During a recent discussion with an existing client we were asked if we thought a VoIP phone server would run well in the cloud and having built VoIP servers for a number of years for several customers running them on prem, we were more than willing to give this a shot.
Our client’s previous PBX and phones were proprietary but they had more than enough desk phones so didn’t want to buy new ones. They had recently bought over another business and wanted to integrate all their communications but try and be as smart as possible with their options. There was no supported route to get all of their IP phones working with an Asterisk based phone server.
After investigating the options CloudITfy managed to get these configured for SIP using a test on prem server. This was a massive breakthrough and one which would allow us to move on to the next stage which was implementing the phone server in the cloud.
Due to the customer having some of its DR environment in Azure, we implemented a Linux server on there and manually installed Asterisk. For security we also manually installed a Linux Router which allowed us to do port forwarding for SIP to work. This all worked very well and soon we were able to connect phones over the internet using standard port forwarding and NAT.
Once this had been tested and we had ensured it was working well enough, we then rolled it out to the customer, first installing it in their office in Aberdeen on site and then remotely to their other offices in Europe, Africa and America using preconfigured files. We have even found, for the few users who were truly remote, that we were able to talk them through installing the configuration file themselves, saving the business both time and money.
This was an interesting and challenging project to be involved in and lead to a lot of late nights for our team. It was however, well worth the effort as our client now has unified communications through its business whilst having still made savings as they haven't had to invest in new PBXs as new sites come online.
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