Solutions for Small Business VoIP? 232
MajorBlunder asks: "I'm part of the IT department of a small but prospering software company. We have recently filled the capacity of the POTS PBX phone system we currently have installed. We are currently looking into switching over to a VoIP phone system. We have a sizable IT staff in proportion to the rest of the company, so we'd like to be able to maintain the hardware/software in house as much as possible. I wanted to ask the Slashdot readership what experiences they have had with switching over to from POTS to VoIP. Any recomendations for full end to end solutions would be appreciated, and recomendations of things to avoid would be great."
Re: Asterisk (Score:2, Insightful)
Such a system needn't be *cheap* exactly in order to be quite a bit less expensive than typical PBXes, which are usually overkill for small businesses, as well as for any but the most elaborate homes. (Should be doable for a few hundred dollars, I'd guess.)
Or am I just missing that someone is selling such a beast already?
Small Business Voip Implementation (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting outbound VOIP Lines might not be mature enough for your company yet. There are always call quality issues unless you manage to get physically near your termination provider and you have a fat pipe from your offices.
The fact that you're a part of a development house is going to help out a lot when customizing your solution. Asterisk really isn't that complicated - modifying it so that it fits your companies needs and provides true business benefit is probably the biggest thing. (Like integrating it with your existing CRM solution or back ending VoIP to your database).
There is a PDF which helps on the overall analysis and how Asterisk can be pretty usefull for smaller businesses =
A Voip Small to Medium Business Analysis [skyyconsulting.com]
Don't forget about the network (Score:4, Insightful)
You can also get switches/modules nowadays that have Power over Ethernet (PoE). So of the two RJ-45 connections (you have the physical cabling for this, right?) in a cube, one connects their PC and the other connects the VoIP appliance/phone back to the PoE port. The phone gets it's power from the ethernet cable. If those switches and the rest of your key servers and network are on UPS, the phones still work when the power goes out.
Good luck.
IPT tips (Score:1, Insightful)
The best tip I can give is to make sure that you have a good infrastructure in place, that supports QOS (quality of service). Typically I only work with Cisco equipment, but I can say that this is an important step. This helps preserve needed bandwidth for call setup and for current active calls. Without it calls will drop, and you will experience choppy / robotic conversations. A Cisco 3560 access switch would be a good choice, as it allows you to use auto qos, and modify the qos statements to fit your needs.
You also might want to look into equipment that can do SRST (survivable remote site telephony) if the IPT (IP telephony) equipment isn't in the same office as the phones. This will allow you to do basic phone service for the office (make and receive calls) with out the need of the CCM (Cisco call manager).
In short, not sure if Cisco Call Manager is a good solution for the size of your company, but since you own
Hope this helps ~MP
Re:Cisco (Score:3, Insightful)
Different strokes for different folks, but you'd be stupid to dismiss either option out of hand.
Re:My experience (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, for those of you clever enough to know the guy is asking about asterisk... that part is probably obvious to him. He's more concerned with how to manage a network, bandwidth and hardware wise, to use this. With maybe a little "what's the best VOIP phone for your money" thrown in.
Re: Asterisk (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a intensely complicated thing with lots of options and lots of issues to deal with.. Anything that is easy to use or plug-n-play would actually make things more complicated and difficult to setup..
As Asterix stands now it is perfectly good as top-of-the-line solution. It has hardware support and interlopy and is quite more well known in telephony circles rather then in computer ones.
If Asterix is to complicated and difficult for you to setup then you have no business setting something like that up for a big company. If you want there are commercial systems based around asterix that you can purchase.
Geico saved me money on my car insurance. (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+Wishlist [voip-info.org]
Plus if one's running a call-center one needs to be able to keep track of overall phone system stats, as well as per-agent.
Had a good experience with Zultys (Score:1, Insightful)
I found out about Zultys at commweb.com - they have articles on a lot of alternatives to the big guys (Cisco, Avaya) and Asterisk.
Just a couple of tips from someone who's been there:
- it's a lot harder than you'd think to get a fax machine working on a VOIP system, reliably, so consider electronic fax seriously (unless you honestly don't need fax)
- it's worth your while to catalog all the features you're used to having in your circuit-switched PBX, and ask your candidate new provider how they're implemented, exactly - even the small stuff
The Asterisk site is a great resource, even if you go with somebody else's SIP system. We used Cisco phones but I don't know that I'd do that again, as they've been dropping like flies (20% of the original set have been returned for replacement, and some of the replacements have, too).
VOIP is, without a doubt, a lot more fun to work with than the old circuit-switched stuff.