Comparitive evals for medium sized office VOIP PBX

[Hal]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
good links it would be greatly appreciated.


Hal

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Hi Hal.

You will no doubt be extremely pleased with the 3300. My employer
certainly is and we so far have 5 of them on our nationwide enterprise
network. Our initial interest was simply to perform IP trunking. We have
since begun actual IP phone deployment.

We are also self-maintained (Mitel Certified COAM customer) and so have
been to I&M school on the 3300 as well as the SX-200_ICP, SX-2000 and
OPS-Man. We have been a Mitel customer since 1986.

The embedded voice mail package in the 3300 could be better, but it's
adequate for most folks. We're merely spoiled by having had OCTEL systems
for several years. The OCTEL Overture, by the way, integrates fully with
the 3300.


In article <ksvvn01t4rhl45gdbqdbdvif9qhjgkumvv@4ax.com> hal@nospam.com
writes:

>I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
>offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
>3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
>looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
>hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
>market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
>good links it would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>Hal

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

PC Magazine did a recent review. For the entire article go to the Mitel
web site <http://www.mitel.com> and right there on the home page click on
the article banner "PC Magazine Speaks Out on VOIP"

In article <ksvvn01t4rhl45gdbqdbdvif9qhjgkumvv@4ax.com> hal@nospam.com
writes:

>I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
>offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
>3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
>looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
>hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
>market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
>good links it would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>Hal

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Hello,

> I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
> offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
> 3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
> looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
> hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
> market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
> good links it would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.pbxpress.com/

WBR, Andrew
--
Andrew Zhilenko
Please remove "hide-email." from my email address when replying,
so my address should be andrew (at) ti dot cz

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

hal@nospam.com wrote:


> I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
> offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
> 3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
> looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
> hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
> market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
> good links it would be greatly appreciated.


> Hal

I'm just wondering why does it have to be VoIP if you do not have branch
offices and do not use VoIP trunking...

Anyways, you could also look at Avaya's IP Office in its TDM incarnation
for all your inside telephony needs, and then equip it with the Voice
Compression Module(s) to support any VoIP telecommuters you may have in
the future. It is a great system, and it has some incredible features like
64-party conference bridge, which you don't pay any extra for. The IPO
Voice Mail (Pro version) is also extremely capable messaging system with
pretty much any feature you can expect from a messaging system these days,
with integrated messaging, IVR, text-to-speech, database interface, you
name it.

In my opinion, IP Office is definitely worth to look at.

--
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
http://www.cabling-design.com
Cabling Forum, color codes, pinouts and other useful resources for
premises cabling users and pros
http://www.cabling-design.com/homecabling
Residential Cabling Guide
-------------------------------------





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[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Andrew Zhilenko wrote:

> Hello,

>> I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no
>> branch
>> offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the
>> Mitel
>> 3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will
>> also be
>> looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
>> hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties.
>> Some
>> market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to
>> any
>> good links it would be greatly appreciated.
>> http://www.pbxpress.com/

> WBR, Andrew

I thought it's kinda funny that pbxpress.com runs Google AdSense ads of
their competitors on their website. It tells you right away that the
system does not sell, and the guys are trying to make some money by
selling ad space on the site. Could be the boss has no idea what the
webmaster is up to... Who knows what's going on, but it feels like
something's wrong.

--
Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD
http://www.cabling-design.com
Cabling Forum, color codes, pinouts and other useful resources for
premises cabling users and pros
http://www.cabling-design.com/homecabling
Residential Cabling Guide
-------------------------------------


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[ME]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

I support a Cisco call manager installation. I'll try to answer any
questions you might have.


<hal@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:ksvvn01t4rhl45gdbqdbdvif9qhjgkumvv@4ax.com...
> I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
> offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
> 3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
> looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
> hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
> market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
> good links it would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
> Hal

 

[Hal]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 11:13:50 -0400, "Me" <me@me.com> wrote:

>I support a Cisco call manager installation. I'll try to answer any
>questions you might have.

Thanks, but more than specific questions about CM, I need product
trials and comparitive tests. Customer satisfaction surveys and
market shares. Stuff like that. Any links to third party product
evals greatly appreciated.

Hal

>
>
><hal@nospam.com> wrote in message
>news:ksvvn01t4rhl45gdbqdbdvif9qhjgkumvv@4ax.com...
>> I am looking into VOIP systems for a 100 + user office with no branch
>> offices and two T-1s to the PSTN. I am looking heavily at the Mitel
>> 3300, and am vaguely familiar with Cisco Call Manager. I will also be
>> looking at Avaya and ShoreTel. Searches turn up tons of marketing
>> hype but so far no comparison tests or evals from third parties. Some
>> market share specs would be nice too. If anyone can point me to any
>> good links it would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>>
>> Hal
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

In article <cc65o0l3h2k2m66na7a564c6840rgve45g@4ax.com> hal@nospam.com
writes:


>Thanks, but more than specific questions about CM, I need product
>trials and comparitive tests. Customer satisfaction surveys and
>market shares. Stuff like that. Any links to third party product
>evals greatly appreciated.

Before you consider CISCO you need to be aware that their Call Manager is
a cluster of applications all running on Microsoft SQL Server on a Wintel
platform (Windows/Intel PC-based). Furthermore, CISCO's voicemail package
for the CM (UNITY) requires yet another Wintel server. Need redundancy or
resiliancy/survivability? That'll take still another server.

Being Microsoft server-based means the Call Manager is open to the same
worms, viruses, Denial-Of-Service attacks, etc as all other Windows based
PCs. For security Cisco recommends creating a separate Firewall.
Translation: You'll probably need another Server.

Need 9-1-1 support? Yes, another server.

Run a "Corporate Load" on all of your networked PCs? BZZZZZTT!! The
Windows O/S is a CISCO-proprietary custom load. This means you will not be
able to apply the Microsoft "Critical patches" without getting those
patches directly from CISCO.

Accustomed to using a specific Server/PC hardware platform? BZZZZTT again!
My understanding is the Cisco CM application won't load on anything but
CISCO proprietary hardware.

Need service on it all? After the 90-day (!) warranty you'll need a
SmartNet ($$$) contract on every component.

See the direction this is headed?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

Mitel wrote:
> Run a "Corporate Load" on all of your networked PCs? BZZZZZTT!! The
> Windows O/S is a CISCO-proprietary custom load. This means you will not be
> able to apply the Microsoft "Critical patches" without getting those
> patches directly from CISCO.

Oh, that's nothing. We have some Canon printers with embedded Windows
NT 4. Not that Canon -told- us they ran NT. They're all vulnerable to
the usual spate of Windows vulnerabilties -- and Canon has informed our
head of PC support that if we go into them and run Windows Update, that
this will void our warranty.

Just Say No to Embedded Windows, or any other Windows you can't lock
down and patch.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger@example.edu> { s/example/whoi/ }

Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one line.
By induction, every program can be reduced to one line which does not work.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.dcom.voice-over-ip (More info?)

In article <HgNhd.93246$tU4.31442@okepread06> "Me" <me@me.com> writes:


>Do you sell Mitel??

No I do not. I am an enduser. (COAM)

We do happen to have a CM in our communications lab, there only for sake
of comparison and tinkering. It was actually the first VOIP platform in
the shop. We bought it out of curiosity. After playing with it for a
couple years it seems like quite an expensive platform to ever consider
deploying, comparatively speaking.

380 multiline (14-line) stations (Superset 5220), 6 PRIs to the outside
world and a pair of Mitel 3300s (resilient config) including embeded
centralized voice mail is right at $180,000 installed & running. And not
so much as even one single Microsoft O/S in the call processing path. The
whole thing is managed by Mitel's OpsMan, which runs on Win2K server, but
that piece could go away without ever losing a call. I doubt we'd even
know it was down until someone tried to do a MAC. And even with the server
down we could still do the MAC via the fairly intuitive GUI interface on
the 3300.

By the way, in case you weren't aware, Mitel O/S upgrades are free. All
you pay for are new features, and then only if you want 'em. If you're not
COAM and have to go to the street for maintenance (after your initial
1-year warranty is up) there's plenty of hungry shops out there that'd
fight for the chance to service it on a T&M basis while trying to woo you
into a MA. Even on an MA, it is far less expensive than a Smartnet
contract.

Finally, Mitel's '9-1-1' application is 100% self-contained within the
3300 and can output an INTRADO-compliant datastream *without* a separate
server.

If you've ever had an old KEY System, you probably know what "Common
Ringer" is. (Multiple incoming lines all ringing one common outside bell
or yard whistle) Can the Call Manager do common ringer? Bet not.

Before anyone buys any VOIP system I would strongly recommend they talk to
their users, especially their Admins, and ask them what multiline and call
appearance and call handling features **they** need. When you get that
answer you will realize your available choices are almost anything but
Cisco.

The 14-line Mitel Superset 5220 can be expanded to either 26, 62, or 110
lines (or feature keys) and still have less than $800 invested in the
instrument.

Cisco makes some nice stuff, but they seem awfully proud of it! The poor
customer has to pay and pay and pay.