Hosted VoIP vs. Avaya IP Office 500 1

[tferraro]

We are looking to upgrade our Avaya IP Office 406 due to age (installed about 7 years ago). Our provider is pushing a hosted VoIP solution instead of an upgrade to IP Office 500. We are a small business with about 30 extensions. I do not know enough about it to make an informed decision. Any input for or against either solution would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.

 

[ipolmans]

Full disclosure - I am an IP Office Sales Associate.

CONS - Without being to bias, I am always against a hosted solution. Basically your depending on there network never going down, your voice quality probably isn't going to be the greatest, unless you have some sort of QoS/CoS. And worst of all your paying for life, instead of owning your equipment, God forbid the company goes under and you may be stuck in a crunch, so if you choose to go with hosted make sure it's from a reliable provider.

PROS - you don't have to worry about maintaining your equipment and generally they can provide cost effective reporting and recording features. Any toll fraud that may occur will be the sole responsibility of the hosted PBX provider... and that's about all I can think of.

Hope this helps

 

[tlpeter]

I would go for an IP500v2.
Why? because of the cons mentioned.
If the the line is down then you cannot even call internally.
I guess they want you to pay per month for at least 3 years?
You can buy a new system for that and use it longer then those 3 years
It will cost you more at all times.


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

Buy an IP500 because you will continue to keep the likes of us in jobs rather than the continued commoditization of the telecoms market.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[daveinwearside]

Ive installed a few different hosted VoIP handsets over the years, I always had to re-visit fairly often. The general feed back form customers isnt good.

Our salesmen loved the hosted VoIP because they have constant re-occurring income from a VoIP solution that will bring in double maybe treble what you'll pay for a PBX and when you have finished with it they can re-sell the kit.

They are fine for a few users in a small office but 30 users will be a ball ache.

Purely from a maintenance and down time point of view id go for the IP500.


ACSS SME
APSS SME

A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

 

[mattKnight]

1st post in an IPO forum...

Asking about should I go hosted or stay with IPO

What answer did you really expect?

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[Westi]

hosted has its place but if you have 30 phones and want to use 10 of them at the same time for outcalling and 4 internal conversations you use up 18 times the bandwidth for a single call which is about 2MB/s up and down.
with an internal system you use 1.1 MB/s (or so)for the same calls (SIP trunks only as digital or analog lines won't use anything of your Internet connection).

If you are on Fiber and have more bandwidth than you can possibly use then it won't matter much but if you use DsL/cable then you need to household with the bandwidth a bit more.
If you use anything like a line of sight then I would completely say get away from any VoIP as I have so far to see one where the customer is happy with it

Joe W.

TeleTechs.ca
FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)


“This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[tferraro]

Thank you all for the replies. It did not occur to me that the answers would all be pro IPO but it should have. I am being questioned on my end and needed some reasons not to go hosted. Much appreciated.

 

[tlpeter]

We do both and to be honest I do not like hosted but for some company's it is better.
I agree with Westi about that 30 phones is to much.


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[intrigrant]

Go to the common telephony forum and there you'll find this question answered a thousand times....

 

[Telecomboy]

Without going into too much detail, I agree that (30) phones is too big for a hosted solution. If you look at what they are charging you per seat/phone on a monthly basis the point where it is more cost effective to buy the IP500V2 is usually around 2 years. So, if you plan on having it longer than that, it just makes sense.

 

[mforrence]

A slightly different perspective... Much depends on what your organization does and what trunks you use. If all 30 phones are constantly on the phone, such as in a call center, hosted is likely a good value. If you're a manufacturer and the 30 phones are scattered around the plant and you use more for internal communications, then premise-based system is a better value. With hosted (also true with premise-based IP), your network must be up to snuff for success. If you're currently running digital stations and analog/digital trunks, then it doesn't matter how good/bad your network is. Hosted phones are always IP, so you need either PoE switches or local power supplies for each phone.

 

[hostedphone]

There is allot of miss understanding on hear about hosted. We install Pabx and hosted and about 70% of all new installs are hosted. They range in size from 1 user to 1000+ . We use dsl EFM and FTTC for connections and rarely have any voice problems (no more than sip trunks) It comes down to if you do it right you have no problems (and no i am not a salesman) Also some of the figures quoted are totally wrong. All internal traffic travels on the Lan so we can get 16 calls on a 800k up adsl on G729 but we sometimes use G711 so we can then get 8 calls

 

[intrigrant]

Consider these questions :
- Do we make money over the phone?
- Do we need 100% reachability for our customers?
- Is there enough IP bandwith available at a reasonable cost?
- Do we expect to grow as a company in the near future?
- Do we really need features like
Presence
Unified Communications
remote/home workers
road warriors
- Make a TCO calculation on both solutions
What are the total first time costs (installation, hardware etc. )
What are the yearly costs to keep it operational ( service contract, power usage etc. )
What are the costs for changes/migration/expansion ( changing names, swapping users around etc., extra lines/phones etc)
- Consider the partners to contract
Are they reliable partners ( how long are they in business, what is their core business ( IT or Telephony ))
Do they have references ( can you talk/visit their references )
Can they respond in a reasonable time in cases of system disruptions ( enough qualified personnel )
And there may be a lot more considerations to make, depending on your organisation.
I would base my choice on questions like the above and then decide which route to follow and make a technical decision what brand to buy ( of course we recommend Avaya IP Office ) but there are a lot more options as only Avaya to consider. If you don't need any of the above features then you may be better off with a hm Panasonic or SIEMENS system (cheaper and reliable too but less state of the art techology and thus lack of features ).