The obstacle was inside the walls. REI wanted newer phones, but its stores had CAT3 cabling left over from an older Toshiba telephone environment. The Cisco equipment it was considering could not simply plug into that inheritance. A plan to modernize communications had become a question about wiring.
Continuant’s account of the project describes using a Phybridge solution to work around the incompatibility. Existing infrastructure could stay in use. The detail is small enough to disappear from an executive presentation, yet it explains this company rather well: progress sometimes depends on finding something you can keep.
- Keep it working. Maintain existing business phone systems across multiple vendors.
- Connect what comes next. Move calling into Teams, Zoom or Webex in stages.
- Stay after installation. Support the phones, meeting rooms and people using them.
A business built on the overlap
Enterprise communications has a peculiar geography. The destination may be a cloud application, while the starting point includes equipment rooms, carrier agreements, desk phones and cables installed years earlier. Continuant operates across that territory as a systems integrator and managed services provider. Its work joins the planning of a new environment to the care of the existing one.
The distinction matters when a manufacturer stops supporting a private branch exchange, or PBX: the system that handles an organization’s calls. A support deadline does not automatically make every handset useless. Continuant offers third-party maintenance for brands including Avaya, Nortel, Cisco and Mitel, giving customers a way to extend service while deciding what comes next.
The company’s own history starts in 1996, when Doug Graham and Bruce Shelby founded Telecom Labs as a Pacific Northwest phone-system dealer. In 2001, they shifted toward maintenance and support after identifying demand for service. By 2003, third-party maintenance had become part of the model. The Continuant name arrived in 2006.
The migration has a middle
Continuant Connect packages the transition around cloud calling and hybrid environments. Customers can bring voice into Microsoft Teams Phone, Zoom Phone or Webex Calling. Its hybrid offering is designed to accommodate existing lines and carrier relationships while a migration proceeds. That makes the sequence of change part of the service.
Consider Pernod Ricard. In Continuant’s published account, the drinks company needed Teams to connect with an existing voice system serving 20,000 users. Continuant worked with Tata Communications on Direct Routing, connecting Teams calling with the wider telephone environment. The account describes a migration in progress, with cloud collaboration working alongside legacy voice.
The useful number is the operating cost
Parexel supplies a larger example. Continuant says a contract signed in spring 2022 began a project spanning 16,000 users, 111 Microsoft Teams Rooms and more than 40 countries. The old environment had become cumbersome: desk phones did not adequately serve remote workers, video connections disappointed users, and separate applications complicated everyday work.
The response combined Teams Phone, Direct Routing and meeting-room upgrades, including video interoperability during the transition. Continuant’s case study estimates $360,000 in annual savings associated with switching 5,000 PSTN users to the new communications features. That figure describes expected operating savings; it should not be read as the price of the project.
“Account Management and Day 2 engineering have been a lifeline for my team”Sean McNamara · Parexel
Someone has to stay after launch
“Day 2” is the useful phrase: the work after deployment. Continuant sells ongoing support in Basic, Extended and Premium tiers. Basic includes round-the-clock customer support and engineering access. Extended adds monitoring, analytics and proactive management. Premium adds further engineering access, software updates and oversight. Buyers are choosing how much operational responsibility to hand over.
The commercial model combines implementation work with recurring maintenance, managed services and cloud communications. Continuant also supplies services through technology advisors, offering recurring referral income and optional delivery under the advisor’s brand. That channel helps explain why a customer may encounter its engineering through another trusted provider.
Its market includes hospitals, universities, manufacturers, financial institutions, retailers and government organizations. These buyers can compare it with manufacturer support, other maintainers and integrators, or their own engineering teams. Continuant’s particular proposition is coverage across vendors and across stages of a system’s life.
There is an unglamorous discipline behind that promise. A support agreement must specify what happens when the problem crosses from a device to a network to a platform. Continuant’s contact-center offering puts that coordination into concrete terms: one contract, one invoice, a service-level agreement and a point of contact across vendors. The attraction is fewer handoffs for the customer’s IT team.
The phone call is becoming software
The scope keeps expanding. Continuant designs AV environments and manages meeting rooms. Its contact-center services bring customer interactions across channels under a support arrangement. Adoption and change management adds workshops, stakeholder planning and training around specific tasks, acknowledging that a working application still needs willing, capable users.
In June 2025, Continuant announced its acquisition of Fidelus Technologies, adding Cisco expertise and a stronger New York-area presence. The transaction closed June 1; its financial terms were undisclosed. By 2026, Continuant was also promoting ConnectAI for healthcare scheduling, routine questions and after-hours calls, with electronic health record integration and automated testing.
Keeping experienced people matters in a service business. Continuant’s careers page advertises a four-week sabbatical every seven years, alongside wellness funds and a matching retirement plan. Those benefits cannot prove service quality, but they reveal a company thinking about employment on a longer clock than the next installation.
Start with what must survive
A buyer can copy the reasoning before choosing a provider: inventory the existing system, identify what can stay, plan the handoffs and assign responsibility for support. A phased approach needs compatible equipment, adequate connectivity, carrier coverage and workable emergency calling. Staff need to know how their routines will change.
A simple organization with little inherited infrastructure may need much less integration. A complicated one should ask how each remaining dependency will work during the move. REI’s wiring offers the memorable version of that question. Before approving a future in the cloud, take a good look inside the walls.