Replacing Fragmented Legacy PBX and ISDN Systems Across a Multi-Brand Group with a Single 3CX Platform.
Abacus Vehicle Hire is part of a family-owned group of businesses operating across Ferndown in Dorset and Andover in Hampshire. The group comprises three distinct brands, each serving different customer needs but sharing the same operational infrastructure:
| Company | Activity |
|---|---|
| Abacus Vehicle Hire | Car, van, truck, minibus & MPV hire — Ferndown & Andover |
| Abacus Motorhomes | Motorhome hire — Andover |
| Horton Commercials | Commercial vehicle body build centre — Ferndown |
With 80 users spread across multiple sites and brands, communications infrastructure underpins everything the group does — from booking and fleet management at Abacus Vehicle Hire and Abacus Motorhomes, to customer and supplier contacts at Horton Commercials.
| Group | Abacus Vehicle Hire, Abacus Motorhomes & Horton Commercials |
|---|---|
| Locations | Ferndown, Dorset & Andover, Hampshire |
| Company Size | 80 Users / Seats |
| Legacy Systems | Ageing ISDN30, ISDN2e & Multiple On-Premise PBX Systems Across All Sites |
| Solution Deployed | 3CX VoIP Platform |
Across the group's sites in Ferndown and Andover, each business had evolved its own communications setup over the years. The result was a collection of ageing, incompatible systems — multiple on-premise PBX units, ISDN30 lines, and ISDN2e lines — that had grown obsolete and were increasingly difficult and costly to maintain.
The problems were both technical and operational:
The group needed to move away from obsolete, inflexible hardware and onto a software-based unified communications platform that was easier to manage, far cheaper to run, and equipped with the features a modern multi-site business requires.
We migrated the entire Abacus group — all three brands, both sites, 80 users — onto 3CX, replacing the patchwork of legacy PBX hardware and ISDN lines with a single, unified cloud communications platform.
The deployment delivered:
| All Numbers Ported | Every number from every company across both sites transferred successfully |
|---|---|
| 3 Brands, 1 Platform | Abacus Vehicle Hire, Abacus Motorhomes & Horton Commercials unified on 3CX |
| 80 Users Migrated | Full group rollout across Ferndown and Andover with no disruption |
| For the first time, all three businesses within the Abacus group — Abacus Vehicle Hire, Abacus Motorhomes, and Horton Commercials — operate on a single, unified communications platform. The fragmented collection of legacy PBX systems and ISDN lines that had grown up across Ferndown and Andover over the years has been replaced by one system that is easier to manage, cheaper to run, and built for the way the group works today. |
Running three distinct brands across two sites on a combination of ISDN30, ISDN2e, and multiple independent PBX systems was never a long-term proposition. With the UK's PSTN switch-off making ISDN withdrawal a certainty, the question for the Abacus group was not whether to migrate — but when, and to what.
By choosing 3CX and consolidating the entire group onto a single platform, the business resolved the immediate infrastructure risk, reduced ongoing running costs, and gained a modern communications system with the flexibility to grow and adapt. All existing numbers were retained throughout, meaning customers across all three brands experienced no disruption whatsoever.
The migration future-proofed a growing, multi-brand group — and gave them a communications platform that finally matches the scale and ambition of the business.
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