Three vendors to one, and $6,600 a year back

A manufacturer was paying three vendors $2,150 a month for IT that nobody owned end to end — including a phone system that hadn't been patched in five years. We consolidated it to one engagement at $1,600, closed the security gap, and added backup they didn't have before.

The situation

Three separate providers, no single point of accountability, and nobody responsible for the whole picture.

The phone system was a FreePBX install that hadn't been patched in five or six years — a known, exploitable security exposure sitting on the network at $400 a month. A legacy Lumen circuit was still billing $1,000 a month alongside a Starlink connection that had already taken over as the working link. A third-party MSP provided basic support for $750 a month. Server backup didn't exist.

Total: $2,150 a month, and a critical vulnerability nobody was watching.

What we did

We consolidated everything under one managed engagement.

The unpatched FreePBX was replaced with InterPeak's hosted cloud phone system — fully managed, automatically patched, and with the features the old system never had. Because the new phone system runs over the existing Starlink connection, the redundant Lumen circuit could be cancelled outright, which is where most of the savings came from.

We added cloud backup for the critical servers, and moved support to our 8×5 help desk with one number to call.

Total: $1,600 a month, all in.

The result

• Phone system — unpatched FreePBX at $400/mo, replaced by InterPeak Cloud Phone, included
• Connectivity — $1,000/mo Lumen circuit cancelled; runs on the existing Starlink
• IT support — $750/mo third-party MSP replaced by the InterPeak help desk, included
• Server backup — none before; cloud backup included
• Security posture — from critical vulnerabilities to continuously patched and monitored
• Vendors to manage — three down to one

$550 a month. $6,600 a year. A 25.6% reduction — with more coverage, not less.

The savings are the headline, but the five-year-old unpatched phone system was the part that mattered most. It had been sitting there the whole time, and none of the three vendors considered it theirs.