More than a phone system. A better way to communicate.

More than a phone system.
It’s a better way to communicate—and save.

Switchvox
®

Unified Communications

Clear Creek
Telephone and
Television
Objectives:
Replace their existing ComDial
system with a web-centric phone
system with VoIP functionality — a

robust system that requires minimal
support, and is easy to use. Seeking
a centralized IP PBX hardware
appliance answerable from 8:00 a.m.
until 5:00 p.m. by a live attendant.
Must offer the convenience and
flexibility of full integration with
their IT infrastructure; and provide
customizable options, email
notification, auto-forwarding,
overflow support, etc.

Challenges:
Clear Creek T&TV had a long list of
complications:

“In terms of cost …by

Solution:
Switchvox 355.

n

the time we purchased
another system and

n

added on all the
individual items not
offered with
[competitor’s]
hardware appliances,
it would be five times
the price we paid
for Switchvox.”

Not only was it hard to find anyone
who would work on the system, the
only Clear Creek employee who was
familiar with the system retired.

Inability to purchase compatible
equipment because most of it was
discontinued.
n

Integration into any of their existing
IT applications was impossible.
n

n

Rick Lundh
IT Manager
Clear Creek Telephone
& Television

The system constantly needed
maintenance and repair

As a standalone system, it offered
voice mail with very limited features.

Programming messaging was
complicated and required a small
booklet of steps.
n

n

Clear Creek was using a party-line
method of conference calling.

Designed to deliver voice or video over a
data network, the Digium Switchvox 355
with 30 Polycom 670 Expansion Module
IP phones provided all employees with
the same phones making replacements
a flash. The expansion module also
allows for additional phones. The solution
allowed Clear Creek to completely
abandon their POTS lines and run
everything off DSL.

Results:

About the Company:

The Digium Switchvox 355 has many
of the competitor’s a la carte features
built into the single, web-centric, IP PBX
with integrated Switchboard. All of the
features are built into the base price.
Integrated into the company IT
infrastructure, the Switchvox
Switchboard is easy to learn, and the
IVR tree helps the administrator
customize individual greetings and
immediately route calls without hassle
from the main IP PBX.

Clear Creek Telephone & TV
Clear Creek Telephone & Television is
located in Oregon City, Oregon, just south
of Portland. Forming a co-op in the early
1900s, for more than 100 years, Clear
Creek T&TV has provided telephone
service to businesses and residents of
Oregon City and Redland, Oregon. Today
they provide cable and Internet services
as well.

Phone system being replaced:
17-year-old ComDial system

Other solutions considered:
Shoretel

“What is nice about the Switchvox system is
how easy it was for our employees to learn it.”

Rick Lundh
IT Manager
Clear Creek Telephone & Television

1st Guard
Corporation
Objectives:
Replace an aging phone system with
one that provides better business
continuity; improves disaster-recovery
operations; integrates smoothly into
existing IT infrastructure; provides
relatively easy implementation; and is
scalable for future growth.

Challenges:
1. Overcome an aging, proprietary Avaya
IP Office system:

1st Guard tested every

Solution:
Switchvox and Polycom
and Bria phones.

n

nuance of the Digium
system (via in-house
demo), and within two
weeks, they were sold.

Proprietary Avaya equipment was more
expensive and incompatible with long
term IT growth strategy.

Avaya had 1st Guard hardware-locked.
In-house software applications and
softphones did not function fully,
or at all.
n

Avaya only ran on a Windows® platform
and could not be integrated into a
Macintosh® or Unix operating system.
n

2. Needed a reliable back-up system:
A secondary Cold Spare was needed
to link the corporate headquarters in
Venice to Dallas operations via an open
API (Application Programming Interface)
n

At the “flip of a switch”, 1st Guard
could pick up operations in the event
of fire, natural disaster, or any other
catastrophic event.
n

Digium’s Switchvox SMB 4.6 was paired
with a couple of Polycom phones for use
in the executive offices. Bria softphones
by Counterpath were installed for the
customer service representatives which
provided a next-generation softphone
application allowing 1st Guard to make
VoIP and video calls over IP from their
computer desktop, and allowing 1st
Guard to replace their outdated
Avaya phones.
Once Switchvox was installed, concerns
about integrating the company’s
“homegrown” business applications were
immediately alleviated due to Switchvox’s
easy integration points.
By setting up a Switchvox 305 Cold
Spare VoIP PBX appliance in their Dallas
location, the disaster recovery problem
was also quickly resolved.

Results:

About the Company:

The Switchvox SMB 4.6 and Switchvox
305 Cold Spare VoIP PBX appliance
helped 1st Guard improve business
continuity and implement disasterrecovery operations, while integrating
smoothly into existing IT infrastructure for
relatively easy implementation.

1st Guard Corporation
1st Guard Corporation is a specialty
truck insurer located in Venice, Florida
offering a variety of insurance-related
products and services to their clients
throughout most of the Lower 48. They
have 18 fulltime employees and posted
annual revenue in excess of $20 million.

Avaya IP Office

Hosted in the cloud 5Nine solution
Cisco solution

“When the Switchvox system arrived, it came
as a single rack system in a box. If we had
purchased the same ‘add-ons’ to the Cisco
system that come included in the single
Switchvox system, we would have paid three
times the money…”

Dan Ribar, CIO
1st Guard Corporation

Comune di
Casalecchio
di Reno
Objectives:
Replace four older-model analog
PBX switchboards with a dynamic
new central telecommunications
hardware appliance that integrates
seamlessly into the current
infrastructure, solving a number
of problems, including replacing
an aging, technologically inferior,
and unstable telephone system.

Challenges:
1. Must be able to manage a high
volume of internal calls from within
the administrative framework: Mayor’s
office, the City Council, City Planning
Board and other internal divisions,
including 16 schools.
2. Must be able to manage a high

volume of external calls from

residents needing information
The solution must be:

on taxes, court dates, legal
• Easy to manage

problems, and licensing; and

calls from businesses, news
• Provide the newest telephony

agencies, economic advisory
and VoIP features

teams, and constituents.
• Capable of being set up

3. Poor cable mapping made
using in-house technicians

installing new phones or moving
with minor local IT support

existing phones a complex
• User-friendly to non-technical

procedure that took several days
personnel

of work.
• Mobile in terms of equipment

4. The outdated analog system

was technologically inferior and
unstable, with problems including:

n

n

Limited management of Interactive
Voice Responders (IVR)
Calls that floated and eventually
dropped.

Missing critical features, such as
voicemail, call queues, intro prompts
and detailed logging.
n

Frequent system overloads that
eventually crashed the entire phone
structure — a calamity that occurred
four or five times per week.
n

Rebooting the system required a
lengthy, manual procedure that
prevented calls from coming through
while the phones reset. This occurred
several times a day.
n

Solution:
Switchvox 355 with existing
IP phones.
The citizens and city
administrators of
Comune di Casalecchio
di Reno are experiencing
a technological boon
in telecommunications
with the versatile and
dynamic Digium
Switchvox application.

Digium’s new Switchvox SMB 355
system let Casalecchio connect up to
400 users through one central hardware
appliance. The City took advantage of
330 IP phones across five remote
locations including 16 schools. As an
added bonus, they were able to integrate
voice, fax, CRM, chat, and Google Maps,
all in a single system with the intuitive
power of a switchboard.

The Switchvox system allows
administrators to configure soft phones
on their HIPER LAN to area schools,
so they can make telephone calls over
the Internet with a computer and headphones, rather than using dedicated
hardware. They also have virtual
extensions configured to dial external
POTS numbers for their off-site locations
and for citizens calling in from analog
phones. Each extension now has a
one-stop IMAP Mailbox for voicemail
and faxes.

Results:

About the Company:

In Digium Switchvox, Comune di
Casalecchio di Reno found all the
features they needed, plus a wide range
of advanced features that were beyond
the original criteria, offering additional
efficiency for little or no extra cost and
within the allocated budget. After nine
months of use, Casalecchio city
employees have a stable system that is
easy to use.

Comune di Casalecchio di Reno
A city of 35,000 people in northern Italy,
Comune di Casalecchio di Reno in
Bologna serves a metropolitan area of
35,000 people, providing them with
hundreds of community and civil
services. A city’s residents are dependent on its administrative body for
governance, education, public safety,
taxation, transportation, health, sanitation, and cultural support among others.

Four older-model analog PBX switchboards

“A city government is a very busy place. A
municipality cannot afford telephone blackout.
Now we reach our goals and are supported
by an easy and professional product.”

Andrea Ventura
ICT Manager
Comune di Casalecchio di Reno

Bisk Education
Objectives:
Replace a digital Nortel PBX
TS-1000 and eliminate an Indiabased hosted service for outgoing
and international calling. Switch to a
single in-house IP solution that
reduces costs and easily integrates
into the existing IT infrastructure.

Challenges:

Bisk has more
functionality with
Asterisk than they ever
had before with the
Nortel/Avaya product,
and they don’t have to
pay individual fees for
every individual
feature. Instead, the

1. Following the purchase of Nortel by
Avaya in 2009, business phone
systems encountered operations
problems that were left unresolved,
making it impossible to provide Bisk
with dependability of service and the
flexibility they needed:
• Integration issues between the two
companies’ phone systems (following
the merger) made it impossible to
correlate data across multiple systems.
n

licenses allow access
to everything.
n

Nortel costs continued to skyrocket as
the two companies tried to reconcile
operational issues
While Nortel and Avaya sought ways
to make the components talk to each
other, Bisk realized there was really no
reason to consider an Avaya system.
They needed a reliable, comprehensive
solution that worked immediately.

n

Nortel PBX’s IP capabilities were for
remote monitoring only and could not
use it for internal communications due
to its limitations.

2. Bisk was contracted to a company in
India for all their outgoing and international calls, with high costs attached.

Solution:
Asterisk open source
communications engine.
A single solution, Digium’s Asterisk IP
PBX solution easily integrated with
Bisk’s other equipment and software,
without worry of compatibility. There
was no reason to continue considering
Avaya or trying to integrate any other
solutions. By eliminating Avaya and
replacing it with open source Asterisk
software, they were able to bridge the
gap Avaya was struggling to accomplish.

Results:

About the Company:

Asterisk saved money across the board
because the individual licensing fees
attached to individual features are all
included in the single Asterisk solution.
By using SIP trunks, Bisk was able to
make Asterisk talk to Europe, saving
many hours in time and more than
$150,000 in costs.

Bisk Education

“Asterisk is a powerful but affordable and
flexible solution to all three of Bisk’s priorities.
To say they saved us money is a no-brainer.
We are talking about savings of well over
$150,000.00 in licensing alone.

Calvin Wells
Director of Network Operations & Engineering
Bisk Education

Bisk Education, located in Tampa,
Florida, offers technical support as an
online facilitator of accredited college
degrees and certifications from leading
universities across the United States.
Today, Bisk Education manages the
online business curriculum for a number
of major “brick and mortar” U.S. colleges
including Tulane University, the University
of Notre Dame, and Villanova University,
to name a few. They offer undergraduate
and Master’s degree programs, and
professional certifications in a number of
fields for students worldwide. The Tampa
facility has 765 employees, of which a
little over half make up the 400-person
recruiting and student-support call center.

Digital Nortel PBX TS-1000
India-based international long distance
provider

Avaya

Greenberg & Co.
Objectives:
Replace an obsolete Nitusko/NEC
system with a unique VoIP telephone
system that is flexible enough to
accommodate multiple phone lines,
including international calling, and at
the lowest possible cost.

Challenges:

The new system had
to work invisibly;
requiring little if any
training; and needed to
produce high-quality
sound across
all systems.

Solution:

1. Need a phone system capable of
handling a high volume of unique calls
per day, based on a centralized
switchboard that:

Switchvox 65 IP PBX

Supports business-critical VoIP
functionality, including full VoIP and
mobile access internationally.
n

n

Includes ability to send voicemail to
email, in addition to supporting many
other business-critical VoIP functions.

2. Must scale without requiring a
significant investment every time they
add a phone, move offices, or add
international clients.
3. It must provide a seamless and
efficient, but economical, means for
high-volume international calling.
4. The ability to conference call from
anywhere in the world.

The Digium Switchvox 65 IP PBX
solution was merged with Asterisk to
provide desired features — all within one
Digium Switchvox system. Because the
system was capable of handling the
unique feature requirements, it was
simple to efficiently and economically
make the transition.
Using SIP trunks proved to be the most
economical means for assuring the
highest level of system performance.
Their Internet connectivity was greatly
enhanced by allocating a portion of their
service to an ITSP (Internet Telephony
Service Provider), and the SIP trunks let
them use VoIP outside the enterprise
network by the same Internet connection.
This allowed them support for eight or
more simultaneous conversations, locally
and internationally.

Results:

About the Company:

The totality of the Switchvox/Asterisk
product application solved the problem
of high international calling rates;
created the ability to facilitate inbound,
outbound, and across-network
conference calling without overloading
the system; and provided an expandable
solution that easily integrated into the
company’s IT infrastructure. Digium
Switchvox, along with Asterisk, solved
the more complex requirements of
Greenberg’s telephony needs,
addressing all of their concerns.

Greenberg & Co.

“What I like about the Digium solution and
when using the open source technology of
Asterisk is that when I explained not just what
I have to have, but what I want to have if it
is possible… they were able to make it work
with Switchvox!”

Daniel Greenberg
Attorney at Law
Greenberg & Co.

Greenberg & Co. is a small boutique
commercial law firm located in Shelton,
Connecticut, whom feeling their growth
potential stifled by a weak local economy
and growing anti-business regulatory
burdens in the United States for his 15
international entrepreneurial clients,
sought a way to diversify. After passing
the Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test
(Solicitors Examination for credentials in
England and Wales) Greenberg opened a
satellite office (under the name Greenberg
& Co. Solicitors LTD) on the island of
Tortola, the largest island in the Virgin
Island archipelago, and the financial
center of the British Virgin Islands.

Nitusko/NEC

Evaluated six vendors, then narrowed
down to three before selecting Switchvox.

Universities
of Portugal
Objectives:
Reduce communications costs by at
least 20 percent for the Portuguese
system of public higher education.
In doing so, developing a highly
competitive, web-centric, VoIP
solution throughout Portugal’s
48 colleges, universities, and
Polytechnical institutions, with the
prospect of replicating the application
in other scenarios, both nationally
and internationally.

Challenges:

The implementation
provides centralized
management and
billing of both the
legacy and Digium
Switchvox with Asterisk
system, while supporting
an infrastructure that
processes seven million
monthly calls.

Solution:

1. Meet the mandated two-year window
for completion of this highly complex
assignment, accomplishing it in three
distinct phases: transition 33 schools
in the first three months of the project;
eight schools in the second phase;
and seven schools in the third and
final phase.

By utilizing Digium’s open source
Asterisk software with a Switchvox IP
PBX system, they were able to maintain
their existing legacy hardware while
gaining IP capability simply by converting
analog audio signals to digital for
transmission. The ITCenter did this by
using Asterisk and OpenSER to develop
a compatible system where the VoIP
system intercepted calls between the
standard, old telephone service (POTS)
legacy PBX and the Public Switched
Telephone Network (PSTN). Incoming
calls were then automatically routed by
the Internet, transparently with zero
impact to the user.

2. The public higher education system
had a high performance gigabit
network in place, but they were not
using it for telephony.
3. The public higher education system
was running telecommunications off
a traditional legacy PBX telephone
system utilizing 220 PBXs, some for
which were not in the best of condition.

Results:

About the Company:

Utilizing a technical team of 10
technicians who hold a variety of
certifications in the technologies on
which open source IP solutions are
based, they transformed Portugal’s
higher education system into the most
advanced telephony system in Portugal.
At the same time, they met all the
financial expectations and economic
savings objectives outlined by FCCN.
They also decreased costs from
€4 million to €3.3 million, for an annual
reduction of €1.7 million.

Universities of Portugal
Proposed by the Portuguese Ministry
of Science, Technology, and Higher
Education, and funded by the
Portuguese government through the
Foundation for National Scientific
Computation (FCCN); FCCN manages
and develops the national network of
communications in high-speed data and
scientific systems of higher education
(RCTS) for Portugal’s 48 colleges,
universities, and Polytechnical
institutions.

220 traditional analog legacy PBXs

“We want to share the success of this endeavor
and use the FCCN/RCTS job as an example so
other government entities, including those in
the United States, can see what can be done
in terms of highly advanced communications
that decrease overall costs.”

Ruben Sousa, Founding Partner & CTO
ITCenter

Strategic
Health Care
Objectives:
Eliminate the crushing costs of
outsourcing a hosted IP telephony
solution that averages $70 to $80
per user, per month. Strategic
Health Care needs a cost-effective
replacement system to bring their
telecommunications in-house.

Challenges:

Digium Switchvox and
Asterisk were easier to
execute than originally
thought possible. Not
only is it flexible and
expandable leaving
plenty of room to
grow, but also it cut
costs drastically,
which was one of the
main objectives of
the project.

Solution:

Strategic Health Care had an existing,
up-to-date telephony system with
advanced features. The health care
organization needed to keep the same
features, but wanted to significantly
reduce the costs associated with a
comparable solution. At the same time,
Strategic Health Care decided to bring
the management of their IT needs
in-house, in yet another effort to better
manage costs

Switchvox SMB with Asterisk
Strategic Health Care implemented
Digium’s Switchvox SMB along with
Asterisk. This solution meant keeping
features the support team needed, while
still reducing costs. They purchased
Digium Switchvox SMB right out of the
box, expecting to have to reconfigure the
phone set-up and reset the entire phone
system to Switchvox specifications.
However, the simplicity of the solution
allowed Strategic Health Care to
proceed without requiring additional
technical support needed for installation.

Results:

About the Company:

Eliminated more than $2,100 (per month),
or approximately $25,000 a year in user
fees by replacing their hosted phone
system with the Digium Switchvox and
Asterisk solution. They were able to
continue using their proprietary software
by entering through a web portal where
their customer support team could
perform all their functions online,
including building reports and
documenting customer issues.

Strategic Health Care
Strategic Health Care in Santa Barbara,
California is an information intelligence
solution offering real-time analytical data
for the healthcare industry.

Outsourced, hosted IT-based system
called Clear Star by Impulse Advanced
Communications

Considered several Web-hosted in the
cloud IP systems
Considered an approach to renegotiate
costs with existing hosted solution,
Clear Star

“We are now looking at a cost of $70 per year,
as opposed to $70 per person per month —
plus the cost of equipment. The savings off
the top alone are impressive.”

Cevin Doppmann
Strategic Health Care

Roxbury
Preparatory
Charter School
Objectives:
Replace an aging NEC digital system,
with a VoIP system that allows phone
calls and messages to be sent to
each teacher, regardless of classroom
location. It is an effort to significantly
change telecommunications to benefit
the students and the staff; provide
unique paging and conferencing
functionality; and provide emergency
911-classroom access — all while
saving money.

Challenges:

Offering unified
messaging and
conferencing, the SMB
Switchvox 305 came
bundled with a subscription plan and warranty.
Designed for small
businesses looking for
the power of a serverclass PBX, the SMB
Switchvox 305 supports
up to 10 concurrent
recorded calls and up
to 15 simultaneous
conference users.

Solution:

1. Without the existence of an IP-capable
system prior to the expansion, the
data network had to be built from
scratch. This involved re-cabling the
entire third floor of the building, and
wiring previously unused areas.

Switchvox 305

2. Construction began prior to the start
of school, but it extended several
weeks into the start of the school year
making the installation awkward
because the environment had to be
safe for the kids.

Digium’s Switchvox SMB 305 PBX
appliance was selected because it uses
a single PRI (Primary Rate Interface), and
offers unified messaging and conferencing. They designed a centralized PBX for
answering all incoming calls with the main
extension configured with cascading call
groups. The administrator can send calls
to the classroom, or directly to the
teacher via their iPhone, Blackberry, or
other mobile device.

Results:

About the Company:

Roxbury is a very progressive school and
wanted a high-end telephony solution
that is flexible and cost-effective.
Switchvox gave Roxbury the ability to
get phone messages to teachers regardless of their teaching location, while also
sending messages more quickly and in
a less intrusive manner. Unique paging
functionality allows administrators to
page room to room, in zones, or in all
rooms at once; and teachers can
dial 911 from their workstation inside the
classroom.

Roxbury Preparatory Charter School

“The phones were already crazy here, but
after increasing to over two hundred fifty
students, significantly expanding the facility,
and adding ten more teachers, we had to look
at a more pliable solution. Digium’s Switchvox
met all our requirements and more.”

Sheri Cheng, Technical director

Located in Roxbury, Massachusetts,
currently sits in an inner city neighborhood
of Boston called Mission Hill. As a
successful charter school for sixth
through eighth graders, Roxbury recently
doubled in size, expanding its facility from
a handful of rooms located on the third
floor of the Edgar Benjamin Health Care
Center, to taking over the entire third floor.

NEC digital system

Digium. We’re changing the way businesses communicate.
®

Founded in 1999, Digium is the creator
and primary developer of Asterisk, the
industry’s first open source telephony
platform. More than one million customers
in 125 countries have deployed Asteriskbased systems. Digium is committed to
ending the days of expensive, proprietary
telecom. The Switchvox family of Unified
Communications solutions is built on
Asterisk and is designed to provide
enterprise class features at affordable
prices for small and medium businesses.

The award-winning line of Switchvox IP
PBX phone systems provides more than
a phone system — it delivers a Unified
Communications platform that integrates
multiple features that increase productivity
and lower monthly communication costs.
It’s the affordable solution with a proven
return on investment for businesses
with 10 to 400 users.
Learn more at digium.com/switchvox

Want more information
on Switchvox?
Take a virtual tour of
this powerful Unified
Communications platform:
www.digium.com/switchvox

Contact us —
we’re here to help.
Talk with a Switchvox specialist:
1 877 344 4861
1 256 428 6271
sales@digium.com

Copyright © 2011 Digium, Inc. All rights reserved. Digium, Asterisk and Switchvox are trademarks of Digium, Inc.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

More than a phone system. A better way to communicate.

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More than a phone system. A better way to communicate.