As a junior product manager I was faced with the shortcomings of teleworking solutions over ISDN. Back in 1998, people still relied heavily on internal PABX systems to get their job done.

Project description

When leaving the office, there was no way to take your telephone extension with you. Sure, you could forward your calls to your ISDN number at home. But you were not included in pickup groups, could not see the internal numbers and, most importantly, your colleagues and customers could not see who was calling them and what department they were from.
The teleworking over IP project solved this by letting teleworkers connect an internal telephone set over the internet to their PABX. The telephone set then works just like the employee would be sitting in the office. As a further extension, there was even a virtual telephone set that displayed an image of the working phone on your PC. Calls could be made by clicking the buttons and clicking the horn to pick it up.

Project result

The project started with a no-budget proof of concept. Not only did we manage to secure the budget and deliver the solution in time, but we also management to create spin-off business out of it. Since this project was the first to solve VoIP problems in a corporate PABX environment, the knowledge gathered was sold to a US company to implement in their local market.