VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Solution

Welcome to the world of VOIP. This disruptive innovation will replace the business telephone systems that you've known and used for ever. And while the individual parts of this new technology are inexpensive, fitting them together and getting them to work can be time consuming.

Where is the commitment of time required?

• Planning. There is work to identify the various constituencies that will be affected. What are the use cases for each constituency today and what will they be after the switch to VOIP? A use case is a scenario that describes one interaction with the phone or VOIP system. It is better to enumerate all the use cases and see that they are handled than to get to implementation and find yourself saying, "I didn't think of that!" and having to fix a problem for angry/frustrated users.
• Systems design, integration and implementation.
• Training and support. You know what a challenge it can be to get people to change ingrained habits.

Keystone has been using VOIP for its business phones for more than 3 years. We have a "roll-your-own" solution, instead of a more-expensive, turn-key solution. Our system uses open-source software and commodity service providers to keep the ongoing cost down. We did most of the design, configuration and integration of the system. Here are the elements of the solution we have.

• An Asterisk virtual machine hosted for us in the cloud.
• A SIP trunking service which routes calls between the legacy telephone and cell phone networks and our Asterisk server.
• VOIP handsets.
• SIP client apps on our smartphones which work wherever our smartphones are on Wi-Fi.

This cloud-hosted, Asterisk (open-source) solution is a better value than the turn-key alternatives. Turn-key offerings usually involve per-extension, per-month charges. This way of pricing VOIP is designed to exploit clients who are accustomed to the operations and costs of legacy phone systems. Vendors sell them as being cheaper than legacy systems.  In reality, turn-key VOIP vendors realize most of the savings that come from their clients switching to VOIP.  

Let Keystone set up a VOIP system for you with open-source software and commodity service providers.  We'll charge you for the up-front time we spend, and you'll get all the savings going forward.  They payback period on the up-front costs will be fast, because the ongoing savings will be substantial.