New phone system suggestion

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Sasiki

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The phone system we have at the company is roughly 10 years old. It's an NEC Electra Elite servicing about 40 lines. I'm trying to put a plan in place for when this one fails. The phone guy suggested a Nortel BCM 400. I don't know anything about what's out there though. The Nortel will do both conventional phone plus VoIP. I'm not sure how many others do, so this isn't really a priority. However, I would like to be able to log into an admin control panel using a web browser to make changes to the system. That's my only requirement as of now.

Chime in please!
 
40 lines as in 40 phone lines? or 40 stations?

What's your budget, do you mind doing some work, do you want a brand name or are you OK with open source stuff?

No one ever got fired for choosing Cisco. That being said, you could use something asterisk based and buy whatever IP phones you want. Trixbox is easy to setup, you should download it and play around with it.
 
we have two of the bcm 400s running digital sets and voip plus voip trunks between them, good systems until till you put too much load on them, we have ~35 ip sets and 140 digital sets on our main one (using an expansion chassis) and then 64 digital sets on the other one which uses the main bcms PRI lines over the network, works really well but getting that to work was a bit fiddly.

if your not going to be using over 100 sets on it then yeah its a really god system and some of the software for it is really god (callpilot desktop messaging, tapi / personal call manager etc)
 
I'm assuming 40 stations, as in extensions.
not 40 trunks to the PSTN.

At your size, I would recommend an Avaya IP Office for its ease of use and flexibility/room to grow.
 
Sorry, 40 stations, not lines. We have t1 coming in for the voice lines. I also have seven branch offices with sets totalling about 70 across all of those. I'd like to get an expandable system where I could possibly interconnect all of the offices in the future.
 
Sasiki said:
Sorry, 40 stations, not lines. We have t1 coming in for the voice lines. I also have seven branch offices with sets totalling about 70 across all of those. I'd like to get an expandable system where I could possibly interconnect all of the offices in the future.
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the bcm will do that over wan we innitaly had a 2 mbit link between the two offices / bcms and everything worked fine, you can even make them all use the same t1 / isdn 30 across multiple bcms
 
A quick synopsis of my past experience:

Avaya - Overpriced and lacking. Easily double what you would pay for any other VOIP solution.

Nortel BCM - If I wanted digital sets i would just buy a frickin AT&T Partner II. It's an all-in-one Linux-based solution. Multi-site is terrible under it. It requires a BCM PER SITE if you want redundance. What a crock.

Cisco - I've used this for my last 2 major installs. Full IP, multi-site with backup via SRST (your Cisco router keeps you up if you lose the WAN to the call managers), pricing is great. I *highly* recommend you procure your own servers for this. The Cisco MCS servers are hugely overpriced for what little you get. The MCS servers are merely re-badged HP and IBM rackmounts.

Asterisk - Highly unstable. I junked this after trying a lab environment w/ 20 phones.
 
shade91 said:
A quick synopsis of my past experience:

Avaya - Overpriced and lacking. Easily double what you would pay for any other VOIP solution.

Nortel BCM - If I wanted digital sets i would just buy a frickin AT&T Partner II. It's an all-in-one Linux-based solution. Multi-site is terrible under it. It requires a BCM PER SITE if you want redundance. What a crock.

Cisco - I've used this for my last 2 major installs. Full IP, multi-site with backup via SRST (your Cisco router keeps you up if you lose the WAN to the call managers), pricing is great. I *highly* recommend you procure your own servers for this. The Cisco MCS servers are hugely overpriced for what little you get. The MCS servers are merely re-badged HP and IBM rackmounts.

Asterisk - Highly unstable. I junked this after trying a lab environment w/ 20 phones.
Click to expand...

Hm, I have asterisk working with a handful of phones without a problem. I call my wife for free :) are you sure they were not problems with the phones themselves?
 
shade91 said:
A quick synopsis of my past experience:

Avaya - Overpriced and lacking. Easily double what you would pay for any other VOIP solution.

Nortel BCM - If I wanted digital sets i would just buy a frickin AT&T Partner II. It's an all-in-one Linux-based solution. Multi-site is terrible under it. It requires a BCM PER SITE if you want redundance. What a crock.

Cisco - I've used this for my last 2 major installs. Full IP, multi-site with backup via SRST (your Cisco router keeps you up if you lose the WAN to the call managers), pricing is great. I *highly* recommend you procure your own servers for this. The Cisco MCS servers are hugely overpriced for what little you get. The MCS servers are merely re-badged HP and IBM rackmounts.

Asterisk - Highly unstable. I junked this after trying a lab environment w/ 20 phones.
Click to expand...

So basically you've bashed all major phone systems including Cisco to some extent. Do you recommed that he just use cell phones or something?:confused:

I've used Avaya Digital and Avaya VOIP. Had plenty of good luck. Very easy to manage. If you do go VOIP (regardless of the provider) check out their softphone feature. It's very cool.

I know WesM63 has a lot of expericence with Cisco VOIP and loves it.
 
The telephone company said they pride themselves with their VoIP systems. Maybe I should check with them and get some details before I let the 'phone guy' coax me into a new phone system.
 
I use asterisk at work with about 20 lines coming in and about 70 phones connected to it and have never had one problem with it. :confused:
 
Chiggy said:
I use asterisk at work with about 20 lines coming in and about 70 phones connected to it and have never had one problem with it. :confused:
Click to expand...

Same experience. I still support the last installation I did, and I've received two support calls over the past year for it, niether of which were the actual phone system at fault ( crappy copper provider ).

Asterisk is rock solid assuming you know what you are doing, but the same could be said for any other system as well.
 
I have a meeting set up for next week with the phone company. They offer Hosted or Non Hosted, Traditional and Traditional with VOIP Hybrid. I'll see if I can't get some good info from them before I make a decision. The phone guy wants to sell us the BCM 400, but I don't want to jump on that ship because it's what he says is good. I like to be educated about purchases like this.
 
There are some pretty good smaller VoIP systems as well.

I know of a couple businesses that are running on the Zulstys system and one running the Shoretel system, each of them has been pretty happy with their system.

We will be moving to a Zulstys soon in replacing our old Panasonic DBS-72 /w Amanda (DOS) voicemail system.
 
Hosted VoIP is ok if your hosted PBX provider is the same as your carrier. Don't use something that doesn't guarantee end to end QoS.
 
I am a phone guy by training so take this how you want.
For current small business needs, a traditional phone system with digital phones is perfectly fine. Many small stores and offices do just fine with Panasonic, Nortel Norstar, Avaya Partner, etc. Now if you need T1 capability, networking, advanced voice mail, etc, then a system with voice over IP may be better suited, like an NEC, Vodavi, Inter-Tel, Iwatsu, Nortel BCM, etc. Cisco has its place...it has advantages and disadvantages like any other piece of equipment. I do not see it as the be-all, end-all like some people might. I have to disagree with the hosted voice over IP model. Unless you have 100 percent uptime with your internet and power, you will have outages and issues. You are relying on a server sitting in a datacenter to route your normal calls, which your business thrives on, not to mention 911 should there be an emergency. In order to get a better idea of what to do, I suggest that you contact several vendors in your area, see what is offered, and go from there.
 
We already have a T1 line coming in for the current phone system. It hits our NEC Electra-elite and goes analog from there. Harbor Communications provides the phone service and Southern Light provides the fiber. They are both locally owned and operated out of Mobile, AL. They work in tandem with each other to provide the customer's their services. We've had this setup for about 9 months with absolutely no outages on either the fiber or telephone. They have us set up on fiber with a failover strand coming down a totally seperate major road, so I think we're pretty much covered as far as fiber cuts go.

Thanks to Eickst for the carrier hosted VoIP. I will make sure that the equipment for the hosted service is going on the same network our fiber comes from. The meeting with them is a week from next monday. I'm not making any decisions then.. just getting some info about what they can offer me.

Thanks for the tips and suggestions. I'm a dummy when it comes to telephone systems!


jeffmoss26 said:
I am a phone guy by training so take this how you want.
For current small business needs, a traditional phone system with digital phones is perfectly fine. Many small stores and offices do just fine with Panasonic, Nortel Norstar, Avaya Partner, etc. Now if you need T1 capability, networking, advanced voice mail, etc, then a system with voice over IP may be better suited, like an NEC, Vodavi, Inter-Tel, Iwatsu, Nortel BCM, etc. Cisco has its place...it has advantages and disadvantages like any other piece of equipment. I do not see it as the be-all, end-all like some people might. I have to disagree with the hosted voice over IP model. Unless you have 100 percent uptime with your internet and power, you will have outages and issues. You are relying on a server sitting in a datacenter to route your normal calls, which your business thrives on, not to mention 911 should there be an emergency. In order to get a better idea of what to do, I suggest that you contact several vendors in your area, see what is offered, and go from there.
Click to expand...
 
JayAre said:
So basically you've bashed all major phone systems including Cisco to some extent.
Click to expand...

Bashed? If you say so. The MCS servers are overpriced. $4k for a non-raid non-core duo box (7815 I2)? I don't even bother inviting Avaya around to bids anymore due to their history of being priced 2x to 4x of what the competition is.

RobStar said:
Hm, I have asterisk working with a handful of phones without a problem. I call my wife for free are you sure they were not problems with the phones themselves?
Click to expand...

They were all Cisco 7940's under FreeBSD. I got sick of the hand configuration and the way the SIP phones are setup. Occassionally the MOH would lock up for no apparent reason. I probably would have seen better results under a Linux distro. Even after all the time I had spent on it I could still bring multi-site Cisco setups up much quicker than I could a single Asterisk site.

jeffmoss26 said:
I have to disagree with the hosted voice over IP model. Unless you have 100 percent uptime with your internet and power, you will have outages and issues. You are relying on a server sitting in a datacenter to route your normal calls, which your business thrives on, not to mention 911 should there be an emergency. In order to get a better idea of what to do, I suggest that you contact several vendors in your area, see what is offered, and go from there
Click to expand...

If you consider a hosted model without a decent infrastructure under it (high end edge hardware and PoE switches, fully UPS'd setup) you are a complete fool who deserves the down time with the poor planning.
 
I had a meeting with the phone company yesterday to discuss their Hosted VoIP solution. The VoIP host equipment is within my fiber network. Price is $42.xx/mo per phone on a 3 year contract. This includes the price of the phone, setup, free long distance, basically everything. I would have to pay $300/month for a T1 though. Total sets would be about 40 with only 12 to 15 being used at a time.

The equipment is all UPS'd, etc. and within the next couple weeks, they are going to have a whole set of backup equipment in a totally different location for failover. They are using this system in their office as well as other big name offices in their area. They said they will provide references for us if we'd like to contact the other customers.

I plan to get a couple test sets in within the next month or so and check it out for myself.

Based on the above pricing/info, would I be better off looking into buying my own equipment?
 
The above 3/yr cost would be about 60grand, right? Not including the cost of the t1, which will be approx for all setups. You'd need a full t1 for voice I'm assuming, so we can base some prices off of that:

In an asterisk setup, the costs would be significantly cheaper:

8,000 for the phones
8,000 for the servers
4,000 for infrastructure

Software and such would be essentially free, however for fairness you'd want to get prices for support. Digium has some pretty good deals, but their prices may have changed since I last looked at them. Let's assume 5,000 for support.

So total costs there would be 25,000, and you could be up and running a couple weeks after the equipment came in. This cost includes PoE switches/phones, UPS to power it all and redundant servers.

Were I you, this option would be highly attractive. :)
 
Wow, significant savings. I need to get an old box put together and throw asterik on it. I assume that the long distance and all would still be free, correct?

Total phone noob. I'm sure I'm trying to make it way more complicated than it really is.

Edit: Anyone have any experience with the Asterisk appliance?
 
I downloaded the LiveCD of AsteriskNOW yesterday. I think I'm over my head in this phone stuff. I'm sure i'm making it harder than it really is though. I will have 40 handsets, 1 timeclock, 1 external modem, 5 fax machines, and 1 fax server using whatever I implement. I think I'll just let the phone guy do his job and set up a demo Nortel BCM unit in here. He doesn't have any experience with it yet and he wants a customer site to test it out on. I think I'll just let him do what he does best. If the BCM works out well, he recommended we go ahead and get the BCM 400.

Any other suggestions?
 
Sasiki said:
I downloaded the LiveCD of AsteriskNOW yesterday. I think I'm over my head in this phone stuff. I'm sure i'm making it harder than it really is though. I will have 40 handsets, 1 timeclock, 1 external modem, 5 fax machines, and 1 fax server using whatever I implement. I think I'll just let the phone guy do his job and set up a demo Nortel BCM unit in here. He doesn't have any experience with it yet and he wants a customer site to test it out on. I think I'll just let him do what he does best. If the BCM works out well, he recommended we go ahead and get the BCM 400.

Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

You can look at Shoretel. It has a pretty good price point for the amount of phones you will be using.
 
XOR != OR said:
The above 3/yr cost would be about 60grand, right? Not including the cost of the t1, which will be approx for all setups. You'd need a full t1 for voice I'm assuming, so we can base some prices off of that:

In an asterisk setup, the costs would be significantly cheaper:

8,000 for the phones
8,000 for the servers
4,000 for infrastructure

Software and such would be essentially free, however for fairness you'd want to get prices for support. Digium has some pretty good deals, but their prices may have changed since I last looked at them. Let's assume 5,000 for support.

So total costs there would be 25,000, and you could be up and running a couple weeks after the equipment came in. This cost includes PoE switches/phones, UPS to power it all and redundant servers.

Were I you, this option would be highly attractive. :)
Click to expand...

You ever use Aastra phones?


I'm looking into doing a new setup, using the 9133i for the desk and perhaps a 57i/560m combo for the attendant.

Right now I have a client using Grandstreams (12 people, so it's no biggie), but this new client has about 70 people and 4 recepts.
 
KaosDG said:
You ever use Aastra phones?


I'm looking into doing a new setup, using the 9133i for the desk and perhaps a 57i/560m combo for the attendant.

Right now I have a client using Grandstreams (12 people, so it's no biggie), but this new client has about 70 people and 4 recepts.
Click to expand...
I haven't gotten an Aastra to play with yet, but I have had great experiences with snoms. They are dead simple to configure, and can be done on a massive scale with the use of dhcp+apache/php ( and mysql, were you so inclined ). And they work flawlessly.

I'll have to pick up an Aastra to play with though.
 
How would you phone guru's suggest I go about getting a 'test lab' on the cheap? It's going to be with company funds and they are being really tight with money right now. Our phone system isn't going to last too much longer. It's been in commission for 12 years.
 
Sasiki said:
How would you phone guru's suggest I go about getting a 'test lab' on the cheap? It's going to be with company funds and they are being really tight with money right now. Our phone system isn't going to last too much longer. It's been in commission for 12 years.
Click to expand...

Depends on what you mean by "test lab," really.

If you mean something to build and test asterisk, or some other in-house system, then you have to justify the cost of the equipment, really.
Especially hard, if you could possibly conclude that you won't be going with that particular system. (Lots of "unusable" stuff)

Thing is, if you aren't a reseller of the equipment, it's hard to justify testing systems.

If you ahve a trusted reseller though, for your equipment, then you can talk to them about setting you up with a test/demo system. I know my guys are good with that, they let me test a Toshiba voip system and an avaya voip system for several months. (I still have some parts of the avaya system, because they 'don't need them back yet')
 
I ran the Asterisk LiveCD yesterday just so I could log into the admin panel and poke around. I'd LOVE to go with an Asterisk system, but

1. I'm not spending my money
2. I don't want to suggest it and upper management hate it. That'd be one strike for me!

It's of course going to be company money buying it, but I want to do what's best for the company (and my job security). Sure, the hosted VoIP from our phone provider is $20,000 grand a year, but right now, we're paying $830/mo for the PRI and roughly $2000/mo of long distance just out of this office alone. That's $33,600/yr. Remember, that's just out of this office. We have 8 other locations, however, this one accounts for 50% of the total bill. At the end of the summer, the phone guy we're using for copper, wants me to help him test out a Nortel BCM system. If I decide to go this route, I assume the only costs I will incur is the T1 for $300/mo and the intial cost of the equipment.
 
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