Zoom Phone?

[jimmmaaa]

Is anyone entertaining, or doing a trial of Zoom Phone? If so what is your experience been like? We are going to be doing a Proof of Concept with 150 users. Right now we have 10 licenses and I was given access today to poke around. Have had the Phone on my Zoom for a while and just used it sporadically thinking it wasn't going to come to anything...but it's looking like we're investigating it more. Any experience anyone has would be appreciated.

-James

 

[dignoffo]

jimmmaaa,

We did a proof of concept with Zoom phone last year and tested Poly and Cisco phones. Basic features work OK and programming from the Zoom portal is straight forward. Zoom is continually adding features catching up to Avaya.

Due to a merger with another law firm Zoom phone has been cancelled and we are moving to hosted Cisco Call Manager later this year.

I have one negative comment is that Zoom technical support is not good. Tickets get opened and it takes several days to reach subject matter experts.

 

[avayaguy23]

This is what happens when a company outsources to India.

 

[fixinputers]

I would not rely on it for primary communications. I get many service outage emails from Zoom regarding phones going down - although in targeted regions. And Help Desk is a joke now.

 

[jimmmaaa]

I would not rely on it for primary communications. I get many service outage emails from Zoom regarding phones going down - although in targeted regions. And Help Desk is a joke now."

Well, If we go to Zoom Phone it's not really my choice. I work for the California State University and some campuses have already gone to it and the Chancellor's office is already on Zoom Phone. If it were up to me I'd like to stay on Avaya at my campus...who knows, at the end of the day we may stay on it...but it is pointing in the opposite direction. I don't plan on going anywhere if we switch to Zoom Phone, I'll just learn that. Change is inevitable. I was resistant to changing from Avaya, at least in my mind, but I decided to have a better attitude about changing to something new. We also had a small trial, 10 phones, on Teams Phone. It seemed terrible and that idea was scrapped.

I've had a chance to poke around in the Admin section of Zoom Phone and it seems like it would be easy enough to learn, and has everything we'd need. We don't have any major call center stuff, just basic hunt groups. It has all that in the basic version of Zoom Phone. There are a handful of different SIP phones by Poly, Cisco, Grandstream, Audio Codes, and Yearlink for places where we'd need hard phones, such as a department admins and guest phones. My co-worker has one. Very easy to configure. Just put in the phone MAC address in software and then when you plug in the phone on the network, the updates/firmware are just pushed out to the phone and it's up and running in a few minutes. We'd have to get a bunch of analog gateways for alarms, faxes and elevators.

I'm trying to have a a good attitude, like the opposite of the "Who Moved My Cheese?" book. If I'm grumbling about the changes and wishing for whatever used to be I'll end up being miserable. I'm sure there will be drawbacks and outages but there may be some unseen pluses and advantages. Who knows. It is just a 150 person pilot, but it is one of our IT division's top five projects for the year. Our CIO wants it...we'll see.

If it happens I'll come back here and make a new post and give an update on how the transition/migration is going.

-James

 

[AvayaRed]

No experience on the Zoom side but have been having many customers ask about Teams Direct Routing.

Are you guys looking at direct routing with Zoom or full in the cloud where Zoom is the carrier as well as the phone system?

 

[jimmmaaa]

Hi AvayaRed, I think if we do it we'll the cloud where Zoom is the carrier...My preference would be to do direct routing with Zoom, keeping AT&T in place, the other way puts all you eggs in one basket. The bean counters are looking at the cost savings...we'll see how the Proof Of Concept project goes.

Multiple universities in the CSU system have already migrated:

San Diego:

https://it.sdsu.edu/services/zoom-phone

Fullerton:

https://www.fullerton.edu/it/services/telecommunications/zoom-phone/

Fresno:

https://technology.fresnostate.edu/zoomphone/

-James