atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Shoretel Telephones & Systems Shoretel

It is my understanding that it is actually less expensinve than Cisco and IP Office.....but you get what you pay for IMHO.

Steve

I have a 3 site, 100+ extension Shoretel deployment here in the central USA.

We have had it for nearly 2 years and have been plagued with issues since day one. We have had every sort of network tech, phone tech, provider tech and Shoretel themselves on site on several occasions and no one has been able to repair this thing.

Issues include, problems with communications over WAN links (MPLS PIP) volume pitching up and down, unreliable Softphone performance, DTMF tones not being registered on some systems and unreliable faxing.

We are on the verge of scrapping the whole system and moving to another solution such as Avaya or Cisco.

I will add however that if you are a very small (20 or so phones) on a single site then the Shoretel system makes it pretty easy to administer. However, if you need 50+ extensions at multiple sites, I suggest moving away from Shoretel.

I became an NBX dealer when they first came out, 1998 I believe, was partnered up with a Data Recovery company. We thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Just show the user and andmin interface, easy too sell. But no matter the size or software, or how much we spent on switches, there were problems. Ts always came up with use seperate cables for phones. I worked it hard for a year and half, we had lots of Certified people for Microsoft and Russian whiz kids that could do all kinds of tricks with Data. I realize that was a while back but I hear the same thing now from lots of places, a whiff trouble and it's "you need sep network" and a lot more bucks.

Over the last year this company went through alot of changes and so the old TIE system is still in place. I had been leaning towards Shoretel for our 35 person office as I liked the integration with Outlook, apparent ease of administration, feature sets and expadability. References also were strong.

I had looked at AltiGen, Cisco, Sphere as well. I have seen an increase in info on Avaya and also the Nortel BSM product.

I would be interested in opinions on these products and pros and cons if each if anyone is willig to share. I still favor Shoretel as it seems to be a well rounded system with a solid reputation. Some of the posts on this forum did not seem too enthusiastic about Shoretel or this product line in general. Perhaps it is good that we waited.

Thank you

We are a ShoreTel end-user for nearly two years, now, completely self-installed on the ShoreTel side of things. We have relied upon the valuable network expertise of our ShoreTel distributor to help us develop and learn the network strategies and skills required to keep VoIP happy. We don't call them much, any more, unless we find something that truly stumps us. Happily, that's an unusual occasion -- but it took a while. We have 29 sites in 4 states; 500+ users; 100+ analog devices (faxes, a few modems, etc). 99% of users have the IP530 or IP560 telephone. A wide mix of analog loop-start, analog DID, T1, PRI trunking. 3 or 4 of these sites exist merely to provide tie lines to existing Nortel PBXs (Option systems and Norstars), some using T1 and some using PRI tie lines.

Successful VoIP on the WAN runs over point-point T1s and MPLS. Early attempts at Frame Relay and Sprint's Sprintlink-Frame product just didn't pan out.

QoS is very important, of course. But it is amazing how critical a happy network is to VoIP communications. When call quality suffers, it's time to be checking error counts on every router involved, and even such simple things as half/full duplex negotiation on the network switches will have a huge impact -- and have to be looked at pretty regularly. And don't forget your bandwidth, you need your bandwidth.

The wise VoIP shopper will critically analyze his/her system and strategic needs -- and will dissect their network before implementing VoIP (!!!!). The wise VoIP seller will do the same -- it's your name that's at stake. In my experience, VoIP has some real benefits to the multi-site company. But it's more expensive to keep running: Your troubleshooters not only have to phone technicians (for the trunking issues, mostly), they have to be data technicians now, too (for the WAN and LAN issues), and PC technicians now, too (for the bells and whistles on the user PC), and know servers now, too ('cause it all hinges on the servers). Windows Server 2003 is more stable than 2000, but none of it runs forever.

You'd better have access to someone who can find that problem, and who can successfully argue and urge and politely insist that the carrier whose trouble it is get the darned thing fixed. The vast majority of our problems have been WAN problems. If your troubeshooter is a vendor, then I can imagine that money will need to change hands every time the WAN gets into trouble. The larger customer will likely hire his/her own in-house expertise.

A couple of years into this thing, I still believe the ShoreTel product really is a good product, with great new strategies available in the manipulation and delivery of voice telephony. The bottom line remains: If you are going to spend money on this business-critical technology (whether traditional telephony or VoIP), you had better do your homework. And don't be shy or hesitant in setting up a good ol' informal face-to-face with the folks trying to sell you this stuff. Get past the sales fluff, and figure out if you can trust 'em well enough to keep you in business. Same thing for you distributors -- we customers don't always know what questions to ask, and can be real intimidated by the monies and complexities involved, so you have to know how not to let the deal get set up for failure.

Hope this helps. Keep the discussion going -- it really helps to know what's going on out there.

Dear Cangin,

I work for ShoreTel and would like to discuss your experience with the system. None of our customers should have to experience what it seems you have.

In the six years I have worked here, our goal is 100% reference-able customers, of any size and it seems we have fallen short here.

Please contact me at [email protected]. Thanks,

Steve

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LLCoach
I was glad to see someone from Shortel step up and address this.
Has there been any progress? What seems to be/have been the problem(s)?

Richard

bump

I would look at the MPLS and how it is setup, because there is no reason why the ShoreTel shouls not work properly on an correctly config MPLS. Did you go to MPLS just for the ShoreTel install? You should take a look at Packeteer.

i work for a law firm that installed shoretel 2 years prior to me starting there. i am used to nortel and avaya, but the shoretel seems to be a quick easy way to get a phone system up. on the other hand we have had many strange problems on many different occasions. i am the network engineer and i would like to know if there is anyone on here that knows how to configure a cisco 3750 to handle shoretel traffic. i have the auto qos turned on and i think that should do the trick but i want to eliminate the network switches from the equation