Soft Switch Vs PBX 4

[jamie77]

What are peoples thoughts in general about the new technology we are dealing with??

What advantage is there to having a Soft Switch running on a server over a telephone system. You still need a 'box' to do the call processing.

There seems to be a trend that everybody wants soft switches but what serious advantage is there over an IP-PBX using digital handsets with soft switch and IP handsets.

using digital handsets you release the load on the company ethernet network and use VOIP for linking sites and remote workers.



Jamie Green

Fooball is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[paterson]

Well, now you've opened a big can o' worms here. I'm sure that you will see lots of differing opinions.

Here's my 2 cents.

First off, not all VoIP solutions are soft switches. There are plenty of Hybrids out there that provide IP sets along with the digital and analog. Some are even considered "office in a box" solutions where the phone system is also the network switch, obviously for smaller sites.

I see the main advantage, but not only advantage, of VoIP systems in regards to the user are the add-on applications that will integrate with you network/desktop applications. Things like Unified Messaging, soft phones on the PC that will use your Outlook contact lists, Web-Collaboration applications, IP sets that will surf the Net... The list can go on and on. You don't really get that much integration with the old/Traditional PBX systems.

Also, you mentioned remote offices and workers. Yes, VoIP trunking has come along way in reliability and can greatly reduce costs. The other thing with VoIP trunking is the integration of these remote sites. You can have centralized Voicemail (with Unified Messaging of course), a co-ordinated dialing plan for users, a global extension list, and on and on.

VoIP systems offer so much more than the Tradional systems and they are really only in their infancy in developement. I'm sure that you will see much more in the future. I would get on board now!


**************************************
My Biggest problem is that I almost always believe what I tell myself.

 

[paterson]

Oh, forgot one thing. When you have an intregrated network, some costs are reduced. You only need one computer cable to desktop, or if you are going wireless, the same Access Points can be used.


**************************************
My Biggest problem is that I almost always believe what I tell myself.

 

[GHTROUT]

Gary Audin is one of my favorites writers on the posters topic. I hired him to speak to our user group for a day and it was a huge success. He writes a lot and teaches a lot for BCR (the magazine and VoiceCon people). Here is a recent article list with link

http://www.voiploop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=10&id=28&Itemid=28

Voice Quality: It Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Subscribing to MPLS for VoIP
VoIP Security: It's More Than Data Security
Power: The Punch to VoIP TCO
Mastering Patching
FCAPS: The 5 Areas of Network Security Management
The Ghost of SLA in MPLS
Assess, Assess, Success
Analyzing Voice Quality
The Impact of Convergence on the IT Organization
Playing Patchman
Universities Grade VoIP
VoIP Deployment Horror Stories
How Did I Get There? Route Analytics
Backup Sites Can be a Disaster Too
Opinions on IP Telephony Readiness
More on SOX
Putting up with SOX
Computer Crime and Telecom
VoiceCon Spring ’06 - Convergence Gotchas #1
VoiceCon Spring ’06 – “Organizing for Convergence” Panel
Rating the PBX User Groups
VoIP/IPT Gotchas, A VoiceCon Tutorial
Is the Internet Really Broken?
A CVE is not a Resume - It's a Threat
Distributed IP Telephony: The Emerging Management Issue
Testing IP Phones
Pumping Up PoE
The Latest Enterprise PBX Opinions
It's About Software Now
Experience is an Education in VoIP
It’s About TIME
Power Hurts Your Reliability and Availability
Those Who Have Not Deployed IP Telephony: Survey Responses
Another Perception of Reliability: Defining MOS Availability
"Not on My Network!"
Maybe New To You, But Still the Same Story
If It Sounds Like a Phone, Behaves Like a Phone...
The Help Desk Needs Help
Entertainment Overload on the WLAN
IT Outsourcing: Good for VoIP?
Is There Really Open Access on Your ISP?
Skype Hype
The Second Wave of VoIP Adopters
The Other Side: Managing the IP Phone and Server
Who is in Charge of the Gateway?
We Don’t Have a Security Problem Now?
VOIP Security Alliance












~

http://www.GHTROUT.com/

 

[johnpoole]

well stated.. i think it may still be to early to put all your eggs in the voip basket.. i would like to see 20 percent of my site on voip, both stations and trunks for a year or more before i turn off the tdm world.. as gene said, today if the site has a voice related problem, we know who in going to fix it.. i maintain a 81c nortel, with networked switches.. i fix all the voice problems without a reboot, ever.. now add voip to the mix, cisco call manager is now on campus.. so network is in the mix, if there is a problem on that side, they reboot the ccm, routers, switches servers.. untill they get it right.. not a cut, it's just the way data people see the world...

in your life, how many times have you had the city you live in without phones.. that's how many times a decade we boot the switches (tdm) that provide dialtone...


voip will be around for longer then a lot of us, i don't see it as the only voice service in a business yet.. i have friends that have verison voip for home service... 40 bucks a month free ld, it clips at times, it echo's at times and it does not work on a power fail.. sometimes the router needs a reboot...

it's just what they thought it would be, but it may not be ready for the big's just yet..


john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[KE407122]

Convergence, the meeting of two operating platforms into a single inoperable one.

There are still the growing pains and the mindset. Have a Outlook Server down and software for a morning upgrade, no problem. Have a phone system burp for five minutes and I'm brought up in front of the Spanish Inquisition.

There is a growing demand for Unified Messaging and the ability to route and redirect calls without looping it in and out of the various systems, which just needlessly ties up more bandwidth. They want to just provide enough for talk-back echo.

MEGACO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaco

We have seen the future and it is much like the present, only longer.

There will always be those days I wish I was back in the tunnels with my splice kit, thermos, and radio.

KE407122

 

[Dexman]

Mike Sandman wrote a piece on VOIP. Interesting reading. Here is the link.

http://www.sandman.com/VoIPresearch.html

My take on VOIP is that it offers lots of great options and features, but it is still a work in progress.

Echo, clipping, static and dropped calls are not tolerated in the TDM world and they should not be in the VOIP world, regardless of the amount of money one saves by going the converged route.

 

[GSmitherman]

There are two big factors in the quality of a VOIP system. First is the product you buy. Everyone has their own preference. Cisco, Avaya, ShoreTel or whatever. I believe ultimately you get what you pay for. I think the most important factor is who you have install it. I was the voicemail vendor integrating Octel 200's to Cisco Call Managers. The company that installed the system did not have the resources to properly install the system. The customer still complains about the Cisco equipment. I believe the vendor is the biggest issue. If your network is robust enough to handle total VOIP you should be good.

 

[jamie77]

My preference is an IP-PBX. I install Avaya IP Office and like the mix of using VOIP where needed and network apps like Phone Manager, VM Pro, Call Staus etc. and then using more traditional digital and alog phones on desks.

There seems to be quite a few people syaing soft switches are the way to go. We have looked at the Swyx and I wasn't really blown away. We are looking at the Televantage next week. But I still don't see what is so good about having you phones on a server rather than a box designed for the purpose.

I think if we are to take on another system I would rather keep with Avaya and go down the Comms Manager route.

Jamie Green

Fooball is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[jamie77]

and dont get me going on my thoughts about hosted SIP solutions!!!!!

Jamie Green

Fooball is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[Sympology]

Jamie,
as a note we use TeleVantage and once you know the system, it is pretty good.
I'll be honest it's not a reliable as a Meridian, but at the same time, it's vastly more flexible, and the cost savings are massive.
Make sure you run it on a 2003 server, we find these much more reliable than 2k servers.

They way to look at PBX's these days, is not what it can do, but what you WANT it to do.

You ask whats so good about it being on a server.

How about:
Remote office moves
Rebooting phones / ISDN lines by right click "restart"
A standby server, in case the one you use burns to the ground
Cost.
Relocations. I did an office move by throwing the server in the back of my car and setting up in new location, took longer to plug the phones in than it did to install the system.
Fault diagnostics - Emails, SMNP Traps etc. An email telling you that you have an issue with channel 21 of your ISDN is most welcome.
Reporting - SQL anyone?
Flexabilty, plugins, addon's, 3rd party apps, your own in house apps?


I could go on.

If they could get them up to be as reliable as dedicated systems, then I'd be a very happy man....





Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[jamie77]

Alot of the things you mention in your list an IP Office can do (SQL through CCC, emails and SNMP)

I just can't get it into my head why a soft switch is any better than a IP Office/Definity/Meridian etc.

And does everyone have that much faith in Bill Gates they are willing to put their Comms with him??

Jamie Green

Fooball is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[gblucas]

Very interesting...I am still a traditional kind of guy. I am a programmer, turned telecom guy. I know both sides of the equation, and I still believe that IP has not come far enough to call it mainstream.

I am an Avaya guy, who loves the Definity. I have been given pitches on Cisco Call Manager, and I am yet to see a 500+ agent call center running all IP phones. Cisco still does not have a mature call center package. I challenged a Cisco sales person to give me a call center like I described above and I would consider looking at Call Manager. I never heard back from him. I ran into him at another Cisco demo, and he turned and went another direction. I finally was able to get to talk to him, and he took me in a quiet corner and told me that Call Manager could not stand up to what I was doing with the Avaya system.

I have had two different cable TV vendors offer VoIP voice over CableModem and I absolutely love it. I have never had a dropped call, not even a burp in the call at all. So to say that I wouldn't adopt that kind of technology is, not true.

I have used the Avaya VoIP IP trunking, for DCS networking between Definity switches and it works great. I have never had a problem with quality issues. I even run it at G.729a over dedicated Point to Point data circuits between sites. I have had Cicso VoIP boards in our routers to connect our non-Avaya sites back to our corporate site.

I say a good mix of both is really what is safe right now. I would put digital phones at call center agent desks, and IP phones with all the bells and whistles at the executives desks, if they want them. IP trunk sites together to get savings on LD, get a single VM, and integration with all sites.

That is my 2 cents (well I guess I may have used a quarter or so)

gblucas

 

[Sympology]

Jamie,
hope this helps.

Firstly I trust Bill with IP more than I trust Nortel.....

Why do we rave about Softswitches, like I said, get the reliabilty up and they will kill off Big meridians.

Can't compare for anything other than Symposium / Nortel, but lets take a few things:

Client software:
We can take a phone book and dump it straight into the system.Dial by name, company or number, with a mouse click.
We have people in Italy who can see if collegues in Romania are on the phone, so know if to transfer a call to them.
A phone is ringing in a different office, you can right click and take the call (for example, the director has forgotten to divert his phone somewhere).
Drag and drop calls onto people.
Agents can see call history in real time, so when a person says they've been waiting 20 minutes, a supervisor can see if they are lying.

Flexabilty.
Like I said, I can pick up a server and move it. In fact all our new sites are done like this.
I'm assembling a 100 user system currently, once done and configured, I'll take to site and swap out with the Meridan. Should take all of, ooo, 2 minutes to switch systems over.

Learning curve:
I can give acess to someone and they can set up new users in a few hours triang, no ld this, ld that.

Ease of use.
I had a days training on it, soon had a call centre up and running. To get the same for Meridian / Symposium took about 3 weeks.

Upgrades:
they come much faster than Nortel, who, imho, are usually a year or more behind the leaders for features.

Cost,
lets not even go there !


Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[GHTROUT]

I heard an interesting point to ponder (a few years back) from the boss at xtend.com Those of us that were in telecom when "other" long distance services were born also remember how many calls had "delay". The perception of call participants was, at first, "is this dude slow or what?! Why the pause before he responds to everything I say?" Then they figured out it was usually a long line carrier overflowing to satellite

That problem went away for the most part. Today's generation of people are used to the phone being as accurately timed as talking face to face.


Now - enter your new personality over IP

So you're gonna go IP

- will customer perception change? "what's with the periodic warble I hear...did he stop working from his office phone? And it seems like he's a little slow...is he on something?"

Do you want your President to sound "slow" ?



Times change...











~

http://www.GHTROUT.com/

 

[Sympology]

Do you want your President to sound "slow" ?"


No comment........


Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Sympology]

Actually, I do worry about some of the comments that people make..

Sounding slow,
warbling
Breaking up...


Every install we've done, every user, without fail has said they sound so much better !

Maybe it the fact we bother to plan and install correctly. If the IP is up to the job, we either upgrade it, or don't implement it.



Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Sympology]

And for those that think IP telephony isn't the next big thing...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/05/bt_21cn_schedule/

BT are converting their entire infrastructure over to IP, so If you live in the UK, at some point your nearly all your calls will all be over IP.

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[ISDNman]

Sprint (LEC) has upgraded many locations to IP. In Las Vegas they went to some Nortel "softswiotch" product and the users (even critical ISDN users) have not seen any changes.

So, yes, IP *can* handle it, of course. But IP has many more ways you can screw it up, and many more people that think they are experts that can and will try doing it themselves.

As they say on the internet, YMMV!

 

[jamie77]

This wasn't so much an IP debate but PBX Vs Soft Switch.

IP is the future. It makes sense. Call charges are cheaper and inter-site traffic is free.

No one has really pointed out any advantages of running your phones on a Server (Microsof based?!?!) over a box made for the job.

IP-PBX's do a good job of IP so what is all the fuss about??

Jamie Green

Fooball is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!