Installing an Asterisk-based IP PBX has allowed a company offering IT support to cope with its rapid growth.

One Call Support found space was at a premium in its offices, with two employees assigned to each desk.

But not being able to upgrade to larger premises meant the firm had to find another way to allow the business to continue to grow.

Chief executive of One Call, Sean Brown, eventually hit on the idea of increasing the number of employees working from home as all of the business was web-based and settled on an Asterisk-based IP PBX system to allow workers to stay in touch with both the office and clients.

"The price, the features, the customisability - it was just too good to be true," he told Computer Weekly.

After trialling the system with one server and three or four phones, Mr Brown spread the PBX company-wide and it now runs 60 phones.

By using a smaller VoIP PBX provider, Mr Brown was able to get bespoke features added into the One Call Support system, such as a function that makes client calls ring all the numbers listed for an employee simultaneously rather than working through them one by one.

Mr Brown said that this allows his workers to respond to client calls in just a few rings rather than leaving the caller waiting until the system moves onto the third or fourth number listed before getting through.