atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones VoIP vs TDM

Just trying to share to fellow people in an industry that is changing faster than I can change my socks. At times I am not the best to articulate my message or intentions, sorry for that. I appreciate the help I have received on other venues, would like to leave it at that.
I gain nothing by trying to share my thoughts and where I see today's market going, hope you all get that.
I will, in the future just feed and not contribute, learned my lesson.

Regards
Walter

walterv, please DO contribute, some of us want to learn. The only way we do is to be given the tools! I for one want your thoughts, as well as industry info! John C.

John,
I hear the negativity, I get that. In the mean time, my solution, what I do, just locked up a 600k job.
Denial of open source and IP is not going to put food on the table.
Our customers our demanding this, and yes, it does work and works well.

Walter

"Just trying to share to fellow people in an industry that is changing faster than I can change my socks."
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Couldn't resist my version, courtesy of Tom McCahill, automotive writer for Popular Mechanics years ago.

"Changes hands faster than a bar of soap"

Hi Walter

I am from your neck of the woods. I hear your pain as the IT folks are looking to do your jobs. But why are you so sold on just a pure IP solution. What is wrong with a hybrid? I looked at your web site and see ESI, NEC etc. All good brands. Why go pure IP? I am not asking to be wise guy I just do not see the point. Lets say a local Century 21 in Huntington. One office 20 phones. Maybe the boss wants a ip phone at home. Why do some ip system when you could do a nec with an ip phone.?

Jim

When dealing with larger environments, campus or multiplication, it just seems outdated to push anything that is hardware intensive and requires special techs and training for the IT department to admin. The larger the better of course if you can put it in proper the first time. I would highly recommend a managed service provider MSP to these clients They could have a $50,000 monthly phone bill and as a partner of the provider you make 5k-8k per month ($400K over 60 months profit) and the client gets free voip phones. The best part is you do not have to put it in or be out of pocket while it is being installed. This also helps you retain the income if you decide to maybe retire out of this rat race next year or so.

On the 20 phone deal, maybe the customer does not care about VoIP so lets rent them a TDM system maybe even a hybrid and give them a technology upgrade plan that allows you to retain them when they do decide to go VoIP?

Customers are doing their homework taking longer to move forward, giving us more time to worry and be mislead by our inner fears of competition and technology. Most everyone has heard about VoIP so lead with it and if they do not want it they will tell you but if you do not lead with it then they may leave you hanging and then your SOL.

Every phone system I sell is either an IPxxx or an xxxIP. I don't think that the fact it isn't a "pure IP system" is going to hurt me or my customers all that much. I still have a lot of offices networked together and a bunch of ip phones out there as well.

So instead of leaning on a manufacturer to determine the way we do business, why not let the technology itself do so? Today the carrier is leading the way of VoIP driving the technology to do more. As a hardware vendor we have no control over what our hardware manufacturer will decide to do and in the end, to the customer, it is our fault if they do not make the right move in advancements.

This is why I was advising that if we rent the hybrids to the small customers, they will understand that we have some skin in the game and if we do our own homework we will come up with a plan that fit what they will be looking for in the future. The larger clients require a bigger plan that most of us can not offer so let the carrier (an MSP) take care of them. VoIP “end to end” is the best and most successful way to secure your clients. Nothing in the middle to cause them to second guess the decision we helped them make. It works for me and I have been supporting this model for 4 years now.

Jim,
I am not an all IP player, or do I recommend an all IP play. Most cases, I don't recommend IP. IP IMHO is a hype word that the end user does not have a grip on, but those initials (IP, VOIP)makes them think they are state of the art.

Hybrid is great and a small application IMHO, is the way to go.

Larger systems,the customers will benefit huge by having an full IP play, and that IP play will be best fitted by being Astrix based.

As you noted, yes, ESI, NEC and to add a few more, Toshiba, Tadiran, and Avaya are good systems, but those systems cannot compare to a Astrix system like Xorcom.

Just My 2C, 30 plus years in this business

walterv--How many users/phones would you consider as a "small" application.

Also, coming from the carrier world I do not know that we totally want QoS standard on our network. I see some benefits for us carriers but it would be more beneficial for everyone else.

On the topic of Hosted IP--one of our competitors is practically giving away their Hosted IP product. They are telling their customers who have Mitel and Nortel that they do not support it anymore (even though they have the techs to do so). They see Hosted IP as the future. I can agree with that to a certain extent. Where I can't is office's with 8-10 users or less or 35 users or more. A local phone/IP converged system is more cost effective in most instances with the smaller number of users plus most of these locations only have a $50 to $100 "residential" broadband connection being ran by a $75 router and switch--these locations need some serious upgrading to their network before IP is an option. We do phone systems and Hosted IP so we are battling this from both sides. I agree with what has been said in previous posts you have to offer what the customer wants or you will starve.