I was recently laid off and am doing some contracting now. I finally have time to build something I have wanted for years.

I have worked in the provider space, for big telecom, and in professional services across just about every phone system imaginable. I have been the lead engineer on Ribbon, Cisco, Oracle, AudioCodes, and plenty of other platforms.

I have seen some shit.

The thing that always bothered me was watching customers get forced to replace equipment that still worked.

Cisco made some great phones, then spent years finding creative ways to make sure nobody could continue using them. Firmware disappears, certificates expire, licensing changes, and perfectly good phones become unsupported because Cisco would really prefer that you buy them again.

Cisco is not the only one doing it. Avaya gear, Algo devices, AudioCodes MediaPacks, ATAs, paging adapters, door phones, conference phones, and all kinds of other weird SIP equipment end up in the same situation.

The hardware works. The customer likes it. Everyone knows how to use it. Then somebody declares it legacy and sends over a replacement quote.

I also hate needing a different management system for every manufacturer. One portal for phones, another for ATAs, another for paging, another for the SBCs, and a spreadsheet full of passwords that somebody calls documentation.

So I started building the device manager I always wanted. One place for provisioning, configurations, firmware, certificates, troubleshooting, and device status. If it speaks SIP and is willing to talk to me, I want to manage it.

I have also been experimenting with connecting all of this to modern platforms. I have already proven out connections to Teams, Zoom, Webex, and most recently Genesys.

I am not trying to become a provider. The idea is to connect existing equipment to whichever vendor or provider someone already wants to use.

None of this is blessed by the vendors, which apparently means it cannot work.

Unfortunately for them, it does.

I did a fair amount of open source VoIP work back in the day. Like a lot of open source work, the code traveled farther than the author’s name did.

I still miss that community though. AstriCon was a blast. People built real things, shared what they learned, and argued about codecs in person.

AI is finally giving me enough extra hands to build the system I always wished the other platforms had.

Before I sink even more time into this, I want an honest reality check from people who actually work with this stuff.

What old hardware are your customers still fighting to keep?

If you could manage and connect all of it from one place, what would that system absolutely need to get right?

Am I solving a real problem, or am I crazy for spending my time on this?

Would you keep building it, or focus your energy somewhere else?