jsaxe

I have 10 years experience with Mitel, I recommend them highly.
Hybrids are the way to go, because VoIP is not anywhere near a mature technology for the desktop, but will be some day. IP networking is the way to go. The other advantage of Mitel is you can use legacy hardware, of which there is a ton of out there, i.e., 410/420 sets, line and trunk cards, even cabinets. Finally, Mitel training is excellent and *certified* technicians are some of the best in the biz.

jsaxe

rixride

What kind of WAN are you locations on? ATM, Frame, VPN?

Also what kind of functionaly are you trying to get out of your system? What kind of applications? Unified messaging, Call Center, conference calling, etc...

What are the expected growths per system?

There are many factors to engineer the system right for you, also will you be doing VoIP internally( All IP phones)? If so has your internal network been engineered for voip?

There are just some of the questions I would look at, also vendor availability and response times.

Some systems may be great but if the support for them is lacking you may get yourself in trouble later, when/if something goes wrong.

__________________
-=Welcome to PBXInfo=-
-Become a PBXInfo Supporter
-Get more PM Space, Profile Picture, a Signature
-Add yourself to Pbxinfo's Frappr
-Find Nortel Software

awillerton

Thanks all for the responses.

Rixride, I'll try as best as possible to answer your questions:

Our WAN is fibre ring but it's not as reliable as we'd like it to be and, while we can tolerate a small data outage, having calls dropped is not an option. We are considering either Frame (from the same vendor offering the Mitel) or Digital Broadband Wireless.

Unified Messaging would be nice but I don't see management buy in until it becomes more prevalent in my market. We want to run a small call center (not more than 5 users) and we would want to incorporate std corporate features (conference calling, voicemail etc). Telecommuting is definintely something to consider as we often have people moving around.

We would want to retain our infrastructure (analog & digital phones) and implement VoIP phones on a phased basis but we would still want to benefit from VoIP for linking all of our locations. (To note on jsaxe's point, both the Avaya and the Mitel vendors are promising that we will be able to reuse the existing analog phones)

The internal network is an excellent point. We have a lot of old cabling (the compound is many decades old) but I'm figuring that we will have to invest here no matter which vendor we go with.

Thanks for raising these questions, we will certainly take these things into account as we move forward,

Thanks,
Alex

stephene

We had an old Mitel SX-50 which we decommissioned, and installed in its place an IP/hybrid Avaya IP Office 403 implementation with digital phones. We have not installed the IP phones yet, only using digital ones. We have 60-70 phones and all on one site. After 8 months of switching out and replacing digital and analog modules and base units(about 8-9 modules replaced multiple times), installing patches, etc. etc. I'm ready to trade Avaya in for something else. Avaya's IP line of products are not ready for primetime, especially if you intend to use most of the new features. Useless you are simply using it for receiving and transferring calls, do NOT buy the IP Office products. If in doubt, ask your vendor for at least 3-5 references who have installations similar to what you are looking to install. I was careless to push and check the references. In hindsight, the lack of references should have indicated a problem. Regardless, we have the Avaya IP403 system now, and we will have to live with it. Would hate to not tell someone about it.

awillerton

Hi stephene,

Thank you very much for your feedback. On the basis of someother comments made on this post we have had to re-look at the project in termsof cabling and network infrastructure, future plans etc in the hope that a more realistic cost and expectation is applied to our communications system.

Was it perhaps that the model of IP Office you have wasn't enough to handle the load of users? I'm thinking that the Mitel offering is overall the better solution at this point.

rixride

awillerton,

What system have you guys decided on?

__________________
-=Welcome to PBXInfo=-
-Become a PBXInfo Supporter
-Get more PM Space, Profile Picture, a Signature
-Add yourself to Pbxinfo's Frappr
-Find Nortel Software