darby

I'm in the same boat, we have a 61c rls 23.37. Just got a quote for 56k to upgrade to succession. Management is VERY seriously considering a Cisco voip solution instead. We are a premier engineering school and they say they would like to project a "leading edge" technolgy image to prospective students and such. I'm all for it as I always like to learn new technology and such. But now they are asking questions about cost savings and all that jazz that I know nothing about...yet!

Ancient1

GoodMorning Darby!
Maybe if we keep this question live enough long enough one of the many experts here can help us justify why we should upgrade, what we will benefit from the upgrade, what we loose from the upgrade, the good, the bad , and the ugly of it all! Thanks!

darby

Hope so!
The boss just asked me if I wanted to go to an ip telephony boot camp in Chicago in November (8-9) It looks like it would be pretty good.

www.thevoicereport.com/conferences/ipworkshop/

Rachelle

Let's do keep this question alive. I work for a Federal agency and I can't justify the cost expeditures of Cisco VoIP either but, I am having difficulty justifying to management to cost of an upgrade to the Nortel equipment. "THEY" think that the PBX system will be obsolete and phased out in the next few years. YIKES>>>>>>

rlc

darby

That's what they think here,they don't want to dump that kind of money into 10 year old technology? I'm ok with learning the new voip technology, I think it would be very challanging and fun. I just don't think that they can do it if they are looking to justify the cost against cost savings.

Rachelle

I am in the same boat. I want to learn but, I don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water. As it stands, it appears that the PBX technology currently can provide the same services as Cisco without having to double or triple the administrating staff. Cisco just seems more cumbersome than the PBX. I don't understand the ultimate benefit/impact of this leap.


rlc

sigdog

We are going to run a dual system here with VoIP for standard users and Nortel for ACD users because we found the Cisco's ACD platform wasn't robust enough for our needs. We also were concerned about our QOS because with VoIP if you have poor QOS your calls start sounding like Porky Pig on crack. So we are running a seperate voice network from our data network. The system is more expensive, the phones are more expensive, and we are doubling our voice connectivity to make it work. How all this saves money I'm not sure, but they tell me down the road it will be a big plus. Now if you are going to use your data network for your phone service, you would probably notice a huge savings. As long as you have enough bandwidth to handle both voice and data you'd probably be fine.One of the nice things about VoIP is once it is setup you really don't have to mess with it. All your moves are done in the switch, if you want to add a phone you just plug it in slap a name on it in the system and your done. I will keep you posted as we roll our system out on any problems we run into.

darby

Thanks sigdog, that would be great. What they plan on doing around here is purchasing the Cisco equipment then letting the IT staff use it for a while to iron out the wrinkles,then roll it out to the rest of the university. We are currently replacing all of our old bay networks switches with new Cisco 3750 switches to upgrade the network infrastructure (very much needed)

gwebster

The Meridian 1 (and SL-1 before it) has been continuously evolved for the last 30 years and I would hesitate to call it "10 year old technology". It uses Intel processors in the core, the Signaling Server is a commercial rack-mounted server with web-based OAM, supports a range of IP phones which provide all the functionality of digital phones, supports open IP standards (H.323 moving to SIP with Rls 4), and integrates seamlessly with the MCS 5100 to provide multimedia productivity applications.

In my mind, there are really two reasons to upgrade:
- the hardware/software platform which you are on is no longer supported. Especially with hardware, you run the risk of not being able to obtain replacement parts which could cause an extended out-of-service condition
- the upgrade results in either a OPEX/CAPEX reduction or productivity improvement through some new feature/application which outweighs the cost involved - i.e. the classic "business case"

Regarding the "cost" of upgrades, Nortel has recently introduced a "Subscription Release Service (SRS)" for the Meridian 1/Succession 1000. SRS enables you to mantain current software releases for the term of the contract (multi-year available) at a fixed price. Rather than budgeting for a big capital expense every couple of years, you can budget for a smaller operating expense every year.