One of the driving forces of VoIP solutions growth is the great amount of flexibility the technology offers customers, according to a TMCnet blog post.

In the post, TMCnet Web Editor Jamie Epstein, quotes a Telappliant.com article written by Mike Eagle, general manager of the Federation of Communication Services.

According to Eagle’s article, VoIP solutions offer multiple cost savings, including high initial costs for a private branch exchange.

“It’s not necessarily that cost is the main driver for business solutions. I think it’s more a question of getting the enhanced and more and more sophisticated flexibility,” Eagle said in a statement.

Additionally, Eagle stated that for commercial organizations, hosted VoIP and Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) trunking are the products that offer the most functionalities needed by businesses transitioning to VoIP solutions.

Patton, a business- and carrier-class VoIP provider, has teamed with IP telephony and video solutions provider ABP, to create  VoIPReady, a program of value-added SIP trunking solutions.

With ABP’s VoIPReady program, integrators and resellers can attract new enterprise customers and increase profits by delivering survivable, value-added SIP-trunking solutions that essentially bootstrap themselves, according to a joint press release issued by the two companies.

VoIPReady end-customers can realize the cost savings and worker productivity of survivable SIP-based communications, while preserving and leveraging existing voice equipment such as Key Systems or PBX-based phone systems, according to the release.

“It’s like getting a new business phone system-in-a-box,” said Robert Messer, president of ABP, “that connects with all your existing phone equipment. The new phone lines are 100% SIP-based, offering all the advantages of IP telephony… lowered costs, richer features, teleworking capabilities—everything with no headaches and no hassles.”

“It is an easy way for a business to take the plunge,” said Sean Gerrity, Patton Sales Director for North America and Japan. “In a relatively short time, the money saved with SIP trunking can fund future purchases toward all-IP communications, such as an iPBX or SIP-based hard or soft-phones.”

VoIPReady delivers fully-provisioned, tested, and quality-assured SIP-trunking solutions based on Patton’s SmartNode VoIP CPE products, pre-configured by ABP for interoperation with Broadvox SIP trunking services, according to the release.

“ABP completely pre-configures and fully tests each VoIPReady solution on the carrier end before it ever ships,” Messer explains. “VoIPReady solutions take all the complications out of customer-site implementation.”

“VoIPReady basically makes system activation a no-brainer,” Gerrity observes. “Once the elements are plugged in and turned on, the system sends a ping back to Broadvox, then it all lights up and starts working.”

ABP’s reseller partners can order new pre-configured lines, or get a block of temporary numbers to use right away—forwarding the old lines while waiting for the old telephone numbers to get ported, according to the release.

To handle any network deployment issues on the customer end, ABP’s trained staff of Patton Certified SmartNode Specialists offers first-line technical support to resellers or the end-customer’s IT team.