atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Which IP system should we sell?

If your going to look at IP based systems, take a look at ShoreTel.

Yeah Coral, you mentioned reasons why we were hesitant on selling an IP system. Right now if a customer wants IP we sell the ESI and it works pretty well. But some customers want a "full IP" system just because it's the latest.

Full IP as in a windows server? So they want to see a PC running their phones?

We've seen pretty much the same thing from our customers/prospects here, 94astro. We also sell the Tadiran and it is GREAT as both a TDM and IP switch.

We then decided to meet the demand for "pure" IP systems with Asterisk and trixbox (we feel that this product is excellent for the smaller end of our marketplace. We found that most prospects believed that the "pure" IP system was going to be less expensive....we also found that they are wrong. By the time you buy a PC, the appropriate gateways and SIP phones, they seem to price significantly higher than what we can sell a TDM/IP switch for. Relative to using PRI and analog extensions, the price goes WAY up, you need a gateway that can handle the PRI and then an FXS gateway or ATA to support the analog extensions.

These guys make a good product.

IPitomy

Full ip as in their phones plug into their network which routes to the ip system, full ip as in each phone can be moved wherever and boot-up with the same ext number. Remember I don't have IT/IP experience so I may be saying the wrong thing.

I'll check out the mentioned manufacturers and see where it take me.

Thank you...

94, you aren't saying or asking the wrong thing. We get that same question every day.

The problem is, there really is no "right" answer.

None of them work to the level that is expected or offer the features of TDM. Hybrid is the only way to go these days. Any manufacturer that only goes one way or the other is shooting themselves in the foot.

Even the industry leader, Avaya, has many if not most of their IP Office systems being installed as hybrids. Some Avaya dealers sell these systems at full TDM setups, as in standard digital phones behind them. There's just no reason to spend twice the money to get less of a phone on the desk top.

Sorry to be so blunt, but this question rivals asking the question "what's the biggest timber that I can sell a customer to build a shed". It's all overpriced and overkill and if your company jumps on that bandwagon, you won't be asking this question again.

If your company really is hell-bent on offering a 100% IP system, check out the Vertical/Vodavi Xcelerator sytem. It is available over the counter from any supply house with no certification requirements. It's inexpensive and will give your company a good taste of a 100% IP system. Try it out and use this to determine if IP really is the way to go. At least your expense will be low to test the waters.

I'll give you a good deal on the demo kit that I bought if you are interested.

Send me a PM or e-mail if you want to try it out. Otherwise, it is going on e-bay for sale to some unsuspecting end user looking to save a buck.

The more we talk the more I think that we can continue to sell ESI for our IP (remote location phones, tie systems) customers.

But, we do get calls from customers wanting a "true ip" system. We currently were beat in a sale, Shoretel over our ESI, probably a better demo...

Who knows what will happen, we'll start the research.

Well, if you can get past that fugly telephone the Shoretel is pretty decent system. Hopefully, they will make it past this last crisis.

I agree with the bulk of the comments posted here about so-called "pure IP" solutions. My experience has been that they're either too complicated as server-based systems (and I come from the IT side) or/and offer no overriding savings. Just recently I had to pull out an Asterisk installation and retrofit the customer's otherwise perfectly working Nortel TDM system (for which the Asterisk was running as a SIP gateway).
The problem was SIP bugs, compounded by not exactly reliable service from the SIP provider. The customer had insisted on Asterisk, because it was a "new thing" and it was "free". Now they're looking into Nortel's BCM system instead.
The only system I've ever installed as "pure IP" was a very small 5-user Talkswitch installation. There was 1 analog line completely separate from the system used by a faxmodem. Far as I know, it's been working fine, but also I had to do a lot of research regarding the service providers and their QOS setup (For serious installations the provider should offer DiffServ).
Be prepared to do some reading.

Perry