Which phone system do you own? Pros & Cons 6

[mrdon515]

We are looking for a new phone system. We have 15 locations and approx 250 users. I have read a number of threads about what people recommend. So far I am planning on looking at these 4 solutions: Avaya, Cisco, ShoreTel, Digium. I know every system has it's good and bad.

What system do you have and what are the Pros & Cons for it? (Ease of use, Cost, Disaster Recovery, Features, Apps, Expansion, Support, Reporting, etc.)

Thanks,
Brandon

 

[Westi]

I like the SNOM PA1 as well and all you do is call the extension and it goes beep and pages out the paging interface, no need for 2 devices as points of failure.

phoneguy, you are saying exactly what makes sense for hosted and on prem but I have had a lot of people yapping for large installations with hosted. Your hosted solution also seems to be built solid with failover solutions which is not the case a lot of times and we had customers run from those to a on prem system again.
If you have SIP trunks then the provider usually can setup cell phones for failover (we can and do) so that if the on prem system goes down the Internet goes down or whatever the reason for the failed connection may be the call completes.

I think we all know the good and bad of hosted and on prem and know when to prefer one over the other but most here are not in sales. some of us are small providers and do it all but most here are techs and we don't care about margins we care about things working as good as they possibly can.

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (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

 

[phoneguy610]

westi agreed, and our uptime and redundancy is what makes us stand out from the local hosted vendors. One thing ive learned is to run away from providers who do not have that. if you hear "asterisk based" run because you will be down 10 times a year. But most of the bigger switch providers like broadsoft, netsapiens, and metaswitch have geo HA baked in and its really almost impossible to have downtime if setup right.

Our sip trunks also can do failover but just for the entire trunk to say one cell number. With a full hosted solution, every extension can have its own offline call routing which is real big plus, in addition to mobile apps and offsite phones.

 

[curlycord]

Indeed lot or all of what you are saying makes sense....star for the positive approach posts.

Maybe test this out too 8180 Algo SIP Audio Alerter.

I have same setup Westi, POTs for Res and SIP (Broadsoft) for Biz but on a wide open (keys) BCM50 with and identical one beside it just in case.

If not Asterisk then what are/is the other platform that runs hosted?



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[phoneguy610]

Hey curlycord

we purchased a netsapiens switch a few years back. It has geo redundancy baked in and a ton of other cool features. It blows asterisk out of the water in both.

Broadsoft is definitely the most popular, but coming from asterisk years ago the way we priced our exisitng customers was per seat. Broadsoft charges licensing per seat, per auto attendant, per ring group etc... so it likely would have been too expensive for most of our clients. That being said they do have a very nice platform.

Ive heard great things about metaswitch as well, the one downside that i hear often though is that the management side of it is very complicated. The nice benefit to our switch or broadsoft is the management portal for end users is very easy to use. Metaswitch requires advanced skills for basic programming, which isnt always bad for the back end side of things, but simple name changes, password changes, auto attendant changes, etc should be able to be adjusted by the end user.

 

[jimbojimbo]

Picking a phone system should start by trying to figure out what business requirements must be met and what features are mandatory versus nice to have. As silly as this question may seem, do you expect to receive dial tone when you pick up the handset? Or even better, do you expect to have a handset? What about softclients on Windows, Apple, and Android devices? Does all the equipment support SHA-2 and TLS 1.2 (DISA/FIPS/FISMA/PCI-DSSv3.2 requirements). What adjunct systems do you need (Call Accounting, Paging System, Music-on-hold)? Now let's get complicated and add Contact Center. Do you need an outbound dialer? voice response unit? How many stations will have Call Recording active? Will Screen Capture be required? What type of reports are required? What about wallboards?

The "best" system is going to be the one that fits your business requirements without breaking the bank.

 

[phoneguy610]

@jim what system doesnt have all of those features?