As part of our relentless drive to integrate all forms of business communication, we recently replaced our analog phone system with something more modern, flexible and exciting. We needed to add more extensions to our existing system - including home-phones - and to allow users to automatically dial numbers while in a database contact record.

We also wanted to integrate our phone system with our MRX email-tracking platform. This turned out to be difficult because we mostly use Apple Mac workstations and most of the proprietary solutions are designed for Windows integration.

We eventually decided on an 'open' VOIP platform - one that could be integrated with our own systems. After looking at various commercial solutions, we opted for Asterisk, an open source Public Branch Exchange (PBX) software solution. This runs under Linux and supports everything we need from the outset, with possibilities for the future wide open. For example, for a given customer contact, as well as being able to see all emails send/received in one place, we can also now keep a log of phone calls to/from that individual.

In the process of choosing and deploying a VOIP system, we have learnt a great deal about VOIP PBX, as well as the best software and hardware on which to implement it. If your company is considering the same transition from analogue to VOIP, particularly where Mac OS X is involved, then we would be happy to share our experience with you.