Journal ellem's Journal: My VOIPmare 13
I have been looking into hosted VOIP for a little over one year. My company is spread across the US (http://protravelinc.com/) with offices from 4 people to 250. I do not have an IT staff that can support the phone systems we have and I need VOIP to attract the best talent in travel. Also this is an excellent opprotunity to upgrade all my switches, routers and add redundancy into an aging and non redundant network held together with SonicWALLs and slender GPOs. I have been through literally 37 different vendors from huge companies to startups. I have done ROIs and TCOs until I can recite them. I know everything that can happen to a VOIP call from a warble to a drop.
I narrowed it down to 2 companies.
Company A has a nation-wide network with PoPs in all the NFL cities and uses a Nortel/Cisco platform. From the outset they have consistently given me inconsistent answers. I am constantly having to ask the same questions over an over. Do we own the phones at the end of 5 years? Are there really VOIP guys on the ground in all the NFL cities? Company A also has a very easy to understand payment plan. In a nutshell give me X dollars per seat we'll give you phones, switches, routers and T1s.
Company B is a New York centric company that is highly regarded in the trades. They run a Cisco/Cisco platform. They have PoP through a 3rd party. They were originally asking us to purchase our own switches and phones. They are plain speakers and are all techs who know their products. They have a system and they run it. They don't deviate from it very much but they made several consessions to get our business.
In the past week I have come to find that Company A either confused or being less than truthful. I will not own the phones at the end of five years. Which is good and bad. Good because I won't own phones at the end of 5 years and bad because I'll be paying for them forever. I have also come to find they do NOT have VOIP guys on the groud everywhere. They will need to outsource some of their jobs. I have no problem with contracting... I have been a contractor! Why it has taken a year to get this answer is my problem. There are other smaller issues.
Initially I thought Company B was infintely more technologically skilled than Company A. I think now Company A may be more technologically adept with a better network but I simply don't have any confidence with them. At the end of the day I suspect either company can do this job. I just don't think I can deal with Company A.
The sad part is if Company A had been prompt and correct with their answers I'd probably already be using them.
why the compan y A/B? (Score:2)
My experiences (Score:2)
I have been looking into hosted VOIP for a little over one year. My company is spread across the US (http://protravelinc.com/) with offices from 4 people to 250. I do not have an IT staff that can support the phone systems we have and I need VOIP to attract the best talent in travel. Also this is an excellent opprotunity to upgrade all my switches, routers and add redundancy into an aging and non redundant network held together with SonicWALLs and slender GPOs. I have been through literally 37 different vendors from huge companies to startups. I have done ROIs and TCOs until I can recite them. I know everything that can happen to a VOIP call from a warble to a drop.
Definitely a case for VoIP. These days I just can't see any merit to keeping traditional PBX or key systems unless you happen to have a fairly new high-end one.
Company A has a nation-wide network with PoPs in all the NFL cities and uses a Nortel/Cisco platform. From the outset they have consistently given me inconsistent answers. I am constantly having to ask the same questions over an over. Do we own the phones at the end of 5 years? Are there really VOIP guys on the ground in all the NFL cities? Company A also has a very easy to understand payment plan. In a nutshell give me X dollars per seat we'll give you phones, switches, routers and T1s.
Company B is a New York centric company that is highly regarded in the trades. They run a Cisco/Cisco platform. They have PoP through a 3rd party. They were originally asking us to purchase our own switches and phones. They are plain speakers and are all techs who know their products. They have a system and they run it. They don't deviate from it very much but they made several consessions to get our business.
I have to admit I'm not terribly impressed with much of Cisco's gear I've had the displeasure of working with.
First off let me say their routers are decent and the industry standard. However outside of that here are my thoughts:
I've been burned by the non-standard behavior of their switches way too many times. The HP gear seems real solid, is a joy
Cisco and VOIP (Score:2)
Wow, disinformation in your journal... (Score:1)
For instance, of the "Big 3" offerings, (Nortel, Lucent, Cisco) Cisco outperforms them by far.
You said you have offices with 4 users up to 250. I am assuming you have looked at having a call manager cluster in your largest office and/or headquarters building where the majority of your users are, as well as running Call Manager express and/or Unity
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe so. I have no experience of the other two. All I can say is that Cisco's VoIP offerings left me distinctly unimpressed. If the others are worse, then perhaps that's just an indication that VoIP in general isn't ready for prime time yet.
Re: (Score:1)
The advantages over a traditional PBX are pretty obvious to me though....
What specifically were your issues? Maybe I can address them?? (Maybe not, but it's worth a shot)
Re: (Score:2)
Easy to use? If the end user is even aware they're using VoIP, then the system has fallen at the first hurdle.
The advantages over a traditional PBX are pretty obvious to me though....
See, to me, the advantages aren't clear at all. Sure, for some situations, it makes a lot of sense (e.g., a company with two or more geographically disparate offices that makes a lot of inter-office calls). But for the general case? I'm not seeing a huge
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not running it. That's the whole point of hosted.
Re: (Score:1)
I hope this was tongue-in-cheek. You'd better care what they run. If it fails or sucks ass, it's your ass in the sling, not theirs...
Anyway, good luck man. If you need some advice or wanna chat about this ish...lemme know.
Asterisk? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Multiple DIDs per phone. Routing, hunt and roll groups. 800 numbers, 888 numbers and 900 numbers.
Yeah. It's complicated.
Re: (Score:2)
Two more checkboxes (Score:2)
Ask each company for a customer in NY, and ask for an on-site visit. Take each VOIP manager out to lunch, ask him what the longest outage was. When you get back to his office, have him walk you through their process for opening a trouble ticket. Ask what the feedback process is like, and to demonstrate if possible. You want to see real-world data if possible.
Then, ask each vendor how they define an outage, and how much money they will refund you if the