[geeks] IP Telephony

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Jul 31, 2007, at 11:30 AM, Dave K wrote:

> On 7/31/07, Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes I have experience with VOIP, one involving a client with some 50
>> phones and 3 locations.
>
>> What kind of questions are you trying to get answers to?
>
> To be honest, I'm at the stage where I'm not sure what the questions
> we need to ask should be!
>
> For one thing, just hearing that real people in the real world are
> using these things.  "Gut" reaction opinions would be interesting too.
>  And perhaps a "neutral" resource to help compare the various claims
> all the salesmen are making.
>

They are being used, and it is a growing part of the market, that is  
for sure.

One thing to understand is that there are multiple points of failure,  
that you will now be responsible for, that previously was the phone  
company's problem.

> BTW, we're looking for a solution for 30-50 users, in a new building
> (so no issues with legacy anything to worry about (a new network will
> be installed too)).  One "fixed" location, and 8-12 remote users.  So
> far we've seen systems from Cisco, Avaya, Altigen, and Shoretel, along
> with a couple of remote-hosted services (ATS, Covad, and ATX, as I
> recall).

The "hosted PBX" model has some popularity because there is no up- 
front cost and because the locally-located box becomes a single point  
of failure.  Higher-end PBXes have failover and load balancing. A  
hybrid solution is to buy something like SwitchVox or Fonality.com  
and then colocate it.

You can check into Vitelity.com for a hosted PBX supplier.  They have  
15,000 phones in operation and have things pretty well automated, and  
are also competitively priced. (hit me offlist if you want contact  
information).

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
patrick at zill.net