An entrepreneur whose previous company was a pioneer in the fitness industry now wants to help businesses get their phone systems in shape.

Michael Cassady is president and CEO of Lyrio, a Philadelphia company that sells voice-over-Internet-Protocol phone systems to small and midsize businesses.

Cassady previously held the same posts for Global Affiliates Inc., a Philadelphia company that allows employers to offer their workers discounted fitness-club memberships as a benefit.

Global Affiliates made the Philadelphia Business Journal's list of the area's 100 fastest-growing privately held companies the past three years, most recently by posting 110.6% percent revenue growth from $4 million in 2002 to $8.4 million in 2004.

Cassady has similar growth goals for Lyrio.

"We definitely look to grow 60 or 70 percent a year," he said.

Cassady founded Lyrio last summer, working with its vice president of sales, Howard Hoffman, and its chief marketing officer, Paul Sewards.

The three created the firm by buying Mount Laurel. N.J.-based Interchange Technologies Inc.'s voice-over-IP division, which Hoffman headed, for an undisclosed sum. They received financial backing from DAC Partners, a group of individual investors based in the area.

Cassady learned of voice-over-IP technology and met Hoffman when Interchange Technology installed a VoIP phone' system at Global Affiliates, which does business as GlobalFit, last year.

The technology involves digitizing audio signals and transmitting them via the method used to move data through the Internet. It allows businesses to cut their long-distance charges by transmitting calls over data networks, instead of using public phone networks, for most of the distance the calls travel. The technology also enables businesses to give their employees phones that can be reached by the same number regardless of where the employees are when they plug them into a data network. Other features it enables include audio and video conferencing, video chat, and unified messaging, which allows users to get voicemail messages as e-mail and vice versa.

VoIP technology initially appealed to computer geeks who used it to make phone calls to buddies over the Internet, but it's going mainstream among consumers and businesses. The digital phone service being rolled out by Comcast Corp. and other cable companies uses it. Verizon Communications Inc. and other telecom companies are making VoIP service available to consumers and businesses. And such big manl!facturers as Nortel Networks Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. are turning out VoIP equipment for everything from home to network use.

Cassady's experience with VoIP technology at Global Affiliates convinced him of its merits. When he was leaving that company, which he and his brother John founded in 1992, he learned from Hoffman of the opportunity to buy Interchange Technologies' VoIP division.

Cassady knew Hoffman had a strong background in the telecommunications industry, having spent 25 years in it, but he wanted a marketing person involved in the company, too. That led him to Sewards, a former executive vice president and managing director with the advertising agency BBDO New York, whose clients have included Microsoft Corp., BT Group PLC (best known as British Telecom), and Sony Corp.

"I pulled everybody together and said, 'Let's start this company,''' Cassady said.

Lyrio has customers and 15 employees, who came with it from Interchange Technologies. Cassady said the company has been breaking even since it was started and won't need additional capital to expand.

Lyrio keeps a New York office that is home to Cassady and his marketing team, but Cassady said the company is not trying to get sales in the Big Apple right now.

To help drum up interest in VoIP in Philadelphia, Lyrio is sponsoring a series of seminars at the Hub CityView in Center City. A session on Oct. 3 dealt with implementing the technology and figuring out the cost of it, plus a demonstration of a ShoreTel Inc. system, which Lyrio sells. "We may get some sales out of it, but I think the main objective here is to really educate the Philadelphia region's businesses on what [VoIP] is all about," Cassady said.