If you are using Cisco VOIP for 500+ users, I need your feedback

[novatech]

My company is moving several offices into one large building (1000+). I "manage" the phone system for the largest building. I have an Avaya Definity G3 with the latest version of everything but it's traditional PBX not VOIP.

The corporate office wants us to use VOIP. I met with Avaya and Cisco and have quotes from both. My manager wants me to contact the companies that were given to us as referrals but I'd rather talk to someone that isn't on Cisco and Avaya's "customer" list. It's easy to give a few good references.

I need all the pros and cons from people who have already implemented Cisco VOIP. I know most of the issues with Avaya's system. It looks like my manager is leaning towards Cisco and that makes me nervous because they don't provide any type of traditional PBX. Cisco's pricing is WAY under Avaya and I want to know why.

Here are a few things I'd like to know...

Did Cisco's quote match the final bill? How long did it take to implement? Were there any hidden costs? What features did your PBX have that Cisco doesn't? Please give me any and all comments, good or bad. I'd love to get some information about your company as well, number of employees, location, are you using VOIP on LAN only or WAN as well, etc.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[jpm121]

Anyone had experience with Verizon's voice over broadband system? It's basically an "IP Centrex" solution, where they host the lines on their server and we just connect to them via T1 lines. We only buy Cisco routers, switches, and IP phones (no CM license needed) and they handle everything else for a per-phone monthly charge.

Contracts are signed; we're probably 30 days away from cutover. I'll check back and report how it goes...

 

[BuckWeet]

Yea, SBC is doing services like that here with a nortel system in columbus, oh..

pretty interesting


BuckWeet

 

[umbro8889]

The company I work for has over 500+ seats. We considered both the Cisco / Nortel. We were a Nortel voice shop with a Nortel/Cisco data infrastructure and Avaya at the edge.

We tested both the both the Nortel and Cisco products for voice and data and on the data side came up with a toss up, but the nod went to Nortel due to overall product cost when you considered the required upgrades to support Cisco's IOS and several key capabilities like how they handle QoS. On voice it went clear Nortel - so we decided (at a higher level) to go pure Cisco in 2000.

The Cisco implementation was due to be finished in 2001, but was finished in 2003 and was $2 million over budget with less than acceptable customer satisfaction ratings and poor uptime in my opinion.

I would stick with the Avaya. Ask them what their migration strategy is and get a compelling ROI to leverage forward your current assets.

 

[bythespy]

Novatech, you could run this thread for 12 months and you would never get the same response from any two users in here.

When you read my comments you need to know, I am a Cisco fan through and through, I bleed Cisco blue and do several refrence visits a year for Cisco.

I am long winded, full of opinions and love IP Telephony!

I manage a 26 site WAN with 100% Cisco WAN & LAN equipment. We use CCM (v3.2.2c SP-H), IPCC(not express),Unity, and CiscoWorks 2000. I have 3.3 in our lab and will be deploying it in a few weeks.

We are in the final stages of a two year project to displace 5-Nortel Option 11c switches, and 19 Nortel Key Systems. The project was spread over two years for financial reasons, the CFO would not let us buy a new phone system until the old one was off the books. We also had to deploy the 25 cisco routers and 47 Cisco switches, in addition to upgrading the core of our data network.


Now on to what you want to know:

Your organization is different from everyone else in here including mine. What worked for me probably will not work for you, nor BuckWheat or anyone else that has posted here.

I have been on CCM since 3.0(8) and I would not go back to a traditional PBX for anything. I like the web interface, I like the way Cisco has designed the product and the feature set meets my company's needs.

There are really only two questions you need to answer:

Can the Cisco Soulution meet your companies needs and expectations? (probably so)

Is the vendor you have selected experienced enough to tailor the solution to meet these needs and expectations?

Once you select the Cisco Solution, the vendor selection becomes the most important decision of your career! The first vendor I used failed to complete the work on-time and was not capable of installing the solution Cisco & I had designed. This almost killed my entire IP Telephony project! The Cisco Solution works, if it didn't they would not be leading the world in IP Telephony deployements!

The very best advice I can give you is to make your decision between Avaya and Cisco first, then spend a considerable amonut of time checking out your vendor. If they do not have the resources, and EXPERIENCE, cut them loose before you get started and get someone that does have the experience. Once you start the deployment if there is a problem, your management team and your users will blame you and Cisco the vendor is somewhat invisible, but more than likely it will be a vendor issue!

Good luck on your decison!

Mspivey
CCNP

 

[salo0920]

I have been following this thread with great interest.

In the past several months, I have offered my customers an "IP Centrex" solution by connecting them to several of my Nortel Switches using products from MCK communications.

I am very excited about growing this service business and I realize that I do not have enough expertise to make this work on a larger scale, nor do I have the experience necessary to make the right choices along the way.

As such, I am asking those who have responded to this thread with their own ideas and knowledge to make contact with me so that we might see if there is some way to work together. I have access to a large and totally secure data center with Gbs of bandwidth and the desire to make a new business at the dawn of this exciting technology.

Thanks for listening

Harold Bondy
harry@mserve.com
(212) 683-2811

 

[novatech]

Bythespy,
Thank you for your post. After talking to many Cisco customers, and not just the references that Cisco gave me, I found that all of them were completely satisfied with the product.
I have been told by everyone that planning and a good implementation team is key to our success. I am lucky because we will be setting up the whole network (voice and data) before the first employee moves into the new building. We have 30 days of "playtime" to make sure the bugs are worked out. I don't think we would go the Cisco route if this was just a project to replace our existing system.
We have not yet made our final decision but it's leaning towards Cisco for the simple fact that setting up a new remote office is so easy. I don't want to spend $30k for a new PBX in an office of 30 employees and Avaya can't touch Cisco when it comes to small remote offices.
One problem I found is that the Cisco quote was MUCH lower than Avaya. Granted, we are a large company and Cisco gives us huge discounts but their quote was missing redundant CMs and appropriate installation fees. They didn't quote labor for a turnkey solution (complete setup of stations/routing patterns, etc.).
I feel for everyone who has had this task. It is not an easy decision.
One last statement about Cisco, I think everyone will agree that they don't have all of the features that Avaya has but they are coming along and I have no doubt that they will be right up there in no time.
Thanks to everyone. I'll keep you posted.

 

[mikeyb123]

Yes, all very useful. I've a large install tgo do 1,200 users plus virtual call centre, and I must admit, although all the functions of a traditional pabx arn't there you cant beat the flexibility of cisco. (less functions the better.....avoids all the stupid user shite we all know and love...)

Happiness is.....

 

[novatech]

You're right, users don't care to have 500 options on their phones and they don't use a lot of them. I don't mind the limited number of end user features but Cisco needs to keep working on administrator features. I have complex routing for a small call center and toll free lines. I need multiple/bridged appearances. I need the ability to set up hunt groups easily and quickly.
I think that's where Cisco has work to do.

With all of the viruses running around, has anyone had any problems with their IP phone system? It seems that companies are installing patches left and right to cover themselves so I wonder if anyone has had downtime during or after business hours?

 

[BuckWeet]

While I agree with the 500 options thing, but there are some important features that cisco doesn't have yet.. Like bridged apperances, coverage answer groups, coverage paths, oh yea and real hunt groups, not just plain jane linear or circular hunt groups, let me also apply a forwarding patch to that hunt group, not let the forwarding takes effect from the phone that it forwards the call too..

I call for easier administration as well. Personally I think they shoudl toss the web interface and do some kind of MMC applet, the web interface is just too clunky and slow..


BuckWeet

 

[AdmanOK]

I have to agree about the admin interface... I mean it is nice to be able to pull up a web browser at a users desk and fix the problem on the spot, but when you're sitting at your own desk and want to do some major administration the web app is awful, too much jumping back and forward to be anywhere near efficient. I wouldn't want to see the web interface go away, but I certainly wouldn't object to a more intuitive and efficient alternative to use in conjunction with it.

 

[njohn343]

I also strongly agree that the things Buckweet mentions plus the web interface are major drawbacks to Cisco. We only have about 400 Cisco phones but the admin of Cisco probably takes as much time as 3000 Ericsson phones - everything is so SLOW. Try putting 10 Cisco extensions into a call pickup group, for example. With Ericsson it takes one command to print out the current group for each and another command to change them. With Cisco it takes about 40 Web page updates !!
Maybe there's an easier way with BAT or something, but it's not obvious and so negates the advantage of Web interfaces - they're supposed to be intuitive.

 

[diiguy]

Our company specializes in VOIP from Cisco. We host and remotely manage Call Manager, Unity, Cisco CRS, Cisco IVR, Cisco Call Manager Attendant for many customer sites (from Miam to Boston with most in the Philadelphia metro area). Out Call Manager based system handles roughly 1500 lines at this point. Largest sites have hundreds of phones and the smallest sites may have 1 or 2 phones. I strongly disagree with other posts that Call Manager is difficult to administer. While it does have some quirks, I can reconfigure phones from Miami to Boston (and I do) from our Philadelphia offices or on my laptop in Starbucks. I agree that Call Manager does lack some traditional features (i.e. broadcast paging to the speakerphones and minimal processing of CDR's). For the critical problems (i.e. CDR processing) we wrote our own code (two patents pending) and are pleased with the way it all works. Besides, with every new release of Call Manager, Cisco is chipping away at the differences while improving stability at the same time. At this point (CCM 3.3.X) Call Manager is rock solid.

It is critical that the underlying IP LAN and WAN be pristine. I've seen many Call Manager installations fall apart not becuase of Call Manager per se, but rather becuase of the poorly designed LAN/WAN in which it is expect to run. Typically, we do a layer 1-7 analysis of the target network (including traffic monitoring of WAN links for example) for deployment and insist that problems are cleaned up before implementing VOIP.

In the end, the customer benefits beucase their LAN/WAN are working better than ever before and the Call Manager install is very stable as a result.

Good luck!

Ivor Benjamin
CTO
Digital Ingenuity, Inc.

http://www.diicom.com/

 

[BuckWeet]

Administration isn't hard, but its time consuming, thats the issue, on a traditional based pbx i can do stuff 10x faster.. And another down side is that cisco doesn't have all the parameters in the BAT tool, which is a major downfall. There have been many times I needed to do a mass change (can't remember which ones) and the BAT tool didn't have it.. I totally agree with you, 9 times outta 10 its the installer.. Any issues we've really have had with CCM have turned out to be actual bugs.


BuckWeet

 

[rezinz28]

I have recently received a quote for a Cisco solution and Avaya solution. The cisco solution was designed and quoted as if I had no equipment. The same exact design from Avaya for 2 S8700's and 4 G600's at the main site, 3 G700's each at 2 remote sites, came out to over $70,000 more expensive then Cisco's design . Why would I spend more money on the Avaya solution when I can get the same features I am using now in a Cisco solution. Also the Avaya solution doesn't include upgrading my routers and switches like Cisco took into effect when they gave me the quote.

Steve

Thank You,
Steve

 

[diiguy]

Re: BAT (Bulk Admin Tool)

It's clunky, but powerful. The latest version allows you to manipulate almost everything. Preparing the data for BAT is a chore, so we wrote our own code to directly output to comma delimited BAT files from our SQL customer db.

Re: Call Manager Bugs

In 3.3.X there are no serious bugs that we have encountered. The Call Managers run for months without problems. We really only take them down for software upgrades -- and then in a rolling fashion so that call processing continues anyway.

Ivor Benjamin
CTO
Digital Ingenuity, Inc.

http://www.diicom.com/

 

[maraxman]

Hello,

I strongly disagree. We have ccm for two years and we are diappointed. Recently Cisco has promised, that with new wesion 3.3.3, we soled our problems that we had previously. But face to fact that curently ccm (3.3.3.) is for two weeks in unstable (because of SQL), they are panic still with no point why. This instalation is pure new instalation on cisco hardware. It had to upgrade from ccm 3.2.2 to 3.3.3. But Cisco did not succesfully restore data from STI backup, and we had to write all callmanagers and users data. It tooks 26 hours during the weekend.
It itself is really terrible, but now we have really pure system instaled by Cisco man. Anyway ccm is after month unstable and many services are down (Corporate directory, web for admin, call-forward could not be taken back ...)
At the end I have to say, that for Cisco we are one of the greatest purchaser in our country, because we are mobile opetator, so they are doing their best for us to have good name.
In our company conclusion is: Callmanger is a toy for adults, good looking for managers, a nightmare fro admins and it will take much time to get the quality of classic pbx and their accesibility of services.

maraxman T-Mobile Czech Republic

P.S. Excuse my English

 

[diiguy]

Maraxman,

I'm sorry to learn of the trouble that you have had with CCM. We do not share your experience. Some suggestions:

1. Shut down services that are not needed (e.g. TFTP, MOH, Call Dispatch, DHCP, WWW, FTP, etc.) on Call Managers that don't need them. Only the publisher needs

http://WWW to

be running.
2. Be sure that logging is OFF on all Call Managers -- for saving disk space and processing time.
3. Be sure that you are not running any third-party software on the CM not approved by Cisco.
4. Be sure that no screen savers are running on the Call Manger machines.
5. DO NOT install Microsoft updates from the Microsoft Update web site. This sounds crazy but Cisco has their own versions of these updates on the Cisco web site. Somehow they modify them slightly before approving them for Call Manager.
6. Be careful with what version of virus software you are using -- again, only use Cisco approved versions.

Perhaps you are already doing many of these things. However, we learned several of them the hard way -- by making the mistakes.

Ivor Benjamin
CTO
Digital Ingenuity, Inc.

http://www.diicom.com/

 

[jcollie]

One thing to check on a Cisco IP Telephony quote is the hardware/software maintenance levels offered. Make sure that your vendor isn't trying to get the low bid by cheaping out on support, especially on the phones themselves.

 

[rezinz28]

jcollie,

I double checked that with the Cisco SE and Cisco partner. All routers, switches, callmanagers, IPCC server, and Unity are 24*7*4 OSP. All phones aer 8*5 SNT.

The Avaya partner hasn't evening talked about our network equipment. I have provided them the models of routers and switches, but it was reflected on the quote. Is Avaya really that much more expensive then Cisco?
Steve

Thank You,
Steve

 

[jcollie]

I think that at this point you'd have to figure out if you're comparing Cadillacs to Chevrolets.