Traditional Phone System to VOIP, pull vs push

Since office telephony and Information Technology (IT) have been crossing paths there seems to be an end goal where the owner of a small business can have one company that looks after almost everything required for them to run their business, stretching from Phones, to computers and servers. However, since phone systems usually are one of the first things to go into a business and are the last things to change (some clients run the same phone system for 10+ years quite happily) there seems to always be a legacy system which the IT provider has to pass it over to the 'Phone Company' so they can do something seemingly trivial such as add another extension or change a hunt group. Usually the performing of these tasks are quite costly as the system itself is old and the people who service them are becoming rarer and rarer.

Specifically the systems I am talking about use traditional phone lines coming into the premises and each of the handsets is configured to access the lines and display the information on buttons that light up to indicate which line is active. At any point in time a user can simply press the button on the corresponding line and assume control of the call.

Commander phone system handset

These phone systems were perfect for offices which had few employees and they were all within an ear-shot of each other as a receptionist could answer the call, say for example and incoming call on line 1, put the call on hold, and yell out to another team member that there is a call for them on line 1. The team member can press line 1 to pull and assume responsibility of the call. Simple yes, and it's a one to one relationship, you have one PSTN line for each of the active lines you require for your business and when all are used up you cannot call out or call in as all lines are full.

Cisco SPA504G a popular VOIP handset

Enter VOIP, an internet based phone system which does away with the notion of one to one and allows many calls to come through to the same number, there are hybrid VOIP solutions which use physical and VOIP lines to facilitate calls but I am focusing on pure VOIP. VOIP also usually allows the management of hunt groups and other things like extensions through a web based configuration which can be administered by the businesses IT provider. Physical lines feeding into the premises no longer matter and this can break down the barriers to allow customers to scale easily and cheaply. All sounds good in theory, yes but how about the example I mentioned earlier, where in a small business the user would like to get a call to another team member? Now in the case of VOIP each handset is not aware of the other 'lines' that it is hooked up to as each VOIP handset makes a connection to the VOIP server (whether its in-house or hosted) so in order to get a call from one handset to the other the receptionist must push or transfer the call to the recipients handset. This leads to a few extra button presses on the handset and opens up a whole bunch of other options including an attended transfer (where a calling party can introduce the call before transferring) and a blind transfer (which is basically like pushing the call across and having no way to get it back). This is more flexible then the old system but you can't argue that it is simpler the old way required one button to be pressed to simply take the call away from receiption.

Some users may struggle with this small but often overlooked change in pushing and pulling of the calls, if the current system has been in use for a long time it would be best to stipulate this difference with your client at the forefront before any moves are made towards a VOIP system. In the end yes it is not as simple as the older phone systems, but the cost and flexibility benefits from VOIP might outweigh the marginal increase in complexity.