innovaphone AG is an independent provider of IP telephony solutions for corporate customers. innovaphone has always completely dedicated its focus on the development, production and distribution of IP telephony solutions unlike traditional telephone exchange manufacturers and network suppliers. In doing so the company has become one of the few suppliers who is uncompromising in implementing IP technology: every solution component from innovaphone supports the supplier independent convergence standards H.323/H.450 and SIP. Thus the advantages of “Voice over IP” become visible in the VoIP gateways, the IP telephones and the IP-PBX – namely flexibility, protection of investment and economic efficiency.



Several intensive years of development have led to a large, well-engineered and very successful product family. The first VoIP gateway (“IP400”) was introduced to the public in 1998, only one year after the company was founded. The gateways are an important component of VoIP technology. They connect “Voice over IP” systems to the public telephone network and thus enable different technologies to interact in every direction. In addition VoIP gateways can be used for trunking: that is to interlink two or more traditional telephone exchanges over IP remote connections (WAN).

Whilst VoIP technology continued to spread and the market grew, innovaphone developed from a mere gateway manufacturer to a complete solution provider. Today the core of our business activities is the “innovaphone PBX” - a state of the art IP based telephone exchange. The idea of convergence in “Voice over IP” is implemented uncompromisingly in the concept of the “innovaphone PBX”. This enables totally new features to be introduced which could not be possible using traditional telephony.

innovaphone AG was founded in 1997 by five ISDN pioneers. The company is based in Sindelfingen, Germany. Currently innovaphone AG employs approximately 60 staff members in 7 locations: Sindelfingen (head office), Hannover (training centre), Berlin, Hagen, Wien (Austria), Verona (Italy), and Eksjö (Sweden). In the meantime business is booming for innovaphone across Europe. Innovaphone’s list of customers includes for instance Altana, Brose, Caritas, Deutsches Forschungsnetz (DFN), Dresdner Bank, Elba Bürosysteme, ENBW, Heinrich Bauer publishing house, Hugendubel, Hochschule Bremerhaven, Ruhr-University in Bochum, Sparkasse Stralsund und the VW training centre. In Austria innovaphone solutions can be found for example in the following companies: Volksbank Graz, Volksbank Vorarlberg, Meinl Bank and Röfix. In Switzerland our list of customers includes for example Edifice and SOS Evasan.

• Standard compliance: All innovaphone solution components are based entirely on both multi-supplier signalling standards H.323/H.450 and SIP.  There are three main advantages of standard compliancy for the user:
  1. Manufacturer independency: innovaphone’s VoIP gateways can be combined with all standard compliant terminals. In addition the solutions are especially suitable to be integrated into heterogeneous environments –traditional as well as IP based telephony environments.
  2. Smooth migration: a gradual changeover from a conventional telephone network to a Voice over IP network is possible thanks to all components being standard compliant. This scenario called “smooth migration” enables the usage of existing telephone exchanges to continue. Familiar features (such as name display, call back when busy, call re-routing) are still available even when networking across various technologies. The “innovaphone IP-PBX” is connected to the traditional telephone exchange using the ISDN protocol QSIG.
  3. Protection of Investment: standard compliancy makes way for manufacturer independency. This together with the option of “smooth” technology changeover enables a maximum protection of investment.

• Availability: innovaphone’s PBX is based on VoIP gateways which are stand-alone boxes and work fully independently of servers and PC software in the company’s network. This thus guarantees maximum availability and reliability of the innovaphone PBX. A power supply and a functional switch are all that is needed for telephony to work. In addition every appliance in a network whether a local network or a wide area network can be configured redundantly so that automatic fail-over would take place, should one appliance fail for whatever reason.
  
  
• Scalability and flexibility: any conceivable business scenario can be realised with the VoIP solutions from innovaphone – from home office connections to complex corporate scenarios with 20,000 users. Innovaphone is able to play off these specific strengths in multi-location solution scenarios.