atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Another New Jersey shopper

One of the cool things on the Tadiran system BTW is you can do both IP trunking and traditional so you have redundacy on a network.

Coral could you send me you rcontact info I would like to discuss Tadiran with you

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One stop Voice and Data Solutions VoIP

One good thing about the comparison shopping is we will have a great opportunity to do an apples to apples comparison between Tadiran and Zultys for overall features, flexibilty and cost. Zultys also has analog trunking for backup and 911 dialing btw both at the switch and at the handset for remote users.

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One stop Voice and Data Solutions VoIP

Tadiran dealer should be in later today. All-in-all I will have compared (in no particular order):

NEC Aspire
Avaya IPOffice
Avaya Merlin Magix
Zultys MX250
Tadiran ???

I have emailed Telrad and Comdial and am waiting for responses.

There's also a chance that I might take my Legend Release 4.1's and upgrade to the last Legend Release (7.something) and add some DS1 cards to improve the networking. This could buy me 3-5 years for VoIP to mature and could be dramatically less expensive than a new solution. We'll definitely have to dig deeper into maintenance costs and hardware availability/reliability if we go this route. This approach is popular with some and extremely distasteful to others in our executive group. It'll end up being a cost-over-time vs. benefit analysis.

Met with the Tadiran dealer yesterday. The solution to be proposed is a straight-up legacy application, pure nuts-and-bolts telephony. I like the approach and am looking forward to seeing the proposal. There's not a whole lot to say beyond that since we aren't a very complicated application. The best summary I could give to the Tadiran systems I looked at is "tried and true." And yet I still get the sense that the Tadiran is a flexible enough system to grow with us for a 15+ year time frame. I'm not sure about other systems I've looked at in that respect, though the Zultys, just based on how it is deployed could have the same potential.

Comdial is coming in on the 4th and I haven't made actual contact with Telrad yet. If I had to guess right now I'd say that my first choice is the Lucent upgrade with Tadiran and Zultys vying for 2nd. But that's a pure guess as I don't know the cost of any of these options, I'm only supposing as to what they will be. Regardless, I'm having fun now.

Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to upgrade what you have. That said, from your first post, it sounds like your Avaya vendor might not be the best. Maube you should explore the upgrade option with another Avaya dealer. There are quite a few Avaya dealers around, as well as many independent installers that know the Avaya product very well.
I have noticed that some of the long-time Avaya vendors (and Nortel vendors, for that matter) have gotten a little arrogant. Soemeone a little smaller and a little hungrier might give you better service.

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Intertel Telephone Repair
Avaya Telephone Repair

[This message has been edited by paul144 (edited December 17, 2004).]

Well, I'm definitely nearing completion of this deal. A short recap:

1. Rebuild the Lucent = too expensive for what you get. Between purchase cost and what the ongoing maintenance was costing this didn't make any sense at all when viewed for the long term.
2. Avaya = don't like the product. Too much complexity. It's like buying a stripped down car and optioning it out. IP Office was easily one of the most expensive solution I looked at.
3. Comdial / Telrad = not comfortable with the vendor and/or product. The solutions don't look bad, but they don't set themselves apart, either.
4. Tadiran = very nice solution, a little on the expensive side. I looked at all the systems based on a five-year TCO. The Tadiran was one of the higher priced systems, behind only Nortel and Avaya.
5. Nortel = $$$. Very close to Avaya in pricing. System price, MAC work, and maintenance were all comparatively high. This was a BCM solution.
6. NEC = 2nd choice. Modified the proposal to use a NVM 2000 and I'm much more satisfied with what it offers now. I'd have no problem recommending this solution. As proposed it'll do what we need and the vendor is really outstanding.
7. Zultys = #1 choice. This proposal uses an MX250 at the main site and an MX25 at the other location. I've been trialing the client side of the solution using phones that are connected via VPN to a switch in South Carolina with good results. I've also spoken with other users of the hardware who've had very good things to say about the product and Zultys. The product is very strong against everyone in the lineup. Pricing as neither the cheapest, nor the most expensive. It bears noting that the maintenance costs are very attractive and the MAC work is easy for anyone with an IT department. It's as close to stone-cold simple as I've seen.

The biggest downside to this choice is the very youth of Zultys as a company. The old "Who knows?" factor when you look five years down the road. I hope I'm right.

[This message has been edited by Wheels (edited February 28, 2005).]

If you look at the Tadiran with a 5 year replacement then yeah you will have a hard time justifying the numbers. Remember on a Tadiran you don't look to replace the system in 10 years or more.

You know, that's a very good point. I look at this as managing cost over time. For my size, I don't think the Tadiran is a good fit even over the longer term because the annual maintenance costs are too high. With lower annual maintenance costs, the Zultys and the NEC really hit a sweet spot with our organization. The Tadiran probably compares more favorably with larger deployments.

I agree. That's why we also sell NEC.