NEC IP VS Cisco IP

[ethereal112]

We currently have an NEC 2400 IPX with 300 IP licenses and are using about 140 of the 300. In a bad situation here we are under the IT department and the IT manager/director thinks the Cisco is way better than NEC, he cant give technical reasons why but he thinks it is. He also thinks that the phone switch will end up failing soon although technically speaking its about 7 years in use and to top it off it was completely upgraded 2 1/2 years ago from the IMX to IPX. The cisco call manager will end up costing us 67K and the NEC upgrade was 97K. Does anyone know where I can get a comparison chart on the net for NEC and Cisco? Also what is the lifespan of a PBX?

 

[mextera]

What is your type of Buisness?

Does the 67K include backup dialtone? Upgrade of routers and switches? Phones?

If they want a pure IP solution then NEC SV7000 is an option to look at.

Mextera

 

[ethereal112]

Mextera,

My I.T director does not like NEC for some reason I dont know why. In my opinion I think he wants to get rid of it because he doesnt understand the full concept of how it operates. He administored Cisco VoIP in his work history so he is pro-Cisco.
I was told that the 67k only included phones and the call manager nothing else.
We are a native american tribe with about 2K employees throughout 2 casino's and lots of government departments.

 

[mextera]

So is the infastrucure in place to handle VOIP?

Expect downtime, those that deal with VOIP have to expect downtime nature of the beast. So practices have to be put in place to minimize the downtime or instead of dialtone.

Talk to others in your area if the IT director is like most here for a couple of years then gone. Then beware of wholesale changes till fully reasearched.

Now this is all said with the understanding that this customer is not ready to change to VOIP. Not all customers are in the same position to handle VOIP.

Most of us will need to migrate to some VOIP that is what the Hybrid systems are for. But for those few customers that have the Infrastructure in place to handle Pure VOIP I suggest that they travel to it. Once more of our customers migrate to VOIP then the more the market technology advances.

Mextera

 

[ethereal112]

VoIP is already in full swing with the NEC, Although only newer building get to have the opportunity to have them. The rest of the users all have Dterms. I dont see why he would want to have 2 IP solutions when NEC is already configured and is in use.
The other day I tried to order the Inaset to try it out and our IT director denied my request.

 

[OzzieGeorge]

Your It manager can't justify his position because it can't be justified. You already have a valid solution and the money has already been invested in that solution.

Many companies overlook the hidden costs of a voip solution when considering a change. there are a number of items such as, the high cost of putting analogue circuits on for such things as faxes, modems and an important one for your business EFTPOS machines (you may just call then ATMs). has anyone looked at how many of these items you have hanging off the PABX then costed connecting them to the CISCO? Then there is the increased cost of battery backup if you have any business critical areas such as the ATMs The need to supply essential power to all those routers etc or provide UPSs will start to spiral. I have heard the argument that the data network is already on UPSs, what that company didn't count on was that the ups was rated to keep the original equipment going for a given amount of time. They didn't figure in all the dterms drawing POE and the system failed early due to the load. So once again hidden costs were hit due to the need to upgrade ancillary equipment. Then there is the cost of routinely replacing the batteries in all those UPSs as against one bank of batteries at the PABX.

You may have gathered that I don't rate VOIP but it is only in existing situations where infrastructure is already in place that I feel this way. With a greenfields site the solution can be designed for VOIP and savings made on infrastructure costs. Why throw away the investment you already have just to move to a different way of doing what you are already doing. Seems to me the IT director does not have the companies best intrests at heart.

Oh and just on the point about the PABX failing, The man is showing his ignorance of the Telecommunications industry. PABXs unlike data equipment are designed to last as the industry doesn't move on that fast. We have many NEC systems in OZ that are approaching the 1/4 century mark. One in particular in Perth which is the largest 2400 IMG (or should that be MMG) in the southern hemisphere and is in a major teaching hospital. If they aren't worried about it failing after over 20 years why should you be worried after 7. Let's see how well the Cisco solution stands up to the test of time.

 

[OzzieGeorge]

Sorry I should have been less tongue in cheek. On the subject of PABX life, it comes down to how long you can secure maintenance for. The big thing with the NEC product is the secondhand market. As Nec products are predominantly hardware based there is a big second hand market in thier products. This means that as Nec makes products obsolete, the second hand market picks up the slack. Other, third party maintainers pick up the market that NEC surrenders in making products obsolete and so perpetuates the product long after the manufacturers want to see it gone from the market place.

The fact that you upgraded 2 1/2 years ago means you are only that long into the lifetime of your PABX and you can expect to get anything up to 20 years from the equipment you now have. And that without worry about failure as that is why you have a maintenance contract. Now if someone suddenly decides to cancel your maintenance, you should be ringing alarm bells as loud as you can!

I hope I have been of help here as this is not really a VOIP or Legacy question. Simple fact here is your boss prefers one product over another and cannot come up with a technical reason to justify change. Your problem is do I take on the boss and risk my job? The question is do you think you can win however much we try to help?

 

[ethereal112]

You've been a great help OzzieGeorge and you hit the focal point of the whole problem here. The problem that you pointed out is do I risk losing my job and to tell you the truth I have a good point in questioning his ability to make such a costly decision on the part of telecommunications. Not only will he try and bring in a product that none of use have ever worked with but according to his network engineer they are going to hang off of the NEC 2400 for voice, but theres more according to my NEC instructor there are features we will lose in the process of trying to get these two to communicate. Although he didnt mention which features we would lose, I can expect more serious issues out of this.

 

[ctvi]

Chinolee112,

The most important piece of information is with the following analogy:

If I had to pull a caravan and I fit it to the back of my car, I would have no trouble pulling it, right. The caravan was designed to be pulled by a car.

Now, imagine that instead of a car, I am using a large SUV or Truck. Pulling it will be sweet as pie.

The same goes for the system you chose. What was it designed for and what are the resources that it has? The IPX was designed to handle over 80,000 ports. What was the Cisco they recommended designed for? Will it handle to call processing easily, swiftly and effectively? Cisco will not hide this from you. Ask them for the Busy Call Hour etc.

Have you talked to your local NEC rep and told him your predicament? Tell him to get this document for you: (you cannot get it, it requires and authorized NEC vendor to get it)

http://www.necworx.nec.com/

There is a document there that compares NEC to Cisco.

The document lists over 350 points of interest!!!

You will see that there are a few versions of Call Manager that go from 100 ports to 30,000 ports.

Here is a sample comparison:
CallManager/MCS-7815I 100 to 300
CallManager/MCS-7825H1/I1 - 1,000 to 4,000 devices per cluster
CallManager/MCS-7835H1/I1 - 2,500 to 10,000 devices per cluster
CallManager/MCS-7845H1/I1 - 7,500 to 30,000 devices per cluster.
Which one did they propose? Was it the car or the semi-trailer? If you want to go from one to the other, is it a fork lift upgrade? Etc. There are more than 350 points of interest to consider!

Does NEC have competitive dollars to help you. Ask your NEC rep. Many companies put away money for strategic accounts. In my books, you would be a strategic account. Try.

Also look at our web site. We have an article written up on voip. It was written a while ago. We are working on a follow up:

http://www.ctvi.com/4-events.html

see article number 103.

I am not recommending one way or another. Just make sure you get all the help you need. Also, it would only be fair to call a local Avaya Rep too. It will help you see all angles before you make the decision.

http://www.ctvi.com

 

[OzzieGeorge]

Perhaps an anonymous note on the financial directors desk directing him here would do the job! Lets face it if the right people know that money of that magnitude is being spent with little or no justification, Im sure it would get jumped on pretty quick.

 

[dontworx]

My company deals with NEC, Avaya ,and others. We are primarily a Data company. What I am realisong after my boss enlightened me on the subject is that the IT staff want cisco, becouse they can get trained on cisco. This means they will be worth more money with cisco experience and certs. I believe it. I have my ccna and we are looking at going the call manager route. After I would get my ccvp along with the five other exams to be a field engineer, I would be worth a whole lot more money. This is just my two cents worth. The other reason is that the IT manager says he wants only one neck to choke when he has a problem.

 

[OzzieGeorge]

If the IT manager has implemented it and there is a problem is he going to choke himself. The need for Cisco certification to work on voice comms equipment is a phenominal backward step for the industry. Things had settled in voice comms where commonsense was more important than certificates. Now we are just making things more complicated again and for what benifit? I'm beginning to feel a bit like the dinosaurs must have.

Just one point for your IT manager. Until Cisco buy out a Telco he will still have to work out which neck to wring.

If you'll excuse the pun.

 

[ctvi]

Dear Dontworx

You say: "..they will be worth more money with cisco experience and certs. I believe it."

You are correct: Try this: on

http://www.monster.com

search for words voip cisco = 854 results, voip avaya = 203, voip nec = 30 results. However, (a) just as there are in more demand, more people are going for it. There is always still a need for UNIX and Novell even though Microsoft is king. (b) It is more difficult to program NEC competitor stuff or is not as reliable as NEC. Just today I spoke to a VP of a company traded on the NADAQ who has cisco call manager and he sounded like he was sitting on top of sailboat bobbing up and down in and out. He was in his home office at the time! (c) price, features, growth, reliability are issues that many people are still going to chose Nec, Avaya or Nortel. (d) With regard to price, I saw a posting,

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1247448

where no Cisco tech on tek-tips could justify the expense. (e) i am sure you know that certificates are meaningless as OzzieGeorge states. It is the experience that counts - once you invested all that energy in the endless knowledge of Cisco routing, vpn etc will you be ready to put your neck on the product to work perfectly? Will you? Have you ever come across a VOIP bug list?

You say "The other reason is that the IT manager says he wants only one neck to choke when he has a problem." As OzzieGeorge writes, you never ever have one neck to choke until you can control the service end to end which you cannot do. i.e who is the carrier, isp provider, electrical company, computer manufacturer etc.

http://www.ctvi.com

 

[dontworx]

I was told that exact quote from the IT Manager my self. And when the local telco has upgraded to a pure Cisco backbone it gets their tastebuds flowing. If you think you don't need certs for cisco go onto monster and carrier builder and see if they don't require you to have them. I agree NEC has a better product, but if the IT world is telling you to sell them cisco and you tell them NO. They are going to go to someone who will tell them yes. I do agree you had better have the experience to work on cisco if you get a job requiring it. Look I have been working on NEC for years, but I also work on the Data side to. I have learned more about the technology of VOIP from Cisco than NEC, even though I like NEC's product better. NEC has on giant problem. Their Marketting STINKS, and Cisco is a marketting machine. Just like Novel. They have a better product than microsoft, but their marketting stinks also. This is just my opinion from working on both sides of the fence.

 

[ctvi]

Dontworx - well written.

Just a few observations:
"And when the local Telco has upgraded to a pure Cisco backbone it gets their taste buds flowing." Which Cisco IOS? Are you going to update every time your Telco does? And if not, what kind of issues or bugs will you have? What works on one Cisco IOS might be have bugs on the next! I have seen that time and time again. The main difference between Cisco and the others is that Cisco is a data company and does not understand 99.9999% uptime. In the data world, you can get away with that. Not in the voice world. They think that they can put out half baked products and fix it later. Or maybe just like Microsoft, their product is too complex and convoluted that it is simply impossible to guarantee performance in all conditions.

By the way, just an anecdote: Cisco did not develop the call manager themselves. They purchased a company called Selsuis and re-branded and redeveloped it. That is not a big issue. But they made a major mistake. They should have tried to become the OS for all telephony like Microsoft is the OS for most PCs. They should have licensed the technology to all PBX manufacturers. Instead they tried to become a phone company and I don’t think that they are doing a good job at it.

You write: "If you think you don't need certs for Cisco go onto monster and carrier builder and see if they don't require you to have them." Of course you need certs for cisco and the Nec training is minimal. However, to get the NEC up, the minimal training will be fine. With cisco, with all the certs, you will still have issues.

You write: "NEC has on giant problem. Their Marketing STINKS, and Cisco is a marketing machine." 100% correct. NEC has a marketing problem.

http://www.ctvi.com

 

[telm59]

If I may add my 2 cents, a server with IP phones trying to be a PBX will never be as reliable as a PBX with IP capabilities.