correct in that most render engines use the same basic principles when it comes to rendering technology, and can all pretty much achieve the same level of output given the proper materials and settings.  However, the difference between the render engines that 3dsmax utilizes vs. the one Poser uses is mostly in the area of "physically correct" lighting and raytracing.  While there is still no render engine that can truly reproduce the highly complex effects of real light interaction in a render, since it would be FAR to computationally expensive for today's hardware, there are some engines, like the ones used by 3dsmax, that can account for fairly complicated things like multiple light bounces, scatter,  and color bleeding (things Poser is not capable of without clever faking, or workarounds... and even then, it will not be quite as accurate).

Ambient occlusion and IBL are techniques that essentially fake Global Illumination.  They're handy because they provide similar results in far less time.  HOwever, they do not account for light bounces, or indirect illumination.  It would take a very complex light setup to simulate multiple bounces, and even then the results may not be as pleasing as the "real thing".  Also, raytracing in Poser's render engine is very slow and dirty compared to these other renderers, making things like glass, metal, water, etc. harder to duplicate.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.