Our company currently has 13 offices throughout the United States. Up to now, it was the responsibility of each office to deal with their local telco issues, from purchasing a phone system, to dealing with the local telco in setting up lines ordered and setup.
Our IT group is now in the process of developing a long-term strategy to manage these systems as well as identifying one manufacturer to purchase any new phone system for future office purchases. Basically we are going to standardize on this system.
Part of our long-term strategy is whether we should be considering VoIP capabilities in future systems. Even if we were not to implement now, we need to ask ourselves, where are we going to be in the 3 to 4 years? Should we purchase systems now with this capabilities for the future? This is one of ?many? questions that we are asking at this time.
While looking at VoIP, we are looking at both a IP-PBX and a ?pure? IP solution. They both appear to have advantages and disadvantages.
I would be interested in knowing what manufacture and information others have found to date on a VoIP manufactures and their products.
Some ?basic? information on our organizations include:
-13 offices
-280 employees
-Average office size: 25-30
-Our current WAN is business grade DSL
-The only things we share over our WAN is email, and access to our intranet
-A few mobile users (15)
-We are paying $0.031 per minute long distance
-Average cost of LD for an office is $500
-Average cost for DSL lines is $150
As you see, we run a pretty lean internal data network and our voice costs are pretty low. Except for local costs. VERY HIGH.
Companies that we are currently looking at include Nortel (BCM), Avaya, Cisco & 3com.
Any feedback that anyone could supply would be helpful.
Thank you in advance.
