Comparitive evals for medium sized office VOIP PBX

I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel

3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any good links it would be greatly appreciated.

Hal

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hal
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Hi Hal.

You will no doubt be extremely pleased with the 3300. My employer certainly is and we so far have 5 of them on our nationwide enterprise network. Our initial interest was simply to perform IP trunking. We have since begun actual IP phone deployment.

We are also self-maintained (Mitel Certified COAM customer) and so have been to I&M school on the 3300 as well as the SX-200_ICP, SX-2000 and OPS-Man. We have been a Mitel customer since 1986.

The embedded voice mail package in the 3300 could be better, but it's adequate for most folks. We're merely spoiled by having had OCTEL systems for several years. The OCTEL Overture, by the way, integrates fully with the 3300.

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg

Hello,

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WBR, Andrew

Reply to
Andrew Zhilenko

I'm just wondering why does it have to be VoIP if you do not have branch offices and do not use VoIP trunking...

Anyways, you could also look at Avaya's IP Office in its TDM incarnation for all your inside telephony needs, and then equip it with the Voice Compression Module(s) to support any VoIP telecommuters you may have in the future. It is a great system, and it has some incredible features like

64-party conference bridge, which you don't pay any extra for. The IPO Voice Mail (Pro version) is also extremely capable messaging system with pretty much any feature you can expect from a messaging system these days, with integrated messaging, IVR, text-to-speech, database interface, you name it.

In my opinion, IP Office is definitely worth to look at.

Reply to
Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com

I thought it's kinda funny that pbxpress.com runs Google AdSense ads of their competitors on their website. It tells you right away that the system does not sell, and the guys are trying to make some money by selling ad space on the site. Could be the boss has no idea what the webmaster is up to... Who knows what's going on, but it feels like something's wrong.

Reply to
Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com

I support a Cisco call manager installation. I'll try to answer any questions you might have.

Reply to
Me

Thanks, but more than specific questions about CM, I need product trials and comparitive tests. Customer satisfaction surveys and market shares. Stuff like that. Any links to third party product evals greatly appreciated.

Hal

Reply to
hal

Before you consider CISCO you need to be aware that their Call Manager is a cluster of applications all running on Microsoft SQL Server on a Wintel platform (Windows/Intel PC-based). Furthermore, CISCO's voicemail package for the CM (UNITY) requires yet another Wintel server. Need redundancy or resiliancy/survivability? That'll take still another server.

Being Microsoft server-based means the Call Manager is open to the same worms, viruses, Denial-Of-Service attacks, etc as all other Windows based PCs. For security Cisco recommends creating a separate Firewall. Translation: You'll probably need another Server.

Need 9-1-1 support? Yes, another server.

Run a "Corporate Load" on all of your networked PCs? BZZZZZTT!! The Windows O/S is a CISCO-proprietary custom load. This means you will not be able to apply the Microsoft "Critical patches" without getting those patches directly from CISCO.

Accustomed to using a specific Server/PC hardware platform? BZZZZTT again! My understanding is the Cisco CM application won't load on anything but CISCO proprietary hardware.

Need service on it all? After the 90-day (!) warranty you'll need a SmartNet ($$$) contract on every component.

See the direction this is headed?

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg

Oh, that's nothing. We have some Canon printers with embedded Windows NT 4. Not that Canon -told- us they ran NT. They're all vulnerable to the usual spate of Windows vulnerabilties -- and Canon has informed our head of PC support that if we go into them and run Windows Update, that this will void our warranty.

Just Say No to Embedded Windows, or any other Windows you can't lock down and patch.

Reply to
Karl A. Krueger

Yep, they do run on Windows. Yes you do have multiple servers. Yes, you do get updates from Cisco instead of Microsoft. Wrong, there are many different platforms you can install on. I'm not aware of any application or appliance that comes with free lifetime support???

Do you sell Mitel??

Our system has been up 100% outside of SLA for 3 years (since install). Having multiple servers allows you to take one or two servers down without impacting the users. I could see having a stand alone system doing everything, but what if that device fails. I have multiple layers of redundancy. If our option 11 freaks, everyone is affected. I can lose 3 servers out of 5 before users are affected. As for virus's or bugs.. Cisco releases patches that affect its application one week after MS does. I don't know about you, but it's really nice have a vendor do the testing on patches before they are applied to my application. It really simplifies things for me. A fire wall in front of you voice apps?? Any semi competent network guy could put some basic access lists in.

I'd consider all vendors. I doubt Cisco will be a good choice if you have less than 100 users. And that's pushing it. You could look at CCM Express. You can actually install a unity voicemail module in a Cisco router NM slot now. So depending on your router choice, you could have your pbx and voicemail system residing on you router. Hows that for consolidating devices? I'm sure Mitel guy has something to say about that. He's always got something negative to say about anything not Mitel...

I just offered to be helpful. Wasn't trying to sell you anything. I don't know of any direct comparisons. I know that Cisco is selling the shit of their VOIP products. Even the open source guys realize that Cisco phones and gateways are the way to go. Look at it this way. VOIP is IP. Cisco is the IP king. These traditional PBX manufactures are playing catch up in the VOIP world.

Reply to
Me

No I do not. I am an enduser. (COAM)

We do happen to have a CM in our communications lab, there only for sake of comparison and tinkering. It was actually the first VOIP platform in the shop. We bought it out of curiosity. After playing with it for a couple years it seems like quite an expensive platform to ever consider deploying, comparatively speaking.

380 multiline (14-line) stations (Superset 5220), 6 PRIs to the outside world and a pair of Mitel 3300s (resilient config) including embeded centralized voice mail is right at $180,000 installed & running. And not so much as even one single Microsoft O/S in the call processing path. The whole thing is managed by Mitel's OpsMan, which runs on Win2K server, but that piece could go away without ever losing a call. I doubt we'd even know it was down until someone tried to do a MAC. And even with the server down we could still do the MAC via the fairly intuitive GUI interface on the 3300.

By the way, in case you weren't aware, Mitel O/S upgrades are free. All you pay for are new features, and then only if you want 'em. If you're not COAM and have to go to the street for maintenance (after your initial

1-year warranty is up) there's plenty of hungry shops out there that'd fight for the chance to service it on a T&M basis while trying to woo you into a MA. Even on an MA, it is far less expensive than a Smartnet contract.

Finally, Mitel's '9-1-1' application is 100% self-contained within the

3300 and can output an INTRADO-compliant datastream *without* a separate server.

If you've ever had an old KEY System, you probably know what "Common Ringer" is. (Multiple incoming lines all ringing one common outside bell or yard whistle) Can the Call Manager do common ringer? Bet not.

Before anyone buys any VOIP system I would strongly recommend they talk to their users, especially their Admins, and ask them what multiline and call appearance and call handling features **they** need. When you get that answer you will realize your available choices are almost anything but Cisco.

The 14-line Mitel Superset 5220 can be expanded to either 26, 62, or 110 lines (or feature keys) and still have less than $800 invested in the instrument.

Cisco makes some nice stuff, but they seem awfully proud of it! The poor customer has to pay and pay and pay.

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg

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