Christian Stredicke

Editorial

The Short Messaging Service (SMS) is under pressure from apps that can do far more than just send messages. Despite being essential for two-factor authentication and online banking TANs, its overall importance has declined. Messenger services like WhatsApp, with over 2 billion users globally, have become the preferred choice for communication, offering text, image, and video sharing, even for calls. Concerns arise over data privacy as these apps monetize user information, contrasting with regulated local telephone companies.

Announcement

In the end-of-year update, Christian Stredicke, CEO, reflects on a transformative 2023. Version 69 was introduced with significant under-the-hood changes, and innovations included pioneering passkey support and enhanced video call capabilities to adapt to the post-COVID world of hybrid work. Looking ahead to 2024, Vodia is working on a new Android app and addressing concerns about the future of texting in telecommunications. Your continued support is vital, and we look forward to a prosperous 2024.

Announcement

Cove Central teams up with QuestBlue and Vodia to revolutionize communication solutions for MSPs nationwide. This elite turnkey partnership simplifies FCC compliance, integrates global cloud capabilities, and redefines industry standards. With Cove Central's TAPP, MSPs gain white-glove support and 24x7 service, setting a new standard in unified communications.

Announcement

With a vast network of IT professionals, 888VoIP has been instrumental in helping VoIP companies achieve major success through loyalty and dedicated service. Their focus on interoperability has led to seamless plug-and-play integration with industry giants like Cisco, Polycom, Yealink, and more. This integration significantly reduces installation costs and system downtime, enhancing customer satisfaction. The transition to a concurrent call license model simplifies the acquisition of licenses through 888VoIP, ensuring a smoother deployment process.

Editorial

We are nearing the end of our tenth anniversary year, and I must say it’s been quite a year. It’s been ten years of innovation in VoIP and cloud communications, and we remain at the vanguard of the industry. We founded Vodia a decade ago with a commitment to innovative software development, and this commitment has only strengthened over the past 10 years. It is the core of what we do.

Tech

A few months ago, we adopted "passkeys" technology at Vodia. Our challenge with second-factor authentication was finding reliable options for end users and since SMS and USB keys were limited, email was left as the only feasible choice. Yet, email confirmation for phone system access is inconvenient and not always available. It’s only about logging into your phone system, not Fort Knox.

Tech

We designed the Vodia phone system, the industry’s most feature-rich, on a lawful groundwork and list of requirements, both in the EU and in the USA, for processing personal data.

Tech

The wallboard displays the current day’s information; at midnight, everything is reset to zero and another day begins. There are a few key metrics for each queue shown on the wallboard: the numbers are updated in real time, for example, and when a call comes in the number of waiting callers is automatically updated.

Tech

Instead of installing an executable, use the browser! Because browsers have their own sandbox model for each web page, this gives you far better security. In addition to controlling the file system access, browsers also control microphones and cameras; when in use, they make sure the user can see what is being accessed and when. The browser also comes with an additional “feature”: when you close the tab, you are naturally on “do-not-disturb.” This is especially important for people working from home.

Editorial

When it comes to the right telephone system, the exact ratio doesn’t even matter: the system needs to support all modes of communication. Most organizations are figuring out which mode works best for each employee, and it would be unwise to address this while installing a new system. There are users who don't like to use the app and prefer a desktop phone; other users prefer the app. And there are cases when users want both.

Announcement

Even though our Vodia PBX was designed for running on a public IP address from day one, it also gives you excellent on premise performance, making it a natural fit for DECT installations. The Vodia IOP is ideal for running the PBX in a private network if you don’t want to run a whole server just for the PBX; together with a DECT base station, this will give you everything you need to run a powerful, robust communication solution.

Announcement

With the wide availability of passkeys on all mainstream browsers, users and administrators can conveniently access the Vodia PBX while enjoying an unprecedented level of security.

Announcement

The most exciting part of the new release is the new front end — we are convinced the user-facing front end will play a crucial role in the coming years in delivering increased value to our end users. We were happy with our 67/68 front end, but we thought we could improve it and we ended up rebuilding it entirely. Version 69 puts the Vodia PBX front end on a solid foundation for years to come.

This is an auspicious occasion – we are marking the tenth anniversary of Vodia as a company. Congratulations, that is quite an achievement. And that’s what our podcast is going to be about, marking the path from 2012 to 2022, quite an evolution, lots of interesting things along the way, not to mention the pandemic and hybrid work and a whole bunch of things.

Tech

White-labeling is a way manufacturers support well-known brands, simplifying both market access and customer recognition. It is used in many industries, including the telecom industry. While it’s easy to brand web pages and emails (including the Vodia PBX frontend and backend), white-labeling hardware and apps is a different topic.

Editorial

Eric Altman, Sales Engineer, Vodia: I understand Vodia is reaching its 10-year anniversary. It’s a pretty significant thing. Can you go through the evolution of Vodia? Where we’ve been and, actually, where we’re going? Christian Stredicke, President and CEO, Vodia: It started much longer than ten years ago. It started in 2005 and under a different name, Pbxnsip. “PBX” for PBX, “n” for and “sip” for session initiation protocol. At that time you clearly saw the cloud already, and there was no product readily available that was ready for the cloud but was carrier-grade. There was BroadSoft and a company called Sylantro which was ultimately acquired by BroadSoft. But these were really big, big deployments. There was nothing for a small MSP so it would be able to run a small PBX in the cloud. That was the original goal, to write software that can be used by these people.

Editorial

The Vodia app also makes it so you can set business hours, for the entire company or for individual employees, all within the PBX. This means no one can call an employee late at night or on a weekend or holiday. This is a key requirement for many employees, who worry using their smartphones means receiving work calls at all hours.

Announcement

WOBURN, MA. – Oct. 22, 2013 – Today Vodia Networks Inc announced its cloud-based PBX solution for SMBs, that provides a highly robust and feature rich communications platform to cater to the ever growing needs of today’s distributed and mobile workforce. The cloud-based service called “Hosted I AM” or “hostedi.am” enables businesses to lower the total cost of ownership of their telephone systems by providing a managed phone system on the cloud along with a complete suite of business features. For businesses with multiple branch offices, hostedi.am provides a single system that will seamlessly connect all locations without the need for a complex infrastructure.

Announcement

Vodia’s Click-to-call feature will allow businesses to do just that by harnessing each of their customer’s web site visits into a sales opportunity by enabling their potential customers to talk to them in real-time. This new cutting-edge feature will enable internet users to place calls to a business directly from the website of the business, without the need for a phone or the need to download any software. The feature will provide business owners with a “Click-to-Call” button that they would be able to place on their company home page. Website visitors of the business will be able to talk to a company representative using a WebRTC enabled web browser by simply clicking the “Click-to-call” button.

Announcement

WOBURN, MA. – Nov. 19, 2013 – Vodia Networks Inc announced today a new diagnostics feature for its IP-PBX product line and hostedi.am cloud service. The new feature allows administrators to capture call and audio data directly on the PBX for diagnostics, without the need for any external packet capture tools.

Announcement

Vodia Networks Inc a leading developer of IP-PBX and Call Center software announced today its commitment to further HTML5 support for its IP-PBX product line and hostedi.am cloud phone service.

Announcement

Vodia Networks Inc announced today the adoption of JavaScript Object Notation or JSON for its IP-PBX solution and hostedi.am cloud phone service. The new JSON based interface of the Vodia IP-PBX solution will enable integration with Call reporting tools, Property Management System (PMS), Home Automation systems and HVAC remote control.

Announcement

Vodia® Networks has once again taken the lead by introducing a VoIP-in-a-Box solution based on open standards that is designed to work seamlessly across all IP handsets, giving users the ultimate freedom in end-device selection. With this new feature, as soon the IP handsets are plugged into the network, Vodia® PBX automatically detects all the phones in your network and lists them on the admin portal. The listed information includes Vendor type, MAC address and IP address of each detected device. The administrator can then simply assign a PBX user to the phone by selecting a user profile from a drop down. The IP handset then automatically reboots and configures itself with the assigned user profile. Configuration information may include customer name, password, email address, telephone number, ring tone, class of service, QoS (Quality of Service), SIP URI, SIP proxy server, call server FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) or IP address, and other parameters.

Announcement

Vodia Networks Inc announced today the availability of its Vodia® mini PBX appliance through “IP Phone Warehouse”. Vodia® mini PBX brings the highly successful Vodia® PBX software to a compact low-power/high-performance appliance, and delivers A-Grade business telephony features such as Auto receptionist, Automatic call distribution, Video, SMS notifications and mobility, ensuring a higher productivity for your business and a significant reduction in the overall TCO. Further value-add features such as Fax-to-email, Click-to-call, Address book synchronization, Call recording, CRM integration and Microsoft® Lync presence, allow the Vodia® mini to provide SMBs with functionality that has so far been only seen on larger UC solutions.

Announcement

Vodia Networks Inc a leading provider of PBX and contact center software, announced today a strategic partnership that will enable Vodia to offer advanced call reporting and analytics functionality for its IP-PBX solution in cooperation with nordic Telecom (NTC). The partnership aims to bring Nordic Telecom’s rich value-added Call reporting solution as an add-on to Vodia’s advanced IP-PBX platform, which will enable businesses and service providers to perform detailed analysis of their call traffic ultimately leading to an improved customer service and steady sales growth.

Announcement

Today, two of the most critical components of any hospitality property are its phone system (PBX) and the Property Management System (PMS). Both the PBX and PMS are going through a rapid modernization trend in the hospitality industry with most of the hotels migrating from traditional TDM based systems to their more modern IP based kin. Traditional PBXs are being replaced by IP based PBXs to benefit from the advantages the new VoIP technology. Traditional Property Management Systems (PMS) are also being replaced by more modern IP based systems that can seamlessly integrate with other IP based systems and services.

Editorial

We have talked about it before, but reading the article I think it is important to point out some points that were not so clear before. The first one is that some carriers really seem to go after the money, even if they have to go to court. In contrast to the credit card industry, fraud is the responsibility of the customer, not the provider.

Tech

Failover is an important feature for most PBX installations. With the availability of high-bandwidth wireless like 4G it becomes more and more popular to use the wireless connection when the primary land-line based internet access becomes unavailable.

Editorial

For someone who has struggled with SIP interoperability for the past 15 years that has an earthshaking impact. Instead of arguing about SIP headers, UDP and RFC, WebRTC makes it now possible that the PBX vendor writes the software for the clients. The interoperability is essentially JavaScript which has very little room for interpretations (compared to SIP). That means we can offer all possible features of the PBX in the browser without any interop problems, on practically all platforms that are out there. This will make SIP softphones superfluous.

Announcement

The app called “Vodia Phone”, now available through the Google Play Store, will allow Vodia PBX users to make and receive voice calls over data networks using any Android mobile devices running Android 4.1 or higher. Based on the WebRTC technology, the app will be particularly beneficial for business users who want to use their mobile device to place voice calls over 3G or Wi-Fi through their Vodia PBX system while using their business number. An iOS version is planned for release in a few weeks.

Editorial

It’s not just the pandemic: Vodia been preaching #workfromanywhere it for a long time, since our cloud PBX makes it possible, but the pandemic has certainly accelerated it. We’ve seen a lot of companies where at least a few staff members choose to work from home, or need to, and for a long time IT departments were wary of undertaking the necessary migrations to make this possible, but with the pandemic and the shift of entire teams away from the office, it’s become a top priority to make it so an organization’s telephone system can accommodate working from anywhere.

Editorial

2021 was dominated by #workfromanywhere, #workfromhome, #hybridwork and, of course, the ubiquity of Zoom, Google hangouts and Microsoft Teams. Over the summer, when a significant percentage of people were vaccinated, many companies, including Apple and Google, predicted their employees would soon be returning to the office, but it turned out most people desired either hybrid or completely remote work; few workers wanted to return to an office full-time. Then, at the beginning of December, we faced a global outbreak of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and, once again, the conversation returned exclusively to remote work. We may be having this conversation for quite a while.

Editorial

In this podcast, Christian Stredicke, CEO of Vodia, a cloud phone system company, talks about how Vodia is working to use WebRTC to create new communications environments for PBX users.

Announcement

We have changed our CPE license model to match the de facto industry standard for concurrent call licenses and make it easier to obtain licenses through 888 VoIP. Those who have bought PBX licenses through 888 VoIP will find it easy to purchase licenses from there.

Announcement

We are excited about this! 888VoIP is the leading distributor for VoIP in the United States. The 888 networks reaches out to practically every IT professional that works with VoIP. 888 VoIP has helped many VoIP companies to become major industry players through their dedicated service and loyalty.