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| David Brook-Wilkins, Technical Director, Onlinco |
Onlico is an IT services and support company that provides an array of IT solutions for its customers. This can range from a ‘Foundation’ 24-7 tech support service through to outsourced IT facilities. Flexibility and excellence in delivery are the key characteristics of the Onlico approach.
With the convergence of voice and data comms, London-based Onlico decided about five years ago to partner with Spitfire to provide converged services for its customers. David Brook-Wilkins, Technical Director for the company explains. “We liked their attitude to service and the fact that they were not a big, impersonal corporation like some ISPs. At the same time they had the infrastructure and resources to provide the converged services our customers required. We have been very satisfied with the Spitfire ISP and voice telephony services we have recommended to our customers.
“Spitfire can supply comprehensive Internet and voice services extending from designing and implementing a telephony communications network to providing line rental and call billing, with complete after sales technical support and customer service. As one of only 35 CPS (Carrier Pre-Select) Operators in the UK, Spitfire has full quality control over its network ensuring that calls are delivered with premium quality. In addition Spitfire does not sell network capacity on to other resellers, ensuring volumes are controlled and quality is not compromised.”
In House System
Recently Onlico decided to implement Spitfire’s hosted telephony solution, SIP Communicator for its own requirements. “Provision of voice and data services is moving away from customer premises equipment to remote hosting,” says David Brook-Wilkins. “With the development of ‘cloud’ computing and hosted telephony, we felt that it was essential for us, as service and support providers, to be ahead of the curve on this. You can’t honestly preach the benefits of hosted solutions unless you have experience of them.
“SIP Communicator provides phone system functionality hosted remotely by Spitfire and only requires SIP-compatible handsets, making the service an extremely cost-effective solution for business start-ups and small businesses that are growing and anticipate moving premises. Before the product became available we had tried a hosted telephony solution from another vendor but that had been an awful experience. With SIP Communicator the implementation of went very smoothly and we were up and running straight away.”
Brook-Wilkins says SIP Communicator offers all the usual phone system features of holding and transferring calls, but has a number of additional benefits. “The system can be configured via the Internet, allowing change of feature set-ups as and when required, without incurring any engineering charges. Multiple hunt groups can be set up for incoming calls to ring telephones simultaneously or sequentially.
The system also provides voice mail, auto-attendant and conference call functionality.”
Onlico use Snom handsets, which include an LCD display, speakerphone and messagewaiting indicator.
“All the phone system features you could want are there,” David Brook-Wilkins confirms. “In the first month we did some system reconfiguration, but it was very easy and we got excellent tech support from Spitfire.
“The system uses a Spitfire SIP Trunk broadband connection instead of a conventional ISDN circuit and we have found this very reliable. Designed as an ISDN30e and ISDN2e replacement, Spitfire’s SIP Trunk typically offers business quality secure telephony at up to 50 percent less than the monthly rental cost of an equivalent ISDN service. As one of the few ISPs and fixed line CPs to offer a SIP Trunk service, Spitfire offers a complete end-to-end SIP service via its own IP and TDM infrastructure.”
Multi-Site
David Brook-Wilkins says SIP Communicator is ideal for multisite operations such as retail branch networks or small businesses employing home workers. “Where a business has home workers or workers in many different locations it provides real business and economic benefits because staff can call each other free of charge and incoming calls can be routed to any location.
“This winter Onlico staff were able to work from home using SIP Communicator. When people were snowed in, they could work remotely and were able to answer and transfer calls just as if they were in the office. It was a clear demonstration of the disaster recovery potential of the system, which gives us complete confidence to recommend SIP Communicator to our customers.”
Asked to sum up Onlico’s experience with Spitfire, David Brook-Wilkins says, “We like to deal with Spitfire because you can talk to a person, usually someone you know, who understands who we are and what we do. It’s not just some impersonal helpdesk. We appreciate that because service delivery is the backbone of our business.”