Anyone using VoIP in work on PCs?

mickoneill30

I was wondering if there was any enterprise software that people recommend for VoIP.

We've a lot of people travelling in our company and we've offices in various sites over Europe so it's always a pain in the ass figuring out what the cheapest plan for a phone is for a user. E.g. user based in London but spends 30% of his time in different countries. Some of the phone bills coming in are scary. They always have internet access so I'm looking at Skype. So I was wondering if there are there any other VoIP plans or software that largish companies are using?

Sposs

Have a look at http://www.asterisk.org/ , very powerful opensource telephony software , might a short while to figure out , but very powerful when you do.

Did a blog post on this not that long ago - http://blog.dediserve.com/?p=126

mickoneill30

Thanks for the reply Sposs but I'm more looking for a standalone service for users travelling with laptops. I think Asterisk is just a PABX replacement.
Is there web gateway for it so that a user in a hotel in France can make a VoIP call using his laptop?

samhail

My company is deploying the latest Microsoft Communicator which is meant to be alot better than the current standard which already has VoIP and and video conferencing.

Other free tools that have it are MSN, yahoo, aol etc. and even gmail these days.

sandleman1979

We are using Microsoft's Office Communication Server 2007.

At first i hardly used it, but now i am involved with the deplyoment of the product i can say it is a very very clever piece of kit.

How we have it setup means i can be anywhere in the planet, as long as i have an internet connection i can carry out voice and video calls to anyone in my company and any company's we are linked with. I can make phone calls to regular phone users (again wherever i am on the planet) and it will show up as a call from my office number.

Additionally its linked in with live meeting which allows you to carry out presentations for example over the internet, users can listen in and watch.

The product is very scalable so you can add extra's on as you go, and as we have it now, we don't have a normal telephone system in our office as we are completly VOIP based using Blueface as our provider.

I have also seen Cisco's VOIP setup and that as well is very clever but have no idea on setting up and costs.....

samhail

I know the later comm server will allow deployment on a citrix server, where the older comm server will not.
Will the cpw (online version) allow VOIP ? or do you need the client ?

sandleman1979

The Communicator Web access only allows instant messaging.. However it can be set so that if you want to call some, the OCS calls say your mobile and then bridges the call to who you want to call.

You need the client for full voip.

We have the full client on a terminal server, however it cannot handle audio or video, so pretty much instant messaging only...

roryq

There is an application within Asterik that you can use as a pbx emulator.. This can intergrate into the system as a virtual extentsion. We use this in our office for both the inhouse phone system and a virtual point of view. It works well with no issues.

Zioper is the name of the application.. Which we use as a virtual ext...

MrFireBox

Have a look at www.3cx.com