This is the tale of two voice-over-IP (VOIP) vendors that have taken very different approaches toward a common customer over the years and how those approaches worked out for them in the end.

It all started ...

It begins late in the year 2000 with a midsize company I'll call "Acme Retail Distribution." Like most companies, Acme had separate data and voice infrastructures and had settled on vendors of choice for each area. Acme's voice network was provided almost entirely by one of the largest time division multiplex voice technology companies in the world. You would surely know its real name, but we'll call it the Old TDM Guys company, or simply OTG. On the data side, Acme had a routing and switching infrastructure provided entirely by a different company that we'll call R&S.

The people at OTG approached Acme about trying out some new VOIP technology that promised to integrate with Acme's private branch exchanges (PBX) and give them VOIP capabilities. The OTG product was designed to provide virtual trunks via IP that would allow Acme to move its interoffice voice traffic over to its data network. The potential savings from uninstalling all those voice tie lines was rather appealing, and Acme was very interested in pursuing the matter.

Thanks, but ...