Posted: 5/3/2016 9:47:12 PM EDT
Sorry, I am a network guy, not a telephone guy.  I need a solution for two office locations, about 15 phone lines. I need to be able to transfer in between. Offices are located about 20 miles apart. 8X8, something else? Internet is Time Warner. Organization is non-profit, so cheaper is certainly better. VOIP I assume, at least network part is taken care of. |
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Quoted: Hosted PBX solution. Figure $25-$35/extension/month. Other solutions do exist, figure $10-25k capex to get it built. I don't think I'm allowed to sell to you, but that's basically what you want. Not saying 10-25K capex isn't fair, but it is a non-starter. Think non-profit that squeezes every penny until it is a dollar. And their head IT guy, me, is moving.  |
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Not saying 10-25K capex isn't fair, but it is a non-starter. Think non-profit that squeezes every penny until it is a dollar. And their head IT guy, me, is moving.
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Hosted PBX solution. Figure $25-$35/extension/month. Other solutions do exist, figure $10-25k capex to get it built. I don't think I'm allowed to sell to you, but that's basically what you want. Not saying 10-25K capex isn't fair, but it is a non-starter. Think non-profit that squeezes every penny until it is a dollar. And their head IT guy, me, is moving.
Phone systems are expensive, and configuring them is black voodoo magic, troubleshooting them is the bane of all IT existence. Sure, you could try and cheap out and roll an asterisk box or some such, but you do that it will belong to you FOR LIFE. I'm dead serious, they will be calling you for adds/moves/changes and nightmare troubleshooting for the next 15 years. I'm not even kidding, I see phone systems in the field still in production that are 20+ years old, I'm pretty sure the techs who installed them are dead, the vendor who sold is long gone, and there's a solid chance the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore. Trust me when I tell you this. Hosted PBX is your only option, you get shipped a phone, you plug it in; in configures itself. A Cisco system is going to be $15k minimum, Panasonic will run you $10k, Avaya Partner System, $12k. Maybe you find a vendor rolling one of the commercial Asterisk flavors, and you spend $8k. That's just for the system. Now you want multi-site with a TIE trunk? Gonna need SIP gateways, and transport, and a whole bunch more shit. Spend $500-600/month with a quality Hosted PBX provider and get a backup ISP connection and a router that does failover at each site and never think about it again. |
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Quoted: Phone systems are expensive, and configuring them is black voodoo magic, troubleshooting them is the bane of all IT existence. Sure, you could try and cheap out and roll an asterisk box or some such, but you do that it will belong to you FOR LIFE. I'm dead serious, they will be calling you for adds/moves/changes and nightmare troubleshooting for the next 15 years. I'm not even kidding, I see phone systems in the field still in production that are 20+ years old, I'm pretty sure the techs who installed them are dead, the vendor who sold is long gone, and there's a solid chance the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore. Trust me when I tell you this. Hosted PBX is your only option, you get shipped a phone, you plug it in; in configures itself. A Cisco system is going to be $15k minimum, Panasonic will run you $10k, Avaya Partner System, $12k. Maybe you find a vendor rolling one of the commercial Asterisk flavors, and you spend $8k. That's just for the system. Now you want multi-site with a TIE trunk? Gonna need SIP gateways, and transport, and a whole bunch more shit. Spend $500-600/month with a quality Hosted PBX provider and get a backup ISP connection and a router that does failover at each site and never think about it again. Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Hosted PBX solution. Figure $25-$35/extension/month. Other solutions do exist, figure $10-25k capex to get it built. I don't think I'm allowed to sell to you, but that's basically what you want. Not saying 10-25K capex isn't fair, but it is a non-starter. Think non-profit that squeezes every penny until it is a dollar. And their head IT guy, me, is moving. Phone systems are expensive, and configuring them is black voodoo magic, troubleshooting them is the bane of all IT existence. Sure, you could try and cheap out and roll an asterisk box or some such, but you do that it will belong to you FOR LIFE. I'm dead serious, they will be calling you for adds/moves/changes and nightmare troubleshooting for the next 15 years. I'm not even kidding, I see phone systems in the field still in production that are 20+ years old, I'm pretty sure the techs who installed them are dead, the vendor who sold is long gone, and there's a solid chance the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore. Trust me when I tell you this. Hosted PBX is your only option, you get shipped a phone, you plug it in; in configures itself. A Cisco system is going to be $15k minimum, Panasonic will run you $10k, Avaya Partner System, $12k. Maybe you find a vendor rolling one of the commercial Asterisk flavors, and you spend $8k. That's just for the system. Now you want multi-site with a TIE trunk? Gonna need SIP gateways, and transport, and a whole bunch more shit. Spend $500-600/month with a quality Hosted PBX provider and get a backup ISP connection and a router that does failover at each site and never think about it again. I hear you. The problem is the bitter-old-I-miss-Ma-Bell folks are not ready for everything is IP.  If I was going to be local I wouldn't sweat an Asterix system if I was local, but I am about to be 2,100 miles away. I can't leave then like that. And I have people that work for me supporting a 25 year old Nortel system. I miss Nortel. They would buy whatever network company that made their engineers look like geniuses. If I never see another Alteon box in my life it will be too damn soon. |
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I hear you. The problem is the bitter-old-I-miss-Ma-Bell folks are not ready for everything is IP.
If I was going to be local I wouldn't sweat an Asterix system if I was local, but I am about to be 2,100 miles away. I can't leave then like that. And I have people that work for me supporting a 25 year old Nortel system. I miss Nortel. They would buy whatever network company that made their engineers look like geniuses. If I never see another Alteon box in my life it will be too damn soon. Quoted:
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Hosted PBX solution. Figure $25-$35/extension/month. Other solutions do exist, figure $10-25k capex to get it built. I don't think I'm allowed to sell to you, but that's basically what you want. Not saying 10-25K capex isn't fair, but it is a non-starter. Think non-profit that squeezes every penny until it is a dollar. And their head IT guy, me, is moving.
Phone systems are expensive, and configuring them is black voodoo magic, troubleshooting them is the bane of all IT existence. Sure, you could try and cheap out and roll an asterisk box or some such, but you do that it will belong to you FOR LIFE. I'm dead serious, they will be calling you for adds/moves/changes and nightmare troubleshooting for the next 15 years. I'm not even kidding, I see phone systems in the field still in production that are 20+ years old, I'm pretty sure the techs who installed them are dead, the vendor who sold is long gone, and there's a solid chance the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore. Trust me when I tell you this. Hosted PBX is your only option, you get shipped a phone, you plug it in; in configures itself. A Cisco system is going to be $15k minimum, Panasonic will run you $10k, Avaya Partner System, $12k. Maybe you find a vendor rolling one of the commercial Asterisk flavors, and you spend $8k. That's just for the system. Now you want multi-site with a TIE trunk? Gonna need SIP gateways, and transport, and a whole bunch more shit. Spend $500-600/month with a quality Hosted PBX provider and get a backup ISP connection and a router that does failover at each site and never think about it again. I hear you. The problem is the bitter-old-I-miss-Ma-Bell folks are not ready for everything is IP.
If I was going to be local I wouldn't sweat an Asterix system if I was local, but I am about to be 2,100 miles away. I can't leave then like that. And I have people that work for me supporting a 25 year old Nortel system. I miss Nortel. They would buy whatever network company that made their engineers look like geniuses. If I never see another Alteon box in my life it will be too damn soon. Those are all IP setups I was referring to. I don't think anyone makes anything that isn't IP anymore outside of the "smart analog" multi-line phones. |
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These guys are right, Asterisk is in your budget and is a perfect solution for the right person. If you are asking here for solutions you are probably not that guy. No offense, its not plug and play. I bought Elastix appliances and used Yealink phones to configure myself, they do have a hosted solution as well. http://www.elastix.com/en/elastixcloud-pbx-service/ I've also used ring central for some services and was happy with them, you could check their pricing. |
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OP I've had excellent experiences using Shoretel Sky for what you are looking for. I've got the most experience on Cisco IP telephony but that is going to be an expense beyond where you're going to be comfortable. I use Shoretel on-prem or Sky everywhere else. It's mature and feature rich. They will port your numbers very painlessly if you require that and ship you the handsets ready to go. Your hassle on the local side is minimal and things like QoS, VLAN segmentation, and some of the other complexities that tend to go along with VoIP are non-existent or minimal depending on your environment. It is a monthly flat cost per seat and can be had with no contract (at a slightly higher monthly cost) if you wish.
ETA: Since you have multiple sites, they would of course share local extension dialing and all that. You have control of menus, monitoring, voice mail, all of that. I won't quote cost as there are a lot of factors depending on what you need/want. Enigma's ball park is very close to the range you'd be looking at. Other comments in the thread so far regarding the cost and complexity of on-prem systems by other vendors is spot on. ETA: It has been about a year since I've ordered and placed Sky but I *believe* that non-profit pricing might be an option for you. |
| Obviously it's not an option yet, but for those who have interest in these sorts of things; Vonage is positioning themselves to be a major Communications Platform as a Service provider. They have bough up Nexmo as well as several SIP/VoIP API companies, their reps have been chattering in the IT as a Service channel talking about integrating with PSAs and Ticket Systems so that you get ticket screen pop on incoming calls and such. |
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Quoted: Obviously it's not an option yet, but for those who have interest in these sorts of things; Vonage is positioning themselves to be a major Communications Platform as a Service provider. They have bough up Nexmo as well as several SIP/VoIP API companies, their reps have been chattering in the IT as a Service channel talking about integrating with PSAs and Ticket Systems so that you get ticket screen pop on incoming calls and such. Did they ever get profitable? From my understanding their issue was always customer service. |
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Did they ever get profitable? From my understanding their issue was always customer service. Quoted:
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Obviously it's not an option yet, but for those who have interest in these sorts of things; Vonage is positioning themselves to be a major Communications Platform as a Service provider. They have bough up Nexmo as well as several SIP/VoIP API companies, their reps have been chattering in the IT as a Service channel talking about integrating with PSAs and Ticket Systems so that you get ticket screen pop on incoming calls and such. Did they ever get profitable? From my understanding their issue was always customer service. Well they've forked out more than $2 billion dollars in the last 18 months buying up various component companies to construct all of this, so I imagine they're getting money from somewhere. |
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That really sucks. I hope they aren't fucking up their service in the rush to knock expenses down like everyone else seems to be doing these days.
That's really disappointing. They were one of the few outfits out there that didn't give me really inconsistent experiences. Give 'em both barrels when they do get around to contacting you. Quoted:
Well, tried the Shoretel route, can't even get them to send me a quote.  |
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Quoted: That really sucks. I hope they aren't fucking up their service in the rush to knock expenses down like everyone else seems to be doing these days. That's really disappointing. They were one of the few outfits out there that didn't give me really inconsistent experiences. Give 'em both barrels when they do get around to contacting you. Quoted: That really sucks. I hope they aren't fucking up their service in the rush to knock expenses down like everyone else seems to be doing these days. That's really disappointing. They were one of the few outfits out there that didn't give me really inconsistent experiences. Give 'em both barrels when they do get around to contacting you. Quoted: Well, tried the Shoretel route, can't even get them to send me a quote. The crappy part is I am about to move, wanted to get this effort put to bed before I did. If anyone has a contact at Shoretel that is solid I would really appreciate it. |
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The crappy part is I am about to move, wanted to get this effort put to bed before I did. If anyone has a contact at Shoretel that is solid I would really appreciate it. Quoted:
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That really sucks. I hope they aren't fucking up their service in the rush to knock expenses down like everyone else seems to be doing these days. That's really disappointing. They were one of the few outfits out there that didn't give me really inconsistent experiences. Give 'em both barrels when they do get around to contacting you. Quoted:
Well, tried the Shoretel route, can't even get them to send me a quote. The crappy part is I am about to move, wanted to get this effort put to bed before I did. If anyone has a contact at Shoretel that is solid I would really appreciate it. You should send me an IM, if this is something you want to move quickly on. |
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Meraki is launching a phone system. https://cantechit.com/2016/05/17/meraki-goes-fuller-stack-with-voip/ |
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Quoted: Meraki is launching a phone system. https://cantechit.com/2016/05/17/meraki-goes-fuller-stack-with-voip/ That is actually pretty slick. Meraki has been a bit of a mixed bag. The setup and idea is slick, the license model sucks. |