IPFone

Based in Miami, FL, IPFone is a leading provider of managed hosted PBX, integrated voice and data, and internet access solutions for businesses.

This case study relates to a project undertaken at a customer of IPFone, a hotel belonging to a global chain of hotels and resorts, located in the Dominican Republic. With an aging Alcatel PBX system in place, IPFone’s customer decided the time had come to upgrade its communications infrastructure. The existing PBX was reaching end of life, and support and maintenance costs were increasing. The hotel’s IT team began investigating options for the new communications solution. In the end, rather than going for another on-premises PBX platform, they chose to adopt IPFone’s cloud-based Hosted Hospitality solution.

IPFone boasts 19 years in business with more than 2500 corporate accounts with deployments worldwide. IPFone’s solution is powered by BroadSoft BroadWorks, the world’s leading developer of VoIP applications software. In addition, IPFone also offers full integration between the hotel’s PMS system and the BroadWorks platform. The prime advantage of hosted communications is the lack of capital expenditure needed to deploy the solution. All the servers, call control and management systems reside at the service provider’s data centers (in IPFone’s case, with full redundancy and automatic failover) and are managed by the service provider’s staff.

A particular challenge for IPFone was what to do with the 800 room phones at the hotel. One potential solution would be to replace all the phones with IP phones that could connect directly to the hosted PBX. This, however, would entail significant capital expenditure, both in terms of the IP phone devices themselves and the data network infrastructure that would have to be installed throughout the hotel.

Visit the IPFone website for more information.