[geeks] Phone system suggestions?

[Nate]

On Sep 23, 2005, at 11:00 PM, Eric Railine wrote:

> There's been a number of good responses to this post, though I think
> noone's asked a couple fundamental questions:
> - what are the business requirements for the phone system?  An
> extension for every employee?  Voicemail for every employee?  Simple
> hunt groups?  Simple IVR?  Complicated IVR?  ACD?  What kind of
> reporting, and to what level of detail?

There's not much in terms of requirements - every employee (except  
most of the interns) has and will continue to have an extension.   
When you dial into the company, you get a voicemail directory where  
you can enter an extension or dial in a person's name to get to  
them.  The only limitations have been out wiring infrastructure -  
we're moving because we're out of space and have people sitting where  
there aren't wall jacks for data or voice at the moment, so a lot of  
folks are without their own phones right now.

> - What do you have for a LEC connection, and what do  you anticipate
> in the near future - just a number of POTS, a PRI, multiple PRIs,
> etc.?

All I know is that they're talking of growing to just over 100 people  
in the next six months.  In the past six months we've gone from 35 to  
70.  AFAIK all we have is just a number of POTS (maybe 4 or 5?), and  
there hasn't been talk of going to anything else.  There's only one  
fax machine, and there are only 5 or so people who make regular  
outgoing calls, as the business doesn't involve that many other  
companies or partners and I'd say email is the primary means of  
communication.  I would know where to start on evaulating a PRI vs.  
multiple PRIs or anything else, and I barely have the time to even  
try to figure out where to start since I'm massively overworked and  
underpaid.

> - Where do you/your company draw the line between "not crazy
> expensive", expensive, and "crazy expensive"?

Good question.  This company doesn't have a steady stream of income,  
it's all project based, and right now, there's money.  The forces  
within the company that decide where that money goes and when is  
somewhat... shall we say, mercurial.

> - Do you already have all your cabling run that you're going to need
> for the extensions?  If you've already got phone lines run anywhere
> you need them, going with non-VOIP might make the most sense, but if
> you have to run new cabling anyway, the total cost might be cheaper
> with a VOIP solution.

We're going to be running new lines for everything at the new place.   
I'm pitching for wall plates with at least three RJ-45 CAT6 TP jacks  
running to a patch panel.  The Panasonic hybrid uses RJ-11 wires to  
the phone, with the inner pair for the analog extensions and the  
outer pair for the digital extensions, but I'm going to do everything  
I can to *not* tie us to the one four-wire RJ-11 jack + two RJ-45 TP  
jacks like we have at our current location, and heck even pitch for  
just four RJ-45 CAT6 TP jacks because we have lots of people with two  
and sometimes three computers at their stations now and we could use  
that flexibility.

Hmm, are VOIP phone systems like Asterisk typically run over the same  
physical TCP/IP network as the LAN?  I'm really a newbie when it  
comes to VOIP stuff like that...

> - How important is your phone service to your business?  That's not a
> flippant question.  In today's environment of a PC-for-every-employee
> and a browser-for-every-customer, people tend to forget how important
> simple telephone service is to your customers,

We're a developer, our customer(s) are publisher(s), so there's a  
very small number of customer(s).

> your sales people,

We have no dedicated sales staff ourselves (just the CEO and project  
producers, not exactly sales staff).

> your support staff,

That would be me and my one IT assistant, and right now we have only  
employee who's remote all the time, and another who is remote some of  
the time.

> your accounting department,

One and a half people.

> etc.  You can lose
> a/multiple servers for 5 minutes and no one might notice.  You can
> lose your network for a minute or two, and few people will notice
> and/or will assume it's their client.

Actually if there's so much as a hiccup in either the primary source  
code database server or the internet I hear about it in seconds.   
(Which reminds me, and this is off my original topic I realize -  
about once every three months one of two x86 Intel P4 machines with  
onboard Intel ethernet running Windows 2000 and XP have locked up  
solid and as long as they are plugged into a switch, in this case  
either a managed or unmanaged Netgear switch, it hoses all traffic on  
the switch.  Turning off or rebooting the locked machine of course  
solves the problem, as does unplugging it from the switch.  Rebooting  
the switch with it still plugged in and locked makes no difference  
and traffic remains hosed.  Has anyone seen something like this  
before, and is there any way to solve it other than finding which  
machine has crashed/locked, i.e. anything I can do at the managed  
switch level?  Is the x86 architecture the only one which can do this  
to a switch or have folks seen this happen with other machines too?)

> Lose your phone service for 30
> seconds and you will be amazed at the number of people you have at
> your desk demanding an immediate answer and an unqualified assurance
> that it will never occur again.

That hasn't happened yet, but it might be just as significant as  
losing the network, at least for some (important) people.

> How important phone service is to
> your business should be one of the strongest indicators of the kind of
> phone system you need and the level of outside/VAR support you should
> have for it.

It'll be a tough pitch to massively upgrade the phone service though  
because the important people don't see phones as essential as data,  
because it isn't what runs the company most of the time day-to-day  
(and the important people all have their digital phones and haven't  
experienced any service outages).

> Having said that, and having admin'd multiple Mitel PBXes over the
> last 6 years, I can wholeheartedly recommend them for serious business
> use.  While not friendly to your average PC user, anyone comfortable
> with CLI (though most of the interface is actually menu-driven, sort
> of like ncurses) can pick it up fairly quickly and comfortably.

I've managed a Lucent Meridian system before.  It was OK.  Biggest  
pain was the fact that the idiots who had it installed had the  
extensions going from a Lucent patch panel to *punchdown* so I had to  
custom crimp RJ-45 cables with a jack on one end and bare wires I'd  
punch down every time I wanted to hook up (or in some cases just  
move) an extension.  If I was just moving an extension, I could do it  
on the system end, but it was a pain (what is it with phone systems  
not including a "swap extension x with extension y" function?)

> Most
> importantly, they're *very* stable - I had several years of 100%
> uptime, and the downtime for the others was always in a service window
> for a specific upgrade or change, with a single 5 minute exception
> otherwise - and easily expandable as your needs/company grow.

Stable is nice, but I'd also really love it if moving a phone didn't  
take 15-20 minutes out of my day.

Thanks for all the questions and points!

- Nate