I plugged in the analog trunk lines (I believe it maxed out at 8) and some POTS phones into the harmonica cable that ran out of the proprietary boards in the back and booted up. About 10 minutes later, without even glancing at a manual, I had everything set up, i.e. class of service on a bunch of phones, auto attendant, and voicemail.

I still clearly remember being impressed at how simple and easy the Windows interface was, which is saying something for a guy who can barely remember where he parks his car in the morning.

Fast forward eight years. Jim Puchbauer, AltiGen's Director of Marketing, stops by and gives me another package to review. There's still a PC involved (a much more powerful computer... Moore's Law and all that); there's still some specialized boards involved (although there are now more of them and there's lots more capacity on both the trunk and station sides); yet this time there's also special business phones (the idea that businesses were going to eschew fancy phones and switch to cheap vanilla analog phones was foolish) that come in both analog and VoIP flavors; finally, there's desktop call control software, built-in ACD functionality and more features than you can shake a stick at.

The bad news: this is no longer an ultra-simple system that a novice can simply crack open and use. It really requires a trained reseller to install and customize for an end user. The good news: the modern platform is infinitely richer in functionality and reliability (although I don't remember too much going wrong with that first system) and dealing with modifications (not to mention MACs with the VoIP phones) should still be well within a savvy end user's powers.

Vendor Basics:

AltiGen Communications
4555 Cushing Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
510 252-9712

www.altigen.com

Architectural Overview: If you ask them, AltiWare 5.0 is what we're reviewing here. But that's just the PBX/Voice Processing "software".

They have a new release. AltiWare 5.0. It's the sixth generation and, as mentioned, they've come a long way from the original.

It supports their AltiServ systems, which are made up of their AltiContact Manager, AltiServ Contact Center and AltiServ IP Business telephone systems.

One of the keys to this release is, well, keys. The idea is the core switching software can be upgraded with things like advanced routing (AltiServ Contact Center is now included in all AltiWare systems), centralized call recording, IVR, or telephony integration by modularly buying licenses as user needs/means dictate. The server we tested had almost everything turned on.

In fact, too much for us to digest this go 'round. For example, we didn't touch the call-center stuff much (including Skills Based Routing, which was there), although we did definitely love the on-the-fly call recording (part of the Advanced AltiContact Manager license) built into the general-business desktop call-handling application, AltiView (which we used to handle real-life calls on and off for a month).

Other highlights to the new release (much of which wasn't really delved into in this review) include: improved IP networking tools and security, including E911 support and remote IP extension survivability; Distributed Call Centers " with features like "Look Ahead" routing for overflow and remote supervisor and agent support; Multisite Businesses " with enhanced multisite management tools and an improved multisite operator console; enhanced CDR search and reporting tools; and an AltiGen SDK " with additional APIs available for doing everything from automating screen-pops to integrating 3rd party CRM.

Again, when we first looked at AltiGen, some traditional PBX and hybrid vendors could boast superior feature sets; today, AltiWare blows them out of the water on this front (which might have been the only prediction we got right back in the salad days of CT punditry).

It's not all software though. AltiGen still makes its own boards, three of which were installed in our test server for the trunking/station and VoIP connections and all of which were connected by a good old MVIP ribbon cable.

The AltiServ now scales from 24 to 300 users per chassis; you can expand by networking multiple local and remote systems.

The Phones: The Alti-IP 600 is their IP Phone. I had this on my desk for a month and much preferred using it than the clumsy NEC Dterm unit I'm usually saddled with. Having the IP functionality made it very simple to set up a working test plant -- since I parked the server in the lab and simply plugged the phone in a spare ethernet port in my office, logged in, registered and away I went.

It comes with the usual glut of both programmable and pre-programmed softkeys, most of which I didn't deal with (neither, I expect, will many other users). One VIP thing to note: sound at all times was excellent. No one ever -- and I must have answered close to 400 calls on it -- noticed anything other than what you would normally expect from a business phone.

It features a Direct Station Selection/Busy Lamp Field (DSS/BLF), Intercom, Multi-Line Appearance and a Full Duplex Speakerphone, with one-touch buttons to voicemail, conference, hold, transfer, intercom, volume control, redial, call release and speed dial.

The AltiTouch 500 telephone is their executive-level non-IP unit. I had a bunch of these too but they remained in the lab, bound by how far the analog phone wires would reach. They look like nice phones too.

It features a large (7.4 square inch) backlit LCD display with adjustable viewing angle, a flashing LED voicemail waiting indicator and an RJ-22 amplified headset jack.

Special Features: If there's a feature missing in this release, I couldn't find it. There's also so much built in and so much flexibility with the Windows management interface that you can probably find some new ones if you play around with it long enough.

That said, a couple of goodies stood out:

Alti-Mobile Extension. This is a new one. I've only seen one other vendor purport to do this. I know AltiWare can do it, because I used it.

Here's the deal. The system now lets any phone with a unique DID number (mobile phones will likely be the primary target, but home phones will work as well) call into an AltiGen telephone system and be activated as a full business extension.

Full is the important modifier. Most systems will blind transfer a call to an outside number. Most still offer DISA-like inward-only connectivity. Here, you're actually bridged into the system in both directions, meaning you get the same call routing, call handling, call transfer, conferencing and company voicemail and call center agent functions as any internal extension. It means, if you've activated it, someone ringing your normal desktop extension in SF will ring through to your cell in NY, where you'll be able to flash transfer to a 3-digit extension on the system in LA. You get the picture.

One cool thing for this review: because I generally set up VoIP tests on a specially segmented part of the actual corporate LAN here, I can't really duplicate real-world VoIP remote extensions, since IT would rather stick needles in their eyes than make any modifications to the firewall for yours truly.

This feature gives you the same sort of functionality of a VoIP extension, only without the VoIP, especially when you combine it with a softphone client and standard VPN access. It also lends itself to very flexible on-the-fly logins -- as in, I'm stuck in the airport, why not get on the phone system so life can go on.

Setting it up for testing was a little complicated. You have to configure the property of a trunk interface (PRI is strongly recommended for this feature because of the reliable Caller ID) so you can do it, something I'm still a little confused by. You then create mobile extension ports which look for incoming caller ID. When calls come in from that number or numbers, it asks if you'd like to login in as a Alti-Mobile Extension. If you do, it will then supervise transfer calls to you at that target number while remaining locked on the call in order to give you full access to local extension features. As you can see, you do lose a trunk for each registered Alti-Mobile Extension, whether it's in use or not.

Great feature though. I know the AltiGen tech support people use it extensively (while installing my test system the techie Jim brought had his cell phone humming the whole time); I'm sure the rest of the new-age phone system vendors will be rushing to recreate it. AltiGen has it.

Standard Follow-Me Call Forwarding. This comes with the basic AltiView call-processing client, which you'll find out more about in the next section of this review. The config tab you set it up with is One Number Access (although an administrator can block this). If you look at the screen shot below, you'll see it's pretty straight forward and not your average dumb outside-number forwarding. You can make up to four numbers available for round robin access -- all at different times (always, business hours, etc.) with password required for connecting as an option. This is also where you can set up Call Screening.

One weird thing: you need to have one number access set up to have Call Screening, meaning it's not available as an option if all you're doing is ringing people down to your extension (or mobile extension). I guess AltiGen figures most people don't want it or like it unless they're doing something fancy; they're probably right. Does come in handy for weeding out pesky callers if you're busy though.

Zoomerang. This feature actually was in the first release of AltiGen. And it's amazing more systems still don't have it to this day!

It's extraordinarily handy, allowing you to autodial people who've left you voicemail, talk to them (or leave them a message), then drop right back into your voicemail queue.

IPTalk. This is a desktop PC VoIP SoftPhone. It lets a PC work as a local or remote VoIP telephone system extension, basically all the stuff you'd get with a physical phone.

In addition, IPTalk integrates with contact management software including Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, ACT!, and GoldMine for caller screen pops and dialing from these apps.

Reliability AltiWare System Redundancy. New with the 5.0 release, in this configuration, two systems, primary and backup, are configured and connected. The primary AltiServ system is in control of all operations while the backup AltiServ system will replicate all configuration, routing, voicemail files and custom phrases from the active server and will monitor primary server status and take over if the primary AltiServ System becomes unavailable.