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Static Conference Bridge
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MitelInMyBlood
Technical User
Semantics here...
I would have to say that depends on your "phone system" -
Without mentioning any specific brands >smile< I happen to be intimately familiar with a competing "legacy" brand of honest-to-God phone system that can do some pretty awesome things with natively internal Non-Busy Extensions that walk, talk and act an awful lot like automatic 8-party conference bridges (yes, plural). The system I'm thinking of has had that capability for well over a decade.
The Call Manager is certainly a robust VOIP host controller/router, but to call it a "phone system" is still a bit of a stretch that in certain bars could get your beer poured into your lap by folks with an awful lot of whiskers in the phone "bidness". >BSEG<
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
I would have to say that depends on your "phone system" -
Without mentioning any specific brands >smile< I happen to be intimately familiar with a competing "legacy" brand of honest-to-God phone system that can do some pretty awesome things with natively internal Non-Busy Extensions that walk, talk and act an awful lot like automatic 8-party conference bridges (yes, plural). The system I'm thinking of has had that capability for well over a decade.
The Call Manager is certainly a robust VOIP host controller/router, but to call it a "phone system" is still a bit of a stretch that in certain bars could get your beer poured into your lap by folks with an awful lot of whiskers in the phone "bidness". >BSEG<
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
CISCO can do as many conferences as your resources can handle and with no limits on the number of parties pre call. It cannot do however scheduled conference bridges. Nor has it ever claimed to.
And if you are talking about bridges that someone can call in a DID a be in a bridge that's great. But that would mean anyone can dial in that bridge right? it is not scheduled or password protected. Lot's of systems can do that I agree.
But you don't know who's in the bridge or whos listening.
If you are talking about the weather report that's sufficient, but most people care on who's listening in, eg. sales mgrs, marketing personnel, and also HR.
I was simply stating that call manager is not a conferencing software and it's not designed to do so.
And if you are talking about bridges that someone can call in a DID a be in a bridge that's great. But that would mean anyone can dial in that bridge right? it is not scheduled or password protected. Lot's of systems can do that I agree.
But you don't know who's in the bridge or whos listening.
If you are talking about the weather report that's sufficient, but most people care on who's listening in, eg. sales mgrs, marketing personnel, and also HR.
I was simply stating that call manager is not a conferencing software and it's not designed to do so.
MitelInMyBlood
Technical User
Sorry to ruffle your feathers and I very much appreciate your help on other things. I was just trying to make a point because I hear similar statements being made by others (mainly sales guys) to "defend" the need for a rackful of adjunct appliances that heretofore weren't needed. Just seems like as we go forward with technology that the direction of the wind isn't always at our backs. It just gets frustrating - not meant as a slur, but sometimes it feels like we've torn down a big building and have been tasked with replacing it with a lot of little buildings.
I think the straw that broke my camel's back was the requirement to spend 5-figures for a non-redundant Contact Center "server" that was natively built-in (with redundancy) before.
I had planned to be retired by now, but 2008/2009 "happened" and my 401K was in the market invested in what was supposed to be a stable portfolio. Catching-up means working 'till I'm 70.
Again Thanks for your help.
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
I think the straw that broke my camel's back was the requirement to spend 5-figures for a non-redundant Contact Center "server" that was natively built-in (with redundancy) before.
I had planned to be retired by now, but 2008/2009 "happened" and my 401K was in the market invested in what was supposed to be a stable portfolio. Catching-up means working 'till I'm 70.
Again Thanks for your help.
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
Besides the fact that you didn't answer my question on how the built in conference bridge works on the other phone system, I agree with the sales pitch. However, the other phone system sales folks do the same.
I have learned that you can't hold a phone system as the "bible of features" and compare every other system with it. I guarantee that you will find very nice features on the other system that the "bible" hasn't even dreamed of. You pick a system on the needs you have and if your needs change then you need to redesign and possibly add new features and hardware.
I make a living designing, installing and supporting all CISCO unified telephony products and I take it with a grain of salt when people seeking help on this forum knock the rest of us and what we do. There is a reason cisco is the best selling product out there and it is displacing everyone else out there. You can call it marketing, a scam, stupid people bying a crappy product, but the bottom line is that it is robust, support is outstanding, especially compared to other manufacturers and if you know what you are doing it will meet the five 9's that all the TDM discontinued products are hooting about.
I choose to work with the cisco products, it is a choice I consciously made. I have worked with Mitel and Nortel in the past and I wouldn't look back not even for a second. Less headaches, better pay and a career path that will be around for a little longer.
Again all the above is just my opinion and nothing more.
I have learned that you can't hold a phone system as the "bible of features" and compare every other system with it. I guarantee that you will find very nice features on the other system that the "bible" hasn't even dreamed of. You pick a system on the needs you have and if your needs change then you need to redesign and possibly add new features and hardware.
I make a living designing, installing and supporting all CISCO unified telephony products and I take it with a grain of salt when people seeking help on this forum knock the rest of us and what we do. There is a reason cisco is the best selling product out there and it is displacing everyone else out there. You can call it marketing, a scam, stupid people bying a crappy product, but the bottom line is that it is robust, support is outstanding, especially compared to other manufacturers and if you know what you are doing it will meet the five 9's that all the TDM discontinued products are hooting about.
I choose to work with the cisco products, it is a choice I consciously made. I have worked with Mitel and Nortel in the past and I wouldn't look back not even for a second. Less headaches, better pay and a career path that will be around for a little longer.
Again all the above is just my opinion and nothing more.
MitelInMyBlood
Technical User
The Non-Busy-Ext. system has its limitations, one as you note is security. Most times when building one of those you would discourage the user from asking to have a DID number on it, rather have participants call an admin to be manually transferred onto the bridge, or front-end it with DISA where users must dial an account code to reach it. Wide-open conference bridges are a;ways a target for abuse and eventually will be found. War-dialers still attack phones systems almost nightly.
For us PBX old-timers (I'm 1 of 4 at my heretofore self-maintained employer) the Cisco learning curve has eased somewhat as we gain experience exploring the system. With our Mitel certs & all 4 of us each with 20+ years experience, even 4 years with their IP platform you could probably say we were CCIE-equivalent on that product line, handling everything from power/grounding and initial commissioning through customer data entry & applications programming incl. ACD (contact ctr). We literally did it all and today find ourselves in uncomfortable territory, to say the very least, having to fall back to a VAR after 20+ years of having peers fall back on us. For several years in the 1990s ours was the single largest Mitel "-48 DC" deployment in the US. 5-nines? With the benefit of dual-redundant DC power systems, try 6. Ask anyone in the corporate office, "what always works?" - and they'll tell you it's the phone system. I'm cautiously optimistic about this new kid, in part because it's AC-powered and our business is part of the national "critical infrastructure". Our phone system has to work. An unplanned outage just isn't an option. We spent close to a half megabuck on backbone power upgrades to get UPS power in all the wiring closets. As long as nobody pushes the FM-200 discharge button in the computer room (taking the core routers down) we should be good-to-go.
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
For us PBX old-timers (I'm 1 of 4 at my heretofore self-maintained employer) the Cisco learning curve has eased somewhat as we gain experience exploring the system. With our Mitel certs & all 4 of us each with 20+ years experience, even 4 years with their IP platform you could probably say we were CCIE-equivalent on that product line, handling everything from power/grounding and initial commissioning through customer data entry & applications programming incl. ACD (contact ctr). We literally did it all and today find ourselves in uncomfortable territory, to say the very least, having to fall back to a VAR after 20+ years of having peers fall back on us. For several years in the 1990s ours was the single largest Mitel "-48 DC" deployment in the US. 5-nines? With the benefit of dual-redundant DC power systems, try 6. Ask anyone in the corporate office, "what always works?" - and they'll tell you it's the phone system. I'm cautiously optimistic about this new kid, in part because it's AC-powered and our business is part of the national "critical infrastructure". Our phone system has to work. An unplanned outage just isn't an option. We spent close to a half megabuck on backbone power upgrades to get UPS power in all the wiring closets. As long as nobody pushes the FM-200 discharge button in the computer room (taking the core routers down) we should be good-to-go.
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
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