Hosted IP phoness or PBX? 2

[doktor]

We are about to decide what way to go accordeing to the above subject.

Please state your pros and cons.

I have my own:

PBX:
The advantage with the PBX is that yoy have the possibility to "shop" CO lines from one or another public telephone line provider (LEC or CLEC).
You can also "shop" according to service providers for your PBX.

HOSTED IP:
With this solution, you save the room for the PBX, and save to cost to power it.
But (maybe?) the central hosted IP central PBX server is a singel point of failure?
And you can not "shop" service provider and CO line provider.
I.e. you are more or less locked?
Anyway if you have many sites with internal voice and data traffic and these sites are connected to the central hosted IP central PBX server, then this traffic is "free".

Other comments, please...




///doktor

 

[donb01]

I don't want to appear resistant to change, because I think for some companies this may be a good solution. Because I am in the healthcare business I need to consider the resiliency of my solution.

You touched on one of my areas of discomfort with your comment about the single point of failure. In my situation, if my service fails for some reason, how do I maintain my needed level of communication? It's not only calls to the outside world that would be affected, but also inside calls from phone to phone, etc, and there would have to be something to back me up. In my current PBX situation I have multiple lines of service coming in from multiple locations. I have some digital lines on copper and some on fiber, and there are analog copper lines backing that up - that's just for my external communications at the main hospital. Each of my remote sites has its own external lines, plus a line linking back to the main site for "internal" calls. If the exterior lines fail at a remote site I can have those calls sent to the main site and route them across the point-point line. If the PBX goes down there is nothing I can do about that but keep spares, etc...

Things that could affect a hosted solution would be loss of your connection to the outside, internal network problems (if your IS department sucks like ours does), service provider going out of business and leaving customers high and dry (there have been a couple instances of this lately), equipment failure at service provider, or failure of service provider's whole facility (this just happened with a fire in the power distribution center of a hosting site in US last fall).... things like that and what kind of redundancy level you need for service should be considered...

 

[doktor]

I was discussing this issue with my colleagues.
We brainstormed this subject to obtain more pros and cons.

We conluded - at least for the moment - that the PBX would give us more benefits, as the hosted solutions were less application oriented as the PBX.
With the PBX you could have any server application containing Attendant Console, Billing, Call Centre applications (with DDE and COM interface), prescense display, mobility, WiFi, Client softphone.

Maybe also the hosted IP platform also can do this, but we were not fully convinced - at least for the moment.

Still the "free" voice and data traffic between sites - obtained from the hosted IP platform - counts a lot.
And also that you pay a fixed monthly fee for hosted IP - to have it running. This can be very much variable with the PBX.

///doktor

 

[SwitchWitch]

Okay, I'm going to jump in and give my 2cents. But first, I want to confirm that you know the difference between
PBX, IP PBX, Hosted IP.

PBX
A phone system that acts as a CO (Central Office). You obtain T1, PRIs or some sort of circuit from the local carrier and everything else is controlled by you the PBX adminstrator.

IP PBX
Your PBX is connected to your data network and also continues to act as a CO. THe benefit, You can place calls to your other offices (that's also on your data network) for free, but as soon as you place a call outside of your data network, you're acting as a CO again and sending the call over the T1, PRI, etc.

Hosted IP
In this scenario, means that you don't have a PBX at all.
Your phones are connected to your computer and for lack of a better word, "a VIrtual CO" handles everything.

Just like you pay for your phone numbers from the CO,you're now paying for the phone numbers from this Virtual CO, you're also paying for what are called a seat, for vmail boxes. You're eliminating the local & long distance rates, YES.. but you're paying for other things.

 

[doktor]

Hi SwitchWitch

I know well the difference, but was just interested in finding more pros and cons for this subject.

Primarily I see this:

1.
Hosted IP.
You do not own the central switch (e.g. IP PBX).
2.
PBX (in house).
You do own all PBX, switch etc,. hard- and software.

Thanks for your commenst.

///doktor

 

[AVAYAPro]

hosted ip is good for businesses who don't live and die by telecommunications and who may not have the budget for a PBX. there are multiple points of failure: corporate LAN, corporate WAN, host's LAN, host's WAN, host's PBX, and PSTN.

whereas, with a PBX, there are many less points of error: PBX and PSTN (LAN if using H.323 or SIP).



ACS - IP Office Implement
ACA - IP Telephony Implement
CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Associate
MCP - Microsoft Certified Professional

I like stars

 

[OldAndKnackered]

Most hosted systems rely on sip trunks, the more advanced ones can dial internally via the switch they are plugged in to. This means however, that if your sip trunk provider has a problem, you have to rely on the analogue side of the broadband line as a failover, as long as it is a small site solution this may not be too bad. However if the SIP for that site is on a lease line, your customer is screwed.

 

[cknipe]

Do you have an IT guy on site? and by IT guy I dont mean the guy there that plugs in anything electrical. If you are going to have your own PBX onsite you really need to understand your network and how it operates.

Ive seen a lot of people call thier Voip system a piece of s*it when in reality its thier network that cannot support the voice.

Here's is a better way to envision what I am saying. Let's say you go out and buy a fancy s500 mecedes. But you live in rural oklahoma where there are no paved roads and the road leading up to your property is just a dirt road with plenty of potholes. Well when you get close to home and its raining and your dirt road turns into mud...would you get our and call your mercedes a POS just because it got stuck in one of those muddy potholes or slid off the road? But when you get out on the state funded fancy highway, this thing seems to run like a champ and very smooth as well.

something to definately consider

 

[baldwincl]

I thought we have done this one before. If you want to know the differences between hosted/PBX look up the age old question of Centrex/PBX with the added problem of network latency.

Some comments have said you dont have to pay for LD with the hosted system? I dont know if i believe that. If it is cheaper than a normal carrier maybe you need some traditional (toll quality all(most)of the time) and some IP (Cheap LD) lines

 

[LkEErie]

This is like the "rent vs. own" argument. Yeah, you don't have a room full of equipment with a PBX, you get free LD, you don't have electric bills to power the 'BX. Why? It's included in the RENT.

Come to think of it, when did your last PBX take up a whole room? My last 120 port box fit on a 4x4 board. The distribution took up the same space whether it's "hosted" or not.

LkEErie

 

[hostedvoipman]

i used to think that the only way was with a traditional pabx but now i have been installing hosted solutions i can only say its the way foward for telecomms . ease of deployment reliability and futureproof is all built in. i understand what people say about a single point of failior but there is allways a single point of failior (the lines)on all systemsi can role out a 150 user system in 1-2 days then never have anuther site visit now to me thats the future

 

[baldwincl]

and your not biased at all right?

Extensions & numbers have to be programed and phones put out on desks taking about the same amount of time either way. Any major PBX brand is going to be reliable and have all the features you could think of, unless you know what is coming next that cisco, avaya, nec etc aren't already working on integrating into their systems.

 

[hostedvoipman]

lol no i am not biased

i still install allot of tin and in some instances that is the right solution for our customers but from a company/end user/support basis a hosted solution is easyer to deploy just as reliable (if not more)and totaly future proof also it generates more income for my company i know thats not what allot of traditional pabx enginers want to hear and up untill 18 mounts ago i was the same but as soon as i started installing and maintaining the systems i have changed my mind . i truly think it is the way forward for telecomunications and as soon as bt starts rolling out 21cn in more areas they will be releasing there owne hosted solution Now that will realy shake the market up

 

[donb01]

I don't completely understand the above comment. I think I can wear both shoes here because I have multiple sites and I'm 98% self-maintaining... OK, so I have my PBX and I want to add or move a phone at a remote site (AKA customer). Being lazy like I am I log in remotely, find an open port, do the programming and print the faceplate from my office. Then I have to drive to the site, do the cross connect, place the device on the user's desk and test it.

So now I have my hosted solution and I want to do the same thing. So I log in remotely to program the station, find an open IP address or let DHCP do it or however those things work, print the faceplate and set up the phone. Then I still need to drive to the site to port the jack to the switch and place the device on the user's desk and test it.

I don't see much of a labor savings here for the vendor. I can see the customer having somewhat less hardware to maintain, but they still have the network switches and infrastructure, and still need an IS department to deal with the load balancing, etc... Power requirements probably aren't that much different, and heat load (from the switches) is probably higher. Also taking into account some of the comments from other users above, you still have the fact that if your outside trunks go down with a PBX you still have communications inside your building, where with a hosted solution you only get that if (according to info above) you have phones that are capable of communicating with each other on the LAN independent of the host system - my read on that with my research on the cost of current mid-range IP phones is that you're probably looking at individual devices that run $400+ to have those features... That's a heck of a lot more than a $150 desk set, or even some of the more entry level IP phones.... So possibly a small system with maybe 30 phones could cost $12,000 just for the phones, plus the network switches and the cost of the hosted solution - that could add up pretty fast, and what happens if you decide to change hosting providers or something later? Do you have to buy all new hardware, or is all the phone hardware rental stuff too?? Maybe then it wouldn't matter so much.

These are all just questions and not opinions...

One thing I will agree with - with a hosted solution all software upgrades, hardware upgrades, hardware failures, etc are someone else's responsibility - which could be a very nice thing!

 

[hostedvoipman]

the differance is if a customer requires a new phone we setup a account and just send a phone to the customer they just plug it in to a network port and away they go.The hosting servers are in a bomb proof data center withe duel backup servers so there is no real chance of them failing.we use cisco handsets that are very reliable. in the 24 months that we have been doing them we have only had 1 fail and all we do is just send a new one in the post

 

[LkEErie]

So how much did the customer pay for his hosted solution and how much does he pay for ongoing maintenance and licenses? You might win, but does he?

How's that savings look after the 3rd year? Did your hosting fees and maintenance just eat up what he would have paid to buy a PBX in the first place? I think so.

LkEErie

 

[donb01]

I guess that would work if your customer has every jack in the place connected to a switch port whether it's in use or not, or has someone that knows how to install the patch cable, but in my particular case I know that if I send a phone over to Nurse Betty at the clinic she's just going to put in a work order for me to go there and install it so it doesn't even pay for me to waste my time )

I have around 847 devices in this building alone, and an IS department that refuses to plug in their own modems, so I doubt I'd get one of them to lift a finger to install an IP phone, and if I asked them to connect it to the computer drop at the desk and connect the computer to the hub in the phone that would probably give them heart palpitations that they're going to bring the network down!!! (or they will insist there's no way in hell it's going to work and I'll end up doing it myself when they're not looking anyway).

 

[baldwincl]

Hostedman,
What you discribe is no different than any other VOIP handset solution. I remote desktop/VPN/modem into a system, program the phone extension, buttons etc, then mail the phone.

I'm in Alaska so i am not going to fly 400 miles just to install a handset and we don't host ourselves because the connections around the state are too spotty.

 

[Sympology]

Yup whe have about 20 Ip PBX throughout Europe.

We set the phone up at head offce attach all the leads and tell them to plug in.

At to be honest with many systems now, it's so damn cheap for a PBX it's unreal. Hell you can get 10 simple 10 user PBX for free if you want, throw on a Gateway and Bob's your mothers brother.

The days of the Monster option 81 with hundreds of cards and looms of wiring and hundreds of ld's to battle through are pretty much gone.
It's got the the stage where I can build, configure and set up a 200 user call centre with ACD's,Advanced queuing, VM, AutoAttends, interbranc calling etc etc in under two days. Add another day to put the phones on the desk and your away.


But either way, hosted or not, if your networks ***** so will your phones.

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.