General biz question : creating a 'Virtual Office' with Macs & Phones

Currently using macs...

An associate friend is trying to 'virtualize' his office.

- already using filemaker server and clients - so most everything is available in/out of the office

- already have sharing server with office docs available to employees

Now he is looking to virtualize the office with his phone system also...

Goal: is to keep his main business phone numbers but be able to have them 'intelligently' forward to his several employees phones - with some easy programability as per his needs.

Something like a pro version of google voice - or skype - but with more options - like corporate level voip

Any ideas where to look for this kind of setup?

you might want to have a look at something like a VoIP PBX like trixobx. have the numbers forward to a SIP provider that is configured on the PBX, the staff can then use either desk phones or voip clients and you are set, plus it will lower costs as "internal calls" are free and call costs over VoIP tend to be lower.

We are currently using this setup and works a treat. Means i spend most of my time working from home and only travel to office for meetings that are too important to host at home

Have you looked into GrassHopper?

Try my1voice.com (http://my1voice.com).

Use an Asterisk based PBX system with an FXO card in it. The FXO card allows the asterisk box to receive PSTN calls and then foward them via VoIP to the remote extentions.

Virtual office works best with the virtual PBX service.