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http://help.fonality.com/?id=171025

If you don't already have native support for VOIP in your PBX, you might be able to replace your whole PBX system with one like PBXtra from Fonality for the same price as retrofitting your legacy PBX.

http://www.fonality.com/

Some other high level considerations:

• Avoid configurations that use ATA's connected to your phone system. This rarely works well.
• Avoid the use of DSL or cable internet connections with business VOIP. Use a T1, preferably dedicated for your VOIP traffic if you want flawless performance.
• If you can purchase VOIP from a company that puts in a dedicated data circuit to your business, that will work much much better than VOIP over the internet.

http://help.fonality.com/?id=171025

If you don't already have native support for VOIP in your PBX, you might be able to replace your whole PBX system with one like PBXtra from Fonality for the same price as retrofitting your legacy PBX.

http://www.fonality.com/

Some other high level considerations:

• Avoid configurations that use ATA's connected to your phone system. This rarely works well.
• Avoid the use of DSL or cable internet connections with business VOIP. Use a T1, preferably dedicated for your VOIP traffic if you want flawless performance.
• If you can purchase VOIP from a company that puts in a dedicated data circuit to your business, that will work much much better than VOIP over the internet.

I'm currently setting up a VoIP system for a very small office (5-10 people). What we've got is an Asterisk PBX setup by a company called Fonality. They did a pretty good job doing the initial setup. They will set up everything depending on your outbound config (T1 or whatever) and even set up phones. They can do remote support which I've found tends to be very quick.
They also have a web-based front end for configuration of simple tasks, (e.g. extensions, call menu, etc..), though I don't use it and prefer to edit the asterisk config myself (their config is broken out into lots of small includes, which makes it a bit harder at first to understand the dialplan flow).

The Cisco 7960 phones are great if you have the budget for them. I believe they run around $400 each at the moment. I haven't tried any of the "softphone" solutions yet to see if they are any good.

I would definitely go with a real VoIP provider and not try and use the Voice-Over-My-Internet-Connection route. QoS is a huge deal. We are using MCI at the moment, and things seem to be working out decently well. One thing to watch out for is that if you want to save money and split a T1 (1/2 voice, 1/2 data), I've found that MCI (and maybe others) do not offer Caller ID on the voice side since it is not a full PRI line (we are moving to a full PRI line very soon). Also, getting a split T1 means that you need an external TSU which is around an additional $1000 up-front hardware cost.

For most people, Asterisk is not easy to use. Several companies are offering setups that are very easy to use. See http://www.coneenterprises.com/phone_solutions.php and http://fonality.com/ for and interesting solution based on Asterisk. The interface rivals Vonage which is great for VoIP. The next generation of the software will allow database calls based on caller id so you can launch outlook or another database and pull up information based on the caller id. This system can add users and extentions easily. You can even setup a very complex call center queue.

I've started to use Asterisk for various applications, including as a

- PSTN to VOIP gateway: combine a cheap server, asterisk, and a few $50 voicemodem cards and you've got a VOIP gateway that can connect your outside phone lines to any VOIP phone.

- VOIP to PSTN gateway: cheap server, asterisk, open VOIP provider like VoicePulse Connect, and some Digium FXS cards and you can connect every phone in your house to a VOIP network.

- PSTN/VOIP front-end to IVR gateway: cheap server, Asterisk, IVR provider like Voxeo and you can connect all of the above to custom voice recognition applications. (Asterisk has some built in IVR but its limited today.)

Several companies are starting to offer commercial PBX products based on Asterisk, including http://www.signate.com/ and http://www.fonality.com/.

In summary, Asterisk is becoming an amazing "telephony widget" - it can address a variety of telephony solution requirements, depending on how you configure it.

There's also Fonality. Nice slogan too.