Does anyone have feedback on this product... 3

[orbitorbit]

DVX-2000MS-10 VOICECENTER™ IP PHONE SYSTEM, 10-PHONE KIT FOR MICROSOFT® RESPONSE POINT™

i have a doctor that is replacing his current Vodavi with this and he thinks that he and his IT guys will be able to handle everything without a telcom vendor.

What do you think?

 

[Dexman]

I'm not familiar with the product, but when I look at the system, the word "Simpliphones" comes to mind.

If it ain't broke, I haven't fixed it yet.

 

[whykap]

simplifones" as in out of business?

 

[biv343]

I'd never heard of this before so I looked it up. Looks like Microsoft has already killed it off.

http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/06/30/microsoft-kills-response-point-development/

 

[whykap]

Sounds like the doc is replacing the dinosaur with a product that never made it.
orbit,
This is your chance to get the idiot IT team kicked off the account for trying to pitch an obsolete product and get the business for yourself (deservingly so).

 

[Dexman]

"simplifones" as in out of business?

Yup...that's the one.

If it ain't broke, I haven't fixed it yet.

 

[orbitorbit]

Here is what I have been running into . These customer that have a sinlge office like law office, doctor have picked up the VOIP and IP buzz word and want to bypass the vendor. These are not just one or two man offices but mid to large size offices that theink they or their IT people ( and I know IT people do not like telcom stuff they just do it cause they have been told to do it ) can do the install and manage it i.e,. voie mail, AA moves changes taining.

I would be interested to hear what experiences you guys have been having with the IP craze.

For example, I have tried to warn these customers to stay with the tried and true. I had a small insurance company that wanted to dump their CICS for and IP system cause her IT friend of the family said so.

 

[Dexman]

I suppose that VoIP has a place in communications.

My personal feeling is that it make sense as a tool to connect multiple locations together as long as the locations have dedicated circuits (DS1, DS3 or higher) and are using some sort of managed service across a private backbone.

I cringe when a company ports their numbers to a provider that offers service using, say, DSL via the public Internet just to save money.

How many times have horror stories about converters not providing Positive Disconnect to the CPE causing receptionists to deal with phantom ringing? Most alarm systems that I know of still won't communicate properly when used with anything other than a POTs line.

TDM still has a lot of life left in it, but VoIP is here to stay. Pushing voice across data networks will eventually become the norm.

If it ain't broke, I haven't fixed it yet.

 

[LkEErie]

My favorite VoIP story is the customer in United/Embarq/Fairpoint or whatever name who had an 8x8 system, but was getting raped to the tune of $50 per line for 2 lines, and about $140 for the fax line and DSL. Along came TWC Business class and gave them 3 lines and Roadrunner for about $140 with unlimited outbound calling.

The problem is they had these spiffy VoIP phones and TW gave them loop start lines

A CICS with CallPilot is paid for. Voip can be delivered on an ATA of some sort, so why would a reasonable customer dump a working phone system? There's no accounting for some people.

LkEErie

 

[LkEErie]

Oh yeah, Simpliphones were offered by Sams and Costco. Just like Hope and Change, is it still working?

 

[donb01]

Like Dexman said, Alarm systems are really finicky and I can't get mine to tolerate anything but a clean POTS line - if there is anything on the line (PairGain, Load Coils, etc) it will have intermittent troubles that drive the staff nuts when the beeper goes off.

I work in a moderate sized healthcare system representing about 1800 devices at 7 sites that's set up with hub and spoke for internal local calls and each site has it's own external lines - usually a PRI and a few copper COs for backup. I have successfully fought off 3 different IS leaders or vendors who want to do a rip & replace on these systems and put in Cisco or something just because IS likes Cisco products. I *DO* want VOIP in my network, but my plan is to install a VOIP system alongside what I have now and slowly migrate over a few years rather than all at once. Cough and choke all you want, but I can install Siemens Hybrid systems right next to my Siemens PBX's and I can tie the two of them together seamlessly. In some cases I can keep all the phones I'm using now and just add new devices with more current products, and in other cases I will have to migrate the users to new phones, but I can do it over a few years rather than in one big blast and have no down time at all while doing it. Also as the years progress the cost of the hardware will decrease as it becomes more mainstream and I'll save money that way too.

The funny thing is that even though I WANT to embrace the technology and I'm not afraid of change, I can only think of about 50 phones out of 1800 that would really NEED to be VOIP. Most of those are home-based transcriptionists who could really use a company extension at their homes and I could facilitate that using their company-supplied internet connections. The calls would be seamless and no one would ever know they are calling a house rather than an office. Of course the CEO and the Veeps, plus Myself and the MIS geeks would get them, and maybe the call centers would benefit but that's about all that really need it, and it's much more cost effective to keep buying the $100 or less refurbished phones vs the average $200+ for an IP phone or even more if they want a headset in some cases....

Not to mention I have 100 years worth of CAT3 or worse voice wiring with IDFs in the smallest little places, and all the little closets they have tried to stuff the IS infrastructure into just can't hold anymore and can't take the heat - plus the cost of all the recabling that would be needed. The IS people just don't think of all this. They just say how cool it would be to do it but haven't given a moment's worth of though to the millions of $$ it would take to implement it across our organization... As it stands I have a nearly million $ investment in hardware based on purchase cost...

The cost really needs to come down yet. And people really need to get a clue about how much bandwidth it needs, rack space, heat dissipation, reliability of our IS network and everything else, the cost of the hardware, etc before I'll support just jumping in and doing it.

Those 20+ person legal offices and clinics need to stop and think about having switches that can handle the load and are ready for POE, how big of an outside pipe they will need for their communications and what it will cost, the expensive phones if they want something decent, and lots of other stuff - not just that we have this cool Microsoft server that can run this software and we're going to just hook it all up and have it work. What happens if big documents and graphics are being passed around the network - like PACS images of X-Rays and stuff like that - voice has to get priority or their calls will sound like Max Headroom or like they are in an echo chamber - so when voice is busy and the network slows to a crawl how much whining is there going to be that they can't get their work done???

oops... guess this got just a little long... but all things they should be thinking about....

 

[Sympology]

There are loads of simple to set up phone systems these days, Aastra is one that springs to mind, but as for running over public internet, yuk.

We runnin 90% of our 3000 phones (21 sites) over IP and for ease of maintenance and features, they are substantially better. As we have Good LAN, MAN & WAN quality is no issue, in fact everyone say they sound better that standard analogues.

But at the end of the day, if you network is no good, you phones will be no good.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[Dexman]

"but as for running over public internet, yuk."
That's why....when business rush to port commercial telephone service to such providers....their telephone equipment vendors often shake their heads in disbelief.

If it ain't broke, I haven't fixed it yet.

 

[LkEErie]

While doing research on another project, my own, I came across this article from Sandman.

http://www.sandman.com/VoIPResearch.html

I was just about to jump from telco to VoIP. I do it now, but the main number still is a landline with CF options. I was about to give that up....now I'm not so sure.

LkEErie

 

[Sympology]

There is s flip side to this.

BT (UK's bar far largest phone company) is moving to it's 21CN systems, where the lines will natively will be IP and converted to POTS for last mile.
This means that for IP customers, they could potentailly be pure IP point to point.

http://www.btplc.com/21CN/Thetechnologyofthenetwork/Thetechnologyofthenetwork.htm

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[Dexman]

Here in the US, many IXCs utilize IP for traffic between their switches....then hand-off to the LECs as TDM.

LECs, such as at&t and Verizon, may be utilizing IP with their respective U-verse and FiOS offerings.

If it ain't broke, I haven't fixed it yet.