Duvoice with IPO - tips & tricks? 3

[DJTelco]

Greetings all,


Any input from the citizens of this forum on your experience with Duvoice VM products? Even testimony on Duvoice used with other platforms is welcome, as it still gives me some indication of what ya'll think of the Duvoice products.

Avaya's Voicemail Pro is wicked expensive, and Duvoice looks like a possible lower cost solution, plus unified messaging is part of the Duvoice product.

Thanks

DJTelco

 

[RePetE815]

DuVoice provides a great suite of VM products for providing UMS features - many times breathing new life into traditional phone systems.

I'm not going to go into all the particular differences between VMPro and DuVoice as I don’t believe that's what you're asking for. I will however hit on some of the highlights of DuVoice and denote where VMPro goes one step further.

DuVoice's entry VM model is the DV4 which provides a “white box” clone PC, WinXP Pro, keyboard, 4-port voice board and 1-port fax board. SRP is around US $2,750.

Now we look at a comparably equipped VMPro package. Dell Dimension 2400 PC + WinXP Pro ($450), keyboard, NIC and 1-port fax board ($400) with GFI FaxMaker ($400) and 4-port VMPro ($1500) comes to a grand total of at or below $2,750.

If we look at an 8-port model on both, we see DuVoice DV2000 sitting at around $4500 with the VMPro system sitting at around $4500 as well.

Integrating GFI FaxMaker with the VMPro goes one step further than DuVoice by providing faxing from the desktop.

In trying to understand your feeling that VMPro is “wicked expensive”, let me ask: are you thinking you need to buy Avaya's Integrated Messaging suite to provide UMS for IP Office? DuVoice only provides a copy of the voicemail and fax to be dropped into the user's e-mail. IP Office and VMPro provides the same features out-of-the-box by simply setting the user's voicemail tab to either forward or copy the VM to their e-mail. Integrated Messaging expands on IP Office’s native UMS features by actually integrating Exchange with the VMPro system, allowing voicemails to remain on the VMPro server without taking up space in the Exchange message store - a must have for larger installs.

All that having been said, when we're faced with a client wanting UMS features tied to a traditional TDM system, DuVoice is a great choice. If the client wants UMS + CTI with screen-pops along with their legacy TDM, Accpac Messenger is worth looking at. But for an IP Office system, with a client wanting UMS and CTI along with a tightly integrated management framework - it doesn’t get much better than VMPro. I would need to be able to gain at least 30% savings by going with a 3rd party voicemail solution before I could justify it to a client based upon 4-5 year TCO/ROI measures. For now, I'm not seeing the required degree of cost savings that would justify the integration of a DuVoice VM server over an Avaya VMPro with an IP Office system. If it can be done, please let me know how. I'd be very interested.

P.S. Avaya published a nice set of application notes on DuVoice DV2000 and its integration with an IP Office system. Check it out at

http://www1.avaya.com/enterprise/applicationnotes/duvoice-ipoffice.pdf