will IP PBX's extinct PBX's?

I saw an IP PBX solution the other day that really worries me that the days of small key systems and PBX"S are almost over. What do you all see in the future for IP PBX's?

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Of course IP telephony does provide yet another excuse - I couldn't answer the phone because the network was down.

I will stick my neck out a bit and say that the prices will come down and IP telephony will invade all but the very smallest segments of the market. It is really just a matter of standards and marketing catching up with the technology. From personal experience I can tell you that IP telephony is sure as hell taking over MY world.

Vaughn

Mine too! I have just lost a sale of a digital PBX to a fully virtual VoIP PBX vendor. That is, the PBX even sits outside the customer premises and talks to their SIP sets making them extensions of the PBX. Reliability questions galore, but the customer specifically wanted to be a guinea pig, you cannot possibly argue with that...

Dmitri, are you in Manhattan?

------------------------------------- Dmitri(Cabl> Vaughn Sim>> From personal experience I can tell you that IP

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For an equal line count today's VOIP systems (coming from the legacy TDM switch vendors) are 1/2 or less the price that their TDM grandfathers cost

Well, you're right on that point. At one time the power could be out and the gas and water could be off. You couldn't flush a toilet, but by God the phones still worked! That will take some 'adjusting' to get used to, especially the first few times it happens.

Philadelphia

If current trends continue in another decade 95% of your installed customer base won't be in business any longer, or at least not in the same location. If they move to new digs you can bet your last dollar that they'll be looking at VOIP. The MAC gravy train is coming to an end. Today one of my VOIP users can unplug his multiline office phone, (Mitel

.. Since the VoIP pricing is nowhere near

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No MACs? No way! With all the installed base it will feed you for maybe another decade or so. 95% of the customers don't really care if it's VoIP or digital (or analog for that matter) as long as the set of functions is comparable and the price is right. Since the VoIP pricing is nowhere near the "right" yet, and reliability sucks, interconnects are very motivated to sell them traditional equipment. Therefore traditional telephony business is going to continue for considerably long time. In the future though, I think it is inevitable that it will become Voice-over-the-same-carrier-as-data (not necessarily IP, who knows?).

The MACs for rewiring the phones, no matter what type, are largely due to poor design of the customer's cabling system. Therefore, if the cabling system was done right, you won't get the rewiring MAC income (or very little) irrespective of the phone type.

VoIP phones are NOT MAC-free! This is one of the wrong assumptions that create a lot of customer dissatisfaction once a VoIP phone system is installed. The phone sets still have to be re-programmed when they change hands, the phone services and their settings change as people optimize their phone bills, voice mails get new autoattendants or menu levels, you name it, it's there on your VoIP PBX.

The "all-virtual" VoIP PBX (service rather) I mentioned earlier that's supplied by one of our local CLECs, is very much alike Centrex. Whoever needed to own their phone system for myriad of reasons, will still buy a PBX, though IP.

That's a tough decision you are making, but I think interconnects are far from being dead yet.

Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD

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When SIP gets going it will really squish even the key system market. But given all major PBX vendors have stopped development on their TDM PBX's its only a matter of time. To much has been invested in the IP systems to ever go back.

"Dmitri(Cabl>

You're absolutly right. The MAC revenue goes in the toilet, no more punch downs to do a move. I wonder if the manufactures realize they are killing off their VARs main source of revenue. During tight times when no one buys anything new, a company can get buy on MAC revenue and maintenance contracts. You lose most of that to IP then when things get tight poof all the VARs go t*ts up and who will service the installed base?

I guess the key is that you have to look to provide services to the companies. A little difficult if your a traditional PBX vendor and you have to try to sell services against an established IT vendor.

You have some good points but I don't totally agree. You can still make money off the base but over the years the TDM base will shrink and the competition for it will grow.

Many of the IP systems are priced right and reliable on a properly set up network, so don't think that's going to stop the roll out of IP. Its fear of the unknown and not wanting to spend money on updating switches and routers that is slowing the spread of IP. Most RFP's I have seen lately still want info on IP even if its for a TDM system.

The bulk of our MAC revenue is still the mov>

This is a great achievement; I agree and sincerely congratulate you. I can also imagine that it took you a lot of efforts to engineer the solution, set it all up, train the customer and support it in good working order, just like you would with any phone system. Maybe I should say it took you three times as much time as it would with a traditional phone switch, but that?s not the point.

The point is, if this customer wants you to reprogram his phone's buttons because Mitel came up with a new firmware release and he wants to use the new glorious features, wouldn't you call your service a MAC? Well, the "C" part of it anyways ;-) and what if the customer wants to move the furniture around and blocks access to his wall jacks? If you help him out with that, you do the "M". Oh, yes, and if he wants to add VoIP phones but you run out of channels on your voice compression module (may not be applicable to Mitel, speaking in Avaya language). If you replace the module with a larger one, then here is your "A" of the MAC. Plus you need to sell him the additional phones.

I'm not saying MACs are going to be the same 10 years from, I'm just saying that there will always be service needed for the customers, no matter how smart their phone system becomes. The smarter the phone system, the smarter service it will require, the more you can charge for the service. It is already the case today: VoIP tech would earn at least $20-$40/hour higher than your regular traditional phone tech.

Besides, the system that you gave as an example consists of maybe 5-8 different pieces of electronics interconnected, each of which requires firmware upgrades, replacements due to obsolescence, customer support etc. Someone has to do all that, and that's what I call MAC of the 21st century.

And the customer will expect us to fix it.

I think some customers, when this happens, will rethink the whole IP technology. They won't like the idea of their phone system being so interdependent.

Take care, Rich

God bless the USA

Single point of failure: cable = computer, phone, TV

Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com) wrote: ....That is, the PBX even sits outside the customer premises and

Sure you can: remind them that "curiosity killed the cat"!

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