we have just put our 5000 user on our hosted system and we are seing sales of pabx drop like a stone. do you think the days of a piece of tin numberd when its so easy to install and maintain on hosted???

I definitely think new manufacturing of key systems and most pabx systems are short for this world except the CS1000 and I hate to say it the IP office. Cs1000 is the only PBX left in the world that can still be 100 percent TDM without IP phones and is still very popular.

with that said, I've found clients in small towns who truly appreciate a good refurbished Nortel Norstar system because they are tanks and keep working and working. Whe the phones get old, buy new t series on the Internet. When you want VoIP, but VoIP via ATA and hook into your system the old fashioned CO punch down way.

Ip Pbx systems are definitely not dead.

I disagree.
VOIP systems are a gimmick.
No flexibility.
Poor quality of conversations.
Too much downtime.
Un-green (high heat output).
High priced phones.
High price to re-do infrastructure which is usually already in place.
PABX is here to stay.

I disagree.
VOIP systems are a gimmick.
No flexibility.
Poor quality of conversations.
Too much downtime.
Un-green (high heat output).
High priced phones.
High price to re-do infrastructure which is usually already in place.
PABX is here to stay.

how can you say that and i was talking about hosted. but they are

more flexable
if voip is setup the quality will be better
we have 99999 up time
greener that 300-400 seperate pabx we would have to install
phones are same price as a good quality keyphone
most times no need to redo infrastructure

and i hate to say it the pabx is dead voip is the way foward and you ither need to get traind up or you will be out of work in 3-4 years if you cant work with voip

The PBX is not going anywhere for a while. You will either see it as some sort of Hybrid or a pure VoIP system but you will see it.

"Cs1000 is the only PBX left in the world that can still be 100 percent TDM without IP phones "

Not quite true, unless you have a single cabinet or chassis on a new system. The phones might be TDM, but the connections between the cabinets are IP. Several other systems can be TDM only, such as the Avaya CM, but you don't see many 100% TDM systems being sold anymore. I miss the days of the Option 11, 61 and 81 where the only IP that existed was an ELAN connection to CallPilot.

Traditional key/PBX hardware will continue to sell on the secondary market. The small end user (only a couple of POTS lines) may be best served with a small key system like the Avaya Partner ACS.

I "FEATURE 00"

Is the PABX Dead? Heck no! We have many many customers where IP and/or hosted makes neither financial nor technical sense. They may have a single PRI and 400+ phones - mostly used for internal communications. Some may only be used once per day and the cost of extending Ethernet would be out of this world. Use one 30-year-old cable pair or install new cable? Easy choice. Hosted is just the equivalent of centrex with keysets (as was offered by some COs with ISDN BRI). It can be very appropriate in the right situation such as a bank with offices all over town. But for a large manufacturing company or resort with phones scattered everywhere - much less viable.

I doubt Avaya would agree with the OP. They didnt spend a billion buying Nortels pbx business just to let hosted take over.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

Quote (hairlesssupportmonkey)

"I doubt Avaya would agree with the OP. They didn't spend a billion buying Nortel's pbx business just to let hosted take over. "

Of course, that's not to say that Avaya can't make a bad decision...

The problem is most people do not understand hosted or its flexability we can install a hosted system and run analog phones on ATA from 1 extn up to 30 per moduel so there is no need to re cable and we have sites from 1 handset up to 800 dont get me rong i have installed pabx for 20 years but nothing is as flexable as hosted

Quote (hostedtelephone)

The problem is most people do not understand hosted or its flexability we can install a hosted system and run analog phones on ATA from 1 extn up to 30 per moduel so there is no need to re cable and we have sites from 1 handset up to 800 dont get me rong i have installed pabx for 20 years but nothing is as flexable as hosted

I didn't say that it couldn't be done. But is it cost-effective? Generally the advantage of hosted is reduction of hardware expense. But you start adding gateways and ATA units, now you've got hardware. Plus the cost of service. Like anything else, there is no such thing as "one size fits all".

I love hosted, but the issue tends to be the customer sees it as cheap, and then never bothers to spend any money on the broadband that delivers it. The amount of people that run their whole business off one broadband connection is astounding then wonder why VoIP gets a bad rap.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

My biggest fear with a hosted environment in my line of work (Healthcare) is that if not done correctly with multiple points of connectivity to the world using multiple vendors, etc then the weakest link is your broadband connection. With a system in-house, whether it be PBX, VOIP or Hybrid, you can build in a bit more sustainability in the event you lose your broadband connection. Of course if our connection to the CO/dialtone provider goes down it's kind of a moot point, but the plan we are headed for right now is to have a Hybrid VIOP system that is about 95% VOIP, but has TDM phones in all of the most critical locations. So if the nurses desk has 2 phones now, one will be VOIP and one will be TDM even though the phones will look exactly the same. If we lose a network switch, or an edge router, or some idiot vendor wrecks a fiber run or whatever, those locations will still have service, and can call and be called in an emergency. Of course if the whole system tanks that will be a moot point, and if we lose connectivity to the CO it will be the same, but it does add a measure of redundancy, which, along with redundant critical electronics in the mix can help. We also have a WAN of sorts that connects all of our sites together, and each site will also be able to stand on its own if it loses the network connection to the mother ship.

In my humble opinion it's hard to do that with a hosted environment. In my town, with one primary last-mile carrier there are only so many ways to redundantly get service into our buildings without costly spending on special outside plant from additional vendors. Our city does have dark fiber plant in place, and we're definitely looking into what it will cost to use some of that for redundancy, but again, it will be quite expensive to roll it out....

I'm sure there are other companies thinking along that same logic stream, and I'm pretty comfortable that in-house equipment is still going to be around for at least the next 10 - 15 years, and at that point it will be time to look at the upgrade path again - who knows - it may be a completely different world then!

Quote (hostedtelephone)
The problem is most people do not understand hosted or its flexability we can install a hosted system......

I'm a little confused because as I know it a Hoseted solution is a system off site and not installed at a customer location.

the thing peole dont understand is the weak link in any disater recovery is the tin on the wall if that dies or you are flooded out you are stuck with no service. With hosted you can go and work at home anuther office or even starbcks and you will still be conected thats somthing you cant do with tin as if its dead you are stuck. you are also not reliant on just 1 conection in a fail you can use your data conection and we have even put gsm backup on some sites.

"the thing peole dont understand is the weak link in any disater recovery is the tin on the wall if that dies or you are flooded out you are stuck with no service."


I call crap on that.
All our IP PBX's all have redundant backups, and we happily bounce calls between sites for 0 cost, including around much of Europe, utilizing local call charges where possible for break out. We've people sat in the UK connected directly to other sites in Europe as that's where they do much of their business.
You make out hosted is the only way to work at other locations. Rubbish. We have people using softphones over VPN's all the time. Everything you say you do we probably do just as well if not better.
We have multiple ISDN lines going to multiple Carrier DC's, and multiple carriers. These in turn go to multiple proxies and in-turn go to multiple PBX's
Our kit switches lines in an instant, we see back up links kicking in all the time because we have such low threshold before it switches to a back up route .
Now throw in voice-mail (including the ability to send it to multiple email addresses), full call centre facilities, visual call control, IVR's (as many as we want for no cost), customised call routing, least cost routing and on and on.

So again, what is the benefit for us?

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

There is no way on earth VOIP can give the quality of voice transmission as TDM. It can only approximate TDM service.
And what about down time?
What about energy waste?
What about costs to implement?
I'm going to a system that can do it all, so that we can get the best bang for the buck where we need it (Avaya S8500 with G650 gateways).

There is no way on earth VOIP can give the quality of voice transmission as TDM. It can only approximate TDM service.
And what about down time?
What about energy waste?
What about costs to implement?
I'm going to a system that can do it all, so that we can get the best bang for the buck where we need it (Avaya S8500 with G650 gateways).

what rubbish

what do you think all the carriers use in there core network "VOIP"
What energy waste ? 1 server running 50-60 thousand phones is allot more eficiant than tin on wall
no inital hardwhere cost and just a monthly rental
you allways have the most up to date system with no expencive upgrades for new featurs you just get them

Sympology (MIS)


11 Jul 12 5:36





"the thing peole dont understand is the weak link in any disater recovery is the tin on the wall if that dies or you are flooded out you are stuck with no service."


I call crap on that.
All our IP PBX's all have redundant backups, and we happily bounce calls between sites for 0 cost, including around much of Europe, utilizing local call charges where possible for break out. We've people sat in the UK connected directly to other sites in Europe as that's where they do much of their business.
You make out hosted is the only way to work at other locations. Rubbish. We have people using softphones over VPN's all the time. Everything you say you do we probably do just as well if not better.
We have multiple ISDN lines going to multiple Carrier DC's, and multiple carriers. These in turn go to multiple proxies and in-turn go to multiple PBX's
Our kit switches lines in an instant, we see back up links kicking in all the time because we have such low threshold before it switches to a back up route .
Now throw in voice-mail (including the ability to send it to multiple email addresses), full call centre facilities, visual call control, IVR's (as many as we want for no cost), customised call routing, least cost routing and on and on.

So again, what is the benefit for us?


in a nutshell cost and profit and life expectancy how much did all that kit cost and if you are a dealer when you have sold it thats it appart from support we get a ongoing support contract plus ongoing rentel and what happends in 6-7 years time its all out of date and unsuportable. look at avaya and how they change there sw versions so fast and then dont support you on older versions

Here is 1 mans opinion that was just done Jan 0f 2012. Now I know he's just using the Xorcom PBX as his system but hey that's what he sells...

Hosted PBX Services Cost Analysis
versus
Xorcom Premise Based IP PBX

http://www.xorcomusa.com/docs/hosted-pbx-vs-xorcom...

Thats just sales paperwork jazzed up to look like a white paper when you look into it properly the figures dont lie we can normally save a customer 10 - 15% over 5 years on cost

Nope we are not a dealer, we're an end user.

How much did all that cost? Actually not as much as your going to think.

However it gives ultimate flexibly and the hosted provider can't match or charge for every minor change. Bear in mind we can change 50 - 100 user accounts per week, and have to set up new dial plans, queues, ivrs, on weekly basis.
What about call charges? We get to pick and choose our carriers, and pay 0 for international call between branches, breaking out at local rate.
As for software updates well the issue we have is "cloud" solutions choose when they do it and what new features are rammed upon you. We choose when we apply updates.

As for cost savings, we were "forced" by people who bought into the cloudy crap for a fax to email solution and currently is running about 50% more expensive if we'd bought an in house solution with redundant back up.
An how about audio conferencing? We have in house solution that has paid for itself within 10 months compared to the cheapest hosted solution out there. So the next several years are effectivly cost free.

As for upgrade. We still have an Option81 that's about 20 years old still ticking along, hooked up to the IP network. It's going to go eventually, but it;s still going. Still these IP PBX's are not as solid are they? What's that, we've just replaced one that was 7 years old, no other reason than they we're moving site and seemed like a good idea to bring the server into our DC's isnstead of onsite.

Yes hosted is suitable for many, but don't spout utter crap saying it's the only way. That's sales talk and I've been in this business way to long to see right past that.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

On the surface it does seem to be nice to have someone else monitor your phone switch and make upgrades and I suppose having automatic upgrades would be nice, but I would have a couple of concerns about that.
1.) Will the upgrades be done on a timely basis and at a time that is convenient for our hospital.
2.) What kind of technician will be monitoring our switch. Will it be a fully trained tech, or will it be someone who has been trained to call the next higher level of competence when an alarm is raised.
3.) Are you really going to bill me for all my moves, adds and changes.
4.) Nearly half of the phones here at this hospital are analog.
That means a packet switch in every wing on every floor. Do you really think they can approach the reliability of analog cards in a phone switch.
5.) If a packet switch goes down the wing is down. I don't believe that's the case with a wing served by many cards in an on site PABX.
By the way I don't have much heat at all in my switch room, but when I go into a packet switch closet serving POE phones I experience a great deal of heat.
Just my thoughts. Tell me where I'm wrong.

Yes hosted is suitable for many, but don't spout utter crap saying it's the only way. That's sales talk and I've been in this business way to long to see right past that.

How can you say you have been "in the bussiness" when you are a end user have you tryed hosted and all the features it gives you

The following is from a site that mainly pushes Virtual/Hosted solutions and even they see the need for an in house system.

The hosted VoIP solution is typically best-suited for smaller businesses that do not have the in-house expertise to install or maintain on-premises IP PBX equipment.

But as a small business grows and becomes more established, the managers may come to a point where they are adding lines more frequently, trying to facilitate telecommuting and accommodate "road warriors", and perhaps even adding branch offices. There may come a point where that expansion means that it's time to reconsider hosted VoIP and install an IP PBX in-house.
To read the rest

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/business-articles/Re...

Oh and as far as how can an end user know the business; apparently you don’t know some of the end-users. I’m talking enterprises where they are responsible for 50 or more sites & 20k handsets and up. It’s their business to know the business if you know what I mean.

Bottom line, I like most here fill that Hosted has it’s place but by know means is going to replace the PBX anytime soon if ever. Today’s Hosted is yesterday’s Centrex…….

I've used 3 options in my lab, an IP PBX from Emetrotel, a BCM from Nortel, and direct hosted SIP with VOIP.MS and Nortel SIP phones.

So far the best option seems to be the IP PBX from Emetrotel, it has the most features and functions.

The BCM is very good too, but it's a shame it's discontinued.

The hosted Nortel 11xx and 12xx phones I've directly logged into VOIP.MS work great on my broadband connection, but I've tried setting it up on other's routers and networks and have run into problems with NAT and things that most of the service providers are not equipped or knowledgeable enough in VOIP to fix. I love the setup when the network cooperated.

I have 2,200 stations and I can't imagine going 'hosted', or strictly VoIP.

"How can you say you have been "in the bussiness" when you are a end user have you tryed hosted and all the features it gives you"

By end user, I am a sysadmin,not a reseller; not a support company; not anyone in a vested interest in making as much money as possible.
My primary aim is to give as possible a service to my "customers" i.e. co-workers as possible.

We have 3500 staff, 75% on in House VoIP systems.

Features? Here's house
Free international inter-branch calls - Check.
Free VM - Check
No cost to any changes we make - Check
Changes done EXACTLY when we want them, even if it's a public holiday.
Free Conference calls with up 120 in any conference - check
Free integration for audio calls into our VC systems - Check
Direct lines to our carriers i.e. in THEIR DC;'s - check
direct lines in our mobile (cell) provider - check
Desktop client - check
Web client - check
Remote home working - check
Free call recording (including call centre) - check
Call control from mobiles and landlines - check.

Do you want me to go on?

Oh and one last thing, what happens if the hosted solution goes belly up or decides it no longer want to do that line of business, then what? Nortel was a company with a multi-billion turn over and seen went crashing down. Did our phones suddenly stop working, well going by the ancient 81 still chugging along, I'd say now.

As stated hosted has it's place.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

Features? Here's house
Free international inter-branch calls - Check. YEP
Free VM - Check YEP
No cost to any changes we make - Check YEP WE DONT CHARGE
Changes done EXACTLY when we want them, even if it's a public holiday. YEP CUSTOMER HAS FULL ACCSESS
Free Conference calls with up 120 in any conference - check YEP FULL MEET ME CONF FREE
Free integration for audio calls into our VC systems - Check YEP
Direct lines to our carriers i.e. in THEIR DC;'s - check YEP
direct lines in our mobile (cell) provider - check WE OFFER FREE CALLS TO AND FROM OUR MOBILE
Desktop client - check YEP
Web client - check YEP
Remote home working - check YEP NO VPN OR ROUTING REQ
Free call recording (including call centre) - check YEP WITH NO INITIAL OUTAY
Call control from mobiles and landlines - check. YEP

NO MASSIVE INITIAL COST YEP
BETTER REDUNDENCY YEP
FULL DISASTER RECOVERY YEP
SYSTEM HOUSED IN MAIN DATA CENTER IN LONDON WITH ALL MAJOR CARRIERS YEP
PUT A PHONE IN ANY COUNTRY WITOUT VPN YEP
SOFTPHONE FOR LAPTOP YEP

DO I NEED TO GO ON

In the United States, it has been estimated that around 500,000 SMBs currently use a hosted PBX service, representing an $800 million market. In a U.S. telecom service business of about $336 billion in annual revenue, hosted IP telephony represents about two-tenths of one percent of total industry revenue.

Looks like it might take a while....

You guys make a pretty good case for hosted.
One point I should make. When Nortel sold out, nothing changed.
Of course that equipment, at some point, will no longer be upgraded (most of it still is upgrade-able).
Now tell me what happens when the company who owns the hosted system goes belly up.
I suspect, in a matter of minutes the power will be shut off and another business will move into the building and the customers are left high and dry.
Unlikely scenario??? Probably, but it does make me wonder.

bosker, my point was hosted IP telephony only represents about two-tenths of one percent of total industry revenue.

So from that I would say the on site PBX is here for a while....

In the good ol' USA I'd say you're right.
But these guys do have a few good point, for the right niche and with the right supplier. One would sure want to do his due diligence.
It kind of seems like maybe Great Britian has Government owned telephones, but I'm not sure.
That would eliminate that last problem I mentioned, and create a whole bunch more.

Quote (BoskerTheArkite)

Great Britian has Government owned telephones

Nope - all privately owned, but govt regulated.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

Hi
All i will say about hosted systems is high bandwidth needed and that costs money

why high badwith?? using g711 its only 100k per call and you only need that when you are on a call. the conection bandwith for updates on the phone is only a few k so on a standard adsl for only £20 or 30 a month you can have approx 8 concurent phone calls and as many phones as you like. try getting 8 bt analog lines or isdn for £30 a month.

"why high badwith?? using g711 its only 100k per call"

Actually closer to 135kbs per call (unless you are not using duplex or don't use RTCP).

Doesn't sound much, but multiple by 100 or a 1000 simultaneous calls and soon stack up.

Then of course you will need a decent QoS link to your provider (surely you not going to rely on a congested, unmanaged Internet link are you?)

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

From hosted:
"you can have approx 8 concurent phone calls and as many phones as you like"

So hosted from what you’re saying I only pay for actual calls? You don’t charge per set?

why high badwith?? using g711 its only 100k per call"

Actually closer to 135kbs per call (unless you are not using duplex or don't use RTCP).

Doesn't sound much, but multiple by 100 or a 1000 simultaneous calls and soon stack up.

Then of course you will need a decent QoS link to your provider (surely you not going to rely on a congested, unmanaged Internet link are you?)

Where are you getting the 135k from?? at the max its about 100k.all the links we use are qos as our providor has a direct connect into our data center

you can have approx 8 concurent phone calls and as many phones as you like"

So hosted from what you’re saying I only pay for actual calls? You don’t charge per set?

no what i was saying is that you could have about 8 concurent calls on a normal broadband speed you pay per handset you have but that can grow and reduce as you need it.The outher benifit is you have unlimited incomming calls E.G you could have 1 phone that could take 1000 simaltanios calls at once. Now i know thats not a realistic senario but we have allot of sites with just a few handsets but they use voicemail at there busy period so your customer will never get a busy tone

I am glad i retired after 35 years in the biz!!!!

www.thetelephonemanonline.com

Indeed, G711 is supposed to "emulate" the quality of a 64K ISDN call. G.711 is less than 100K (64K + overheads) but when designing the network its best to over state your budget so 100K is a nice round number to add up with!

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk652/tk698/techno...

ACSS - SME
General Geek

Good to know.

TL:DR

Data is where the $$$$ are

Voice budgets suck

PBX manufacturers are migrating to make money, don't fool yourself. All other variables are secondary.

**********************************************
What's most important is that you realise ... There is no spoon.

Well hosted telephone.... the good thing is you believe in what you do.....

Now hosted and the good old PABX, or a new on site VOIP system can co-exist.

In the end ith will be the customer that will decide what best suits his needs.

Like cloud computing it is a matter of trust, some cases just can not be better done on-site,
like some things probarbly can be done better in a hosted way.

A hospital is a good example of a place where hosted is not such a good idea, they like to feel save and self-supporting with all kinds of back ups and redundancies. There main objective will be to have a full fualt tolerant system for their INHOUSE communications.

Another example could be a hotel, they have loads of rooms with phones, most of them analog. The phone is a service. No one calls with a room phone, they just make personal calls with the cell phone. A hotel struggels to make money, in the long run a onsite system with a bunch of analog phones is cheaper for them then the monthly costs for a bunch of ip phones from a hosted platform....
(and do not forget the integration to their PMS system)

Large factory sites, with loads of analog and digital phones spread over their campus using good old copper wire, cause the do not want ip. Offcourse wireless can be a solution.. but when you are in the chemical or petrol business you have to put safety first. So they use special phones that can not cause fires of explosions. And they use it primairily for internal comms, or the government wants them to have that all in place for safety purposes

What you say:
"The outher benifit is you have unlimited incomming calls E.G you could have 1 phone that could take 1000 simaltanios calls at once"

So if 5 of your customers on a regular monday morning at 10 AM receive a 1000 calls each, the hosted platform will have let say 10000 incoming trunk-lines, so the other 50 customers still have 5000 incoming lines available, but what if those 50 customers decide to make 200 outgoing calls each at 10:01 AM.... still nos busy-tone....
I agree very unlikely... but working on call centers for the last 20 years I kind of know something about non-blocking and erlang

I agree with you for a new startup, in agreenfield situation, or even smaller companies getting rid of their old PABX... yeah a hosted solution can be a good deal....

Now what if a company comes to you guys for lets say 1500 phones and mialboxes and enough capacity for those enduser to maka and recieve calls, they put in a contract for lets say 36 months.... and after 8 months they go belly up.... there CFO just cant crack the numbers, so the downsize and there are only a 100 people left in the company....so they reduce their sets to only a 100.... You guys just run in pick up 1400 used phones... do not charge them.... and hav a little over-capacity in your system????

if so.... let me know when you guys come to the european main land.... got some deals then

Please let me know if the information that was provided is helpfull.
Edwin Plat
A.K.A. Europe

There's lots of things I can do remotely for a customer, but sometimes you need to go on-site. Hosted solutions rarely have field-trained technicians; they mostly have engineers and when you call to get service, you get the old "reboot the phone", reboot the router, etc. Unless you are deep in it, and then you get to level 1, level 2 and so on.

Plus if you talk flexibility, while on site, my customer can ask for a 100 different scenarios and I will get it going, because of what: personalized service; they will always see or talk to the same handful of people, not talk to one end of the country and another depending of the hour. We can train them to manage their system.

AS for updates, if it ain't broke, dont fix it. Patches are there to correct bugs; upgrades if you want a new feature. I'm not gonna cram an update down my customer's throat just because. My brother in law is using hosted, and he never talks to the last guy, and damn for 3 years all he wanted is to have his own MOH for publicity; can't do it!

As far as fire and flood, give me a break! They are insured, and if it burns down or I have water up to my thighs, I'm sure as hell I won't be installing a new system soon and am nowhere near their priority!!

If I troubleshoot, I can look within the same location at equipment, wiring, phones... etc I can test everything myself.

I guess it could be a viable solution for some small business; but look around on different forums; nowadays with VoIP, everyone is an expert in telecom; tons of small business will install a 3CX or Asterisk and buy phones on eBay, rather than pay us or you.

One other thing: let's say one of my customer wants to take his business somewhere else once their warranty/service contracted is expired: check the yellow pages or go on your system manufacturer's site and search for another certified installer. We don't handcuff anybody.

Much of the same rhetoric used in the early eighties to argue digital and analog is now used for (or against) IP.

--Consider, there are children being born today that will never need a 10 digit phone number or a traditional landline. Despite our technical understanding, talk, text, image and video are singly known as communication. The expectation is already there for a single device to be equally adept at disconnecting any media for urban, rural subscriber and business use.

Voice Quality
Dependability
Cost

These factors are reasonable but are only part of an assessment as is the limits of secondary or grey market support long after the manufacturer's have abandoned the product. Mistakes will be made both ways.

Five years ago I spoke to a student who complained bitterly about limited student loans and grants available yet thought nothing of a $700.00 cellular bill in one month. I replied, "I'm sorry, as a taxpayer, I'm insulted. There is no way we can possibly afford to send you to school. I haven't paid $700.00 a year for my residential phone service."

After 30 years of involvement in analog and digital communications; if a single wireless or fibre IP interconnection can facilitate talk, text, image, application and video, regardless of device (handheld, pc or gaming console) to assist me in work, educational access, personal communications and entertainment, sign me up and I'll gladly push the CS1000 off the loading dock.

KE407122

"The phone was working fine before it knocked over my coffee."

As far as fire and flood, give me a break! They are insured, and if it burns down or I have water up to my thighs, I'm sure as hell I won't be installing a new system soon and am nowhere near their priority!!

its not about that its about disaster recovery and bussiness continuity. You tell me of any pabx that if the building burns down you can have the users up and running in 10 min in any location in the country keeping all there numbers and ddi numbers without any need to setup diverts.i can setup as many phones as you want in any area code in about 20 min you name me a pabx that you can do that on.

Seems to me that if my building burns down, I'm out of commission anyway, for days or weeks, until I can make some arrangements. So who cares about a 20 minute restoral.
On the other hand what if the building hosting my PBX burns down? I'm losing business because my phones are down for how long?
This thinking actually seems to sway me in favor of on-site.
You need assurances, and you need contingincy plans in either scenario.

Seems to me that if my building burns down, I'm out of commission anyway, for days or weeks, until I can make some arrangements. So who cares about a 20 minute restoral.
On the other hand what if the building hosting my PBX burns down? I'm losing business because my phones are down for how long?
This thinking actually seems to sway me in favor of on-site.
You need assurances, and you need contingincy plans in either scenario.

most of our customers would not agree with you as business continuity is critical in today’s market and if you can survive for weeks without talking to your customers I don’t know what business you are in. If the building our system is in burns down the UK will have more problems that just our phone system as its one of the main interconects for the UK internet and BT so if it burns down most of the country will be without phones or internet lol

"i can setup as many phones as you want in any area code in about 20 min you name me a pabx that you can do that on."

I just set up 250 phones in about 30 seconds.csv file, couple of templates and concurrent numbers not hard.

Next.

Stop comparing hosted with PBX's from a decade ago.

I have hundreds of users in different countries, let alone different area codes. What you are offering is nothing unique.
If a building burns down they just move to another location, big deal, this is the whole ruddy point of IP connectivity.

Of course I presume that when they are working from say an coffee shop, you are using VPN's to connect to your service, not just sending SIP traffic of the net.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

i can setup as many phones as you want in any area code in about 20 min you name me a pabx that you can do that on."

I just set up 250 phones in about 30 seconds.csv file, couple of templates and concurrent numbers not hard.

Next.

Stop comparing hosted with PBX's from a decade ago.

I have hundreds of users in different countries, let alone different area codes. What you are offering is nothing unique.
If a building burns down they just move to another location, big deal, this is the whole ruddy point of IP connectivity.

Of course I presume that when they are working from say an coffee shop, you are using VPN's to connect to your service, not just sending SIP traffic of the net.



so was that including the 20 day lead time for new ddi numbers???

how can they move to anuther location if its in a different city or country and what about there ddi numbers on the isdn e.t.c

no need for a vpn its encripted so no need to bugger about setting up vpn on laptops or smartphones

Hi
Well Hostedtelephone if you look at this thread you will notice something very important you are the only one on here defending hosted systems that should tell something about hosted systems

Thats because most engineers on hear have never worked on hosted and do not understand the true power and flexability of a hosted system

Quote:

hosted and do not understand the true power and flexability of a hosted system

Q - What telephony features does a hosted PABX offer that a on-site PABX does not?

A - None

Therefore there is no extra power.

Q - What flexibility does a hosted PABX offer that a robust on-site PABX does not?

A - None

As Sympology has pointed out, we can do everything that hostedtelephone claims with our own networks and chosen flavour of PABX. For example, the PABX I deal with is split across multiple data centres - at least as resilient as hosted.

Where hosted has a place is in the SME market place. In effect, outsourcing your telephony services, I can see that there are commercial reasons for this
Low capital investment - diverse PABX systems require substantial capital investment and many smaller companies cannot or do not wish to use their capital in this way. The Hosted Telephony supplier bears the roughly comparable capital cost
Low skill or no dedicated staff required - true diverse VoIP solutions require skilled management and technical resource, again costly and often hard to find. The hosted solution centralises this requirement and turns it into a service.
You pay for this on a month by month basis, as a service, and will be more expensive over time (as little as 3 years IIRC) You are also tied to the hosted choice of carrier and call tariff.

I think this is a case of horses for courses - it isn't a panacea for all telecoms ills, but it does have a place, but don't kid yourself the decision to go with hosted is a commercial one. The smart hosted provider knows who their vertical market is and targets that!

I would not like to run an entire telecoms service up a grotty ADSL internet connection with variable connection speeds and contention. Worse still no SLA for repair if it goes dicky!!

I'd like to add that when this thread popped up initially, I was expecting hostedtelephone to be spamming everyone with his company - and I am pleased to admin that I am wrong!

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Quote:

o was that including the 20 day lead time for new ddi numbers???

how can they move to anuther location if its in a different city or country and what about there ddi numbers on the isdn e.t.c

no need for a vpn its encripted so no need to bugger about setting up vpn on laptops or smartphones

Give me a break you bunch of amateurs

All our numbers are non geographics , point to multiple ISDN 30's.
10 in a carriers DC in one site
10 in the same carriers site, but a different city
10 with a different carrier in a 3 rd
4 in a different country.
Oo lets not forget our direct links in our Mobile Providers DC as well

All non-geo's have INSTANT fail over (we see it all the time) to all the sites.

[Quote]No need to mess around with VPN's?[/Quote}
So how do they connect to the corporate LAN to get all their work? It's part of our standard build.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

Quote:

I think this is a case of horses for courses - it isn't a panacea for all telecoms ills, but it does have a place, but don't kid yourself the decision to go with hosted is a commercial one. The smart hosted provider knows who their vertical market is and targets that!

Just to clear up any potential ambiguity in this...

The decision to move to a hosted telephone system is commercial only There is no compelling technical reason for it.

Hosted has been around for a very long time - it was just called centrex!

And thanks for the *

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Quote:

If the building our system is in burns down the UK will have more problems that just our phone system as its one of the main interconects for the UK internet and BT so if it burns down most of the country will be without phones or internet lol

So if your business site did burn down, I take it you have a DR site with 100% capability? I mean if somewhere like say, Telehouse in Docklands did have, say a power failure (pfft like that would ever happen *cough*), you'd have 100% capacity in another geographically separate location.

Some of our major clients INSIST our co-hosting is in a different city, let alone different site.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

Hi hostedtelephone,
We sell this solution, it is not acceptable for any high reliability applications. The "tin on the wall" is actually highly reliable. Hardware for better systems will run 15 ~ 20 years with few problems. How long does the average PC run? If your outside connectivity goes down, you still have communications throughout the installation.

A telephone switch is just a computer, but it is a computer designed and built to much higher standards. No fans to fail for one. The other more insidious issue is that data folks have a different mind set than telecom people do. Data guys, on average, do not treat each call with near the same care that telecom people do. The entire concept of connecting a caller to another human is something they don't get. You would never have seen a system hang up on a caller when they press "0" before - ever. Now it seems to be acceptable? Hosted systems are run by IT departments, not telecom people. IT people do not understand the application and therefore do not do a good job on it. Understand that I'm talking on average here, not every single IT person.

When have you ever seen phone switches flooded where the flood didn't also take the data hardware on site out? These systems are generally installed in the IT rooms these days. That argument falls down once you realize that all the IT stuff died as well, so no comms. either way.

I know you are excited about this (not) new technology, but it isn't a wise choice in many applications. Also, digitized TDM type traffic only requires 64 KB/sec, so sucking up 100 KB/sec seems inefficient as well. In short, I can only see high risk coupled with short term satisfaction. I also noticed that you refute excellent, true comments. There is nothing for you to defend, you just need to take a realistic look at the world. You are not doing your customers any favours by selling a system that does not suit there needs. Even VoIP connectivity can by supplied to an existing analog system using SIP modems if required, so there isn't a good business case for removing their old equipment simply to sell them a set of expensive phones. That's called greed.

Go study real telephony. Once you understand it properly, you can apply these principles to your hosted solution and at least get that right. One size definitely does not fit all in these cases.

Just for the record, Nortel didn't sell anything off really. They went bankrupt. Their small business products, and even the BCM were not as reliable as competing systems either, and it was easy for me to switch out Nortel for Avaya products for a whole bunch of reasons. Then they went and died, darn.

-Chris

Its not called greed its called business sence. all dealers on here are there to make a profit no profit no job so you need to get into the real world and I have 30 years in the business from installing small 20 extn up to 2000-3000 user systems. We know that hosted does not suit all places and we have other solutions that we install in these places from avaya shortel and Panasonic Modern hosted is nothing like Centrex for its reliability and functionality. All I am hearing on this thread is replies from end users who do not understand modern hosted telephony its concepts and benefits. To sum it up if you are a dealer that is happy installing bits of tin then you carry on. But don’t be surprised when a dealer comes along taking all your customers and putting them on hosted.

Quote:

All I am hearing on this thread is replies from end users who do not understand modern hosted telephony its concepts and benefits

Educate us then.

Please give me lesson on the concepts and benefits of hosted telecoms.

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Hi hostedtelephone,
Ahhh, business. Now there is a topic I know extremely well.

A business is there to serve it's customer base and provide assistance in selecting the best solution for it's customers. It's not an extremely difficult concept to understand, but I see so many people getting this simple thing completely wrong. In my view, pushing boxes and / or services that are not in the best interest of the end user is ... greed. Because that is the prime motivation for carrying out that business plan.

We are not in business to push boxes - whether they be at your location or the customer's location. This is a critical difference between how you conduct business, and many others. Sadly, it is your right to operate as you see fit without regard to what the customer actually needs. What a customer thinks they want is often the result of advertising and mis-information. It is our job to listen to their desires and consider what impacts this may have on how their communications systems will behave in the real world. You can't responsibly take what they are asking for and provide it without doing some thinking and education. If anyone here operates like that, they should be replaced with some code on a web-page. That's about how useful they are.

As for taking customers, that isn't happening to us. In fact, we are gaining customers through referrals and installation disaster mitigation. That's where we utilize as much customer equipment as possible (given that it's not really old, or in poor condition) and provide a solution that actually works. At the moment, we have a customer that was about to go with a SIP solution for there inbound lines and extensions. At over 200 sets, it's not a small site, nor huge. The problem with this is ... they are a medical facility that currently is running on Definity and a PRI. Quite frankly, the old Definity and PRI is the proper solution. Changing this to a hosted solution would be completely irresponsible by anyone's standards. Internal communication is every bit as important as connecting with the outside world. They have a hundred or so patients at all times. I can't believe someone was so uneducated as to recommend SIP lines to this facility, but they area a firm rooted in the data world, and they just don't get what the problem is. Yeah, I spoke with them. How they were ever certified for this kind of work beats me, but their reduced cost "help" to the customer is only setting up for disaster. Of course, once duly warned, if they decide to go with a hosted solution (that word solution seems odd in this context), we will certainly provide that. However, the programming will reflect the concerns with this method.

So, go ahead and attempt to snatch customers who may be using the best solution already. You may even keep a few of them, but not many. Besides, telephony as a service really tastes bad in my mouth.

As for systems that run all TDM type sets, IP Office (which I like now that it's at IP 500 V2 8.44)that will run 100 TDM sets. The Magix is gone, not that that makes me sad, but there is another brand that I didn't see mentioned anywhere. That is the Eon product line. Those can be massively sized, fully redundant systems. Last time I looked at how large their systems got, they were at OC-48 . Think about that size for a moment. Yes, that's a purely digital data system, but Eon systems can be had as small, single office systems too. Petsmart used to use these, and they are reliable beyond what is normally seen out there. Compared to a hosted "solution", these are more flexible and win hands down, never mind they also handle all the data if you want.

No, hosted solutions only look to me like a product designed to sell with minimal hardware and value to the end user. Too many ways to burn these down. Just wait 'till the hackers start with these!

I wish the Partner ACS had not been discontinued, but an IP Office with the C-110 module compares very favourably to the Partner. They just can't learn to program it themselves anymore.

-Chris

So, go ahead and attempt to snatch customers who may be using the best solution already. You may even keep a few of them, but not many. Besides, telephony as a service really tastes bad in my mouth

Telephony is a service. we allways sell the best solution for the customer as that is where we make our money on our skill and reputation. we have not lost a customer yet that is on hosted and the platform we use has over 30000 users on it at the moment .And now Bt are about to launch there solution i am sorry but like i said at the begining the days of the pabx are numberd

We may argue from here on end about which is better,but your blanket statement about on site being numbered is dumb at best;humans don't like to give up control.

The Merlin platform was one of most reliable ones on the market. From the 206 to the Magix, there were millions of systems installed. Even today, there are lots of 410s still in use after decades of service.

Unlike the Definity, the Legend & Magix are limited when it comes to ISDN/PRI. But the hardware & software was very stable and did not need constant upgrades/patches to resolve bugs. The releasing patches to resolve bugs is routine/commonplace in the IT world, it is generally not in the TDM/PBX world.

Sadly, Avaya made a mess of the Partner ACS R7 processor. Several patches had to be issued to get the system where Avaya needed it to be. The R8 processor was good, but it had a "short" life. Today, 5x9 Partner ACS processors sell at a premium price on the aftermarket.

I "FEATURE 00"

In addition, the NT SL-1,Meridian 1, SL-100, and CS1000/2100 are probably the most reliable systems on the market. Honestly I work for a large retail chain with over 8,000 locations in the USA. We were 100% Nortel based until in the early 2000's Nortel failed to come in and market to our IT people....and thusly Cisco won the contract.

Most of our corporate campus has Cisco Call Manager, BUT a few buildings still have Option 81cs.....Guess which ones never fail, never go down, and never need to be patched?? Well the Option81c of course. At least once a week the Cisco phone at my desk drops a call or becomes disconnected to the server.

Nortel knew how to build voice and IP systems.....Cisco is "cool and popular" so I guess they win....I prefer the Nortel/Avaya product and now the Emetrotel IP-PBX as it keeps the Nortel tradition going on.

Man, I want one of them VoIP systems so I can save some money.

I had one of those miserable "hosted" systems called Centrex for 3 years. you may say that it's different, but it really wasn't. It was super when I had an off-premise station and could forward my calls, or work from home, but over the course of 3 years, it became cheaper to forward calls to my VoIP line and dual ring my cell phone.

Except for the banks, I haven't seen the big retail push to bring "hosted" to the desktop. Some smaller chains have and some don't. The most compelling reason would be for centralized control, but we see more stores going to SIP delivery or alternative carriers terminating on a PBX or key system.

LkEErie

Quote:

we allways sell the best solution for the customer as that is where we make our money on our skill and reputation.

No you don't, let me ammend
[/Quote]we allways sell the best solution for the customer that we are able to provide as that is where we make our money on our skill and reputation.

Silly question, but what platform does you service actually run on, or is it magic pixie dust?

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

no we supply the best solution for the customer even if it means we pass the customer to a third party and no it dosent run on magic pixi dust it runs on carrier grade servers and routers in one of the main data centers in london and i look forward to meeting you soon when we rip out the old tin you have and replace it with a proper system

Ah so something like a Huawei U1980 running on Huawei Networking kit then (carrier grade kit)? Only reason I ask is we're looking at that for in house stuff.
Or by servers do you mean something like HP Non-Stops?

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

wow this hosted guy is pissing people off everywhere with his kindergarten knowledge level and made up facts

i would like to add onto the we are losing customers to hosted bit..

we offer hosted as well as premise based (we have only sold 1 hosted system since we started offering it 2 years ago, compared to about 100 or so premise based.

I would also like to add that in that same time we have gained about 10 new customers after they encountered the disasters of hosted. One customer even explained to us that they were down for about 2-3 days per MONTH. That is crazy!!!

I will admit we have lost 1 to hosted recently, but i forsee a call from them in the near future. They all come back lol.

So i gained 10 you lost 10
I lost 1 you gained 1

Tell me again how your hosted system is stealing all of the customer base

(condescending wonka voice)

You need to get your facts straight before you start slaging people off. if you have been ripping hosted out then obviously it was installed by people that didn’t know what they were doing all I can say is from my companies experience we have seen a massive increase in sales and like I said at the beginning of the thread we now have well over 5000 seats running ranging from 1 user up to 850 across 20 sites and our customers love it. The problem is that most telecom dealers do not have the skill or experience to install a hosted system properly you need allot of telecom and IT knowledge which most pure telecom dealers do not have.

Hey hostedtelephone,
I believe you were asked what your platform was, that is so very superior to all those "tin boxes" the majority of people on this thread have skill and experience in.

Any chance you can enlighten us to the way of the future?

Hi hostedtelephone,
Gee, I thought I was dealing with a connectivity professional. Silly me, I completely forgot to look at your job designation. Programmer. That says it all really as your responses are exactly what I here from those same disconnected IT pros. I'd say you're at least a couple layers of abstraction away from reality. The other folks with the same job title have a far more accurate feel for what makes a workers telephone go ring, ring. And they make sure that phone usually does ring when it should.

What happens when a line gets noisy to your clients? Well, DSL usually cuts out, so does cable, but there is no analog equivalent with which to hear problems. Normally you will deliver your service on the least expensive transport, which excludes something reliable like a T1 in any flavour. That means the connection dies in silence as far as the telco or cable provider is concerned. Perfect for anything beyond a small office (use your cell phones) or retail store. Anything else, like a factory depends on 911 response as a legal responsibility. I guess it's okay, because today cell phones have GPS built in.

For the poor fella using a KEY system on POTS lines, they call the telco in between other calls and report the noise. Or, they use another line. Either way, those people are still in business.

As for "tin on the wall", or in a rack (cause we put systems in that way as well), it's true that the Magix is one of the most reliable systems out there. The Partner is pretty reliable as long as you use the newer 5 slot carrier, hate those two slot demons though! But, the Magix is a bear to get fancy with for most people. You have to continually "fake it out" to get what you want. I'll even push for Toshiba and Panasonic systems. What I can't agree with is almost anything Nortel designed. They are junk, expensive junk as soon as you try to do anything with them. You can cover a wall with that crap and still be out performed by a small Partner or Magix system, with a savings in power to boot. I'm not kidding, they are not reliable systems, sorry. Even the great BCM has a propensity to fail, and that is very probably what really killed Nortel. Not the CO switches they sold to companies that went belly up. I highly doubt that story.

Bottom line. Hosted solutions are not reliable, period. We use these, but the hosting hardware is hung on the client's premises and runs a pile of SIP phones around the world. Yep, we have done those as well. Within the building, you can't beat digital phones, and you do not lose any features doing it that way. You still have screen pops and all the other toys, so a hosted (vapour ware) solution gains you nothing, unless you like to go home 'cause you can't work. ;)

-Chris

hosted-

thats funny because i worked for an IT company for years and have a very high IT knowledge level.

The best part is i have a family member who owns a hosted company so i know the product very well.

The owner of that company used to be VP of a huge IT company for a long time so he is very pro network. He always vlans off his switches and provides qos.

His networks are by far the best i have seen of any hosted provider out there and i am 100 % sure they are superior to yours as just reading your posts and talking to him (who knows his stuff) i can tell his knowledge level is far greater.

But even with his he gets voice quality issues.

It will be there one day, but the technology is not quite there yet for it to be as reliable as it needs to be. And when it is at that point, we will be hosting these "tin cans" ourselves in our own data centers. So good luck with your no name crap.

and by how angry you are getting without supporting your arguments whatsover just further backs my point

and 5000 users is nothing

talk to me when you have 25000 users

This from a 2011 article,
"Avaya currently has sold over 200,000 Avaya IP Offices phone systems and has 30 million users worldwide!"

That's from just 1 "TIN BOX" provider & only 1 platform of what they offer, so like I stated way back at the beginning of this thread the so called "TIN BOX" is here for a while.

Hi Matt,
I think you called it there.

Like, what kind of a response did hostedtelephone expect anyway?

Like the vast majority of us here, job security isn't a worry. I don't get upset about that at all. I just become annoyed with a vendor who only knows how to sell on price and half truths.

hostedtelephone, what you may not be getting the message on is that no one here has bemoaned the advent of IP communications. That has been the operational backbone for the world for a long, long time. You are not capable of worrying anyone about hosted systems. What you are doing is making our workload heavier. We have to properly educate clients who may have bought into your message. It is unfortunate that our society has come to ignoring intangible realities until it bites them somehow. For those who do fall for your promise, well ... let's just say that most of us are really tired of cleaning up after every darn fad in the market. Remember the hell that redialers put many of us through? The promise of cheap calls. So now you want to copy Vonage, but for business use with slightly different hardware. We've seen DLS based lines before, about 10 years ago here, two of those giants toppled over. The end result was many ex-clients stuck without any service. Even if they signed up, there wasn't enough copper out there to support the amount of lines that were sold.

Who lost out? We sure didn't! Man, were we busy! In our neck 'o the woods, Bell didn't lose out either, god no! They were running copper and optical like demons, charging a high dollar for each and every single line delivered. Once again, it was everyone who paid the price for collective greed, even folks who knew better and didn't lose lines. The rates increased and it was everyone's neighbour who paid the price, each and every one of us.

If you take funds out of any system, it must balance again in some way. Short turn gain, long term pain.

Enough now, go play in your sandbox. I guess we'll be cleaning up after you too some day.

-Chris

> Enough now, go play in your sandbox. I guess we'll be cleaning up after you too some day.

Madness is all of us here aren't against technology, its just the poor implementation of it. We are often cleaning up after poorly installed IP Offices, and poorly implemented hosted. We own half a hosted company and I wouldn't put their service into a call centre. Lack of trust in the implementation of it and call centre software don't make it viable.

A serviced office is ripe for hosted. Not a busy taxi company taking 5000+ calls a day.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

or a hospital with 1500 users


or a school with 1000+ etc etc

hosteds childish turning his head to the facts is going to be his downfall. Our company provides all so job security here is not a problem as well.

He should look at the fact that many of us do install both so we are not hating on hosted for fear of unemployment. We just know what the better product is.

Any sales guy can twist numbers to make it "appear" the customer is getting a better product

but after they start to see the facts, good luck maintaining a relationship with them.

Go ahead hosted make us more $$$ , im not going to argue

No one in our little burg would even sell us hosted if we wanted it.
Now that tells me something.

We are going to make it to 100 on this thread. As far as the BCM not being future proof I think Avaya has that under control. The BCM is still selling pretty well all over from everything I can see. It's still going to be supported by Avaya from the last bulletin I saw until 2018.
“Avaya will further provide hardware and software Extended Services Support, including technical support, availability of existing patches and documentation, repair services, for three (3) years (October 1, 2018) after the Manufacturer’s Support period “

I have no problem recommending the BCM to anyone.

The problem with the bcm is that most people know nortel went bust and it puts them off. We used to sell loads of them. They were a good basic system with some nice features but once notel went bust no one would touch it. I know avaya is now supporting it but thats more of a way for them to get the customers onto ip office its a shame really because it was a cheapish reliable system

We don't sell the bcm unless it s requested, which is quite often. We did 3 last month alone. And that says something because we are mainly a toshiba and Avaya shop.


Every one of your arguments is invalid.

You have not proven a single point you have tried to make

First is was it was cheaper (wrong)
Then more reliable (horribly wrong)
Then more features (lol)
Now it's we sell more then you (yea I'm sure)
I'm sure I'm missing another one or two statements that have been disproven

And you have ignored the fact that when hosted is reliable enough the name brands are going to be chosen over your no name free Pbx crap

Interesting as all this may be, phoneguy610 has illustrated the basic point here. There isn't enough bandwidth - yet, and at reasonable cost to most consumers. There's the battle of the future, bandwidth. Once you deliver that reliably, the apps will follow. So far, this is not the case. Maybe in some pockets, but on average - not even close.

What will be the shape of phone systems in the future? This is anyone's guess. The counter argument will most probably be concerned with security and access to tracking information (for advertising, of course!). How would you like to be "chipped", only to have "approved" advertising sent right to your brain? A hosted "solution" (to what is it a solution?) is in fact only software that appliances talk to. The track record for most software is abysmal when it comes to quality metrics. I suspect that this "product" is merely a bold push to sell communication as a service. Since there is very little outlay beyond licensing fees (tell us developers, just how much markup is there in here? I know it must be massive) leading to obscene profits. The sharing with some low morals type dealers provides the market push they need to create market traction. Coupled with slightly lower buy in cost for the client (leveraging the something for nothing gene in consumers) is hoped to provide the final momentum to falsely create the image of reliability to complete the total illusion.

If there is anyone here who doubts what kinds of profits are generated by writing software, just have a gander at Micro$oft and other similar companies. I'll bet the the actual expenditure for their operating systems is concentrated in anti-theft of software. What is being sold is essentially ... nothing. One copy they decide to release, and the packaging/advertising is really the bulk of their production costs. Now, how could this become even more profitable? Hell, no packaging or media at all! How? Hosted communications solutions. Man, I hate that phrase, "hosted solution", as if it's good for anyone. How about the theft issue? Software as a service where the actual code is no longer valuable, but the license to operate it is. Once you consider these things in those terms, you have a better understanding of the central issues here.

Smoke, mirrors, vapour-ware. I'm not buying into this at all. Besides, massive amounts of bandwidth available for simply cracking the common software code ... now that is worth some effort for some folks. This is probably a lot of fun as well. It doesn't take much to gain access to a large body of running common code, and even less to deny service by crashing the works. Probably even more fun. Remember all the trouble windows users suffer through.

-Chris

Well Hosted

You asked if the PABX is dead?

Very clearly if you read the replies to your question, the PABX is not dead and has a long way to go.

Chris,

Nortel's Norstar and BCM with near perfect reliability installed in our over 8,000 USA stores since 1988 is hardly a terrible system. I think you need to counter your opinions about Nortel with a real life business case.

Joseph Sus-Nortel Installer/Programmer
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-sus/12/1a7/856

I agree with Hosted that the PBX is dying but Hosted IP did not cause it's demise and is not necessarily it's replacement. Ours aren't dead yet and until I've squeezed every last cent out of them or our needs change I don't replace.

"Hosted IP voice offers companies all the functionality and enhanced calling features you expect from a high-end PBX or Key system, without having to purchase expensive equipment or install and maintain it." (vendor whitepaper)

All this from the same company that dutifully sold Centrex, PBX's, Key systems, patches and upgrades now send me the same tired business cases for Features, ROI and TCO for Hosted IP that they did for PBX and PBX Upgrades.

Is it any wonder there is reluctance from those of us who buy, install, manage and program systems to endorse a single product or industry direction?

We make our own decisions based on our need, anticipated financial position and desire to have an equipment life-cycle that isn't gone within four months. If a Hosted Ip is practical for us, I'll buy it. If it isn't, I won't.

KE407122

"The phone was working fine before it knocked over my coffee."

I'm still waiting to find out what these magic devices are that Hosted uses, they appear not to be Softswitches (which are PBX's by another name) and they of course are not PBX's.
So what is this Magical device?
My money is on an Asterisk.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

According to Webster, asterisk "indicates footnote references, omissions, etc". Mmmmm, something to think about.

Asterisk or free Pbx based From what I have seen

I always shudder when I see "Asterisk" in the SIP header.......

ACSS - SME
General Geek

Asterisk....Didn't he and Obelix deliver menhirs?

KE407122

"The phone was working fine before it knocked over my coffee."

To my mind hosted is more suited to small branch offices distributed over a wide geographical area.

A single site with numerous phones is in my opinion still better of with a BPX.

I do not believe the choice is either/or but one of use the correct tool for the correct job.

A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

"Today’s Hosted is yesterday’s Centrex……."

Tru dat
Star for that one brotha.


"we have just put our 5000 user on our hosted system and we are seing sales of pabx drop like a stone"

Could that be the help of your sales dept pushing hosted?.
LOL


"do you think the days of a piece of tin numberd when its so easy to install and maintain on hosted???"

Well, today's onsite VoIP system its 4 screws to the data rack vs the past of over sized modules upon modules so my answer is.....NO!!!!.


Sure some go hosted but a lot revert back too!
Both Hosted and onsite VoIP system will be here for a long time....just like Centrex and PBX coexisted, nothing has changed except both their technologies have both gone VoIP.

The whole idea of onsite is competition as well control and ownership don't forget.

=----(((((((((()----=
curlycord
www.curlycord.com

As a person that works 99% on OP construction (rural). With an analog line you can go out 100.000 feet+ (loaded)
While having digital fascilities are nice, they are not always available.
So my vote would be PABX with an analog line card still has its place.

the PBX is definately here to stay as is the Key system,
there are two many Flavors of PBX and Key systems, I do not for 1 Minute believe there is a 1 size fits all,
solution hardwarewise as there are too many customers out there with drastically different needs,

you wouldn't take a Vegetarian to Burger King, would you ?

While PBX is here to stay,its key system incarnation is on its way out, simply because of SIP and VoIP in general, not counting PRI and BRI. There are no more copper infrastructure going up, mostly fiber. As 50+Mbps Internet connections are becoming the new 5Mbps of a decade ago, analog/copper is being phased out.

yes that i agree on... KEY is just about done... When someone can get a 23 channels with a pri for less than 1k a month i really dont see them paying 2500 for the same thing on copper. It just doesnt make sense.

And i am sure 10-15 years from now the hybrid VOIP/DIGITAL systems that dominate the market now will also be nearing end of life.

But, there is still plenty of life to be had

ddcommllc.com
Avaya/Toshiba/Nortel

ACIS

I don't know what to think anymore.

Most corporate offices I speak with prefer to have a desk phone for safety, great voice quality, extended features and some even for the nice look of the phones on the desks.

On the other hand, most young companies think Iphones are a perfect replacemnt for a PBX in their office. I brought an Avaya 1165E phone into a young client and they told me that the phone looked like it was from the early 1970s. This 25 year old girl told me "yuck, get that dinosaur out of here" Steelcase no longer installs desk phones in their corporate office. They use their cell phones tied into Verizon or ATT.

Problems with using Iphones as your sole office system, include no access to features such as paging, park, transfer, etc. You are also dependant on the cell phone provider and 100% signal coverage isn't always guaranteed. Another issue is codec voice qulaity is so highly compressed on a cell phone due to limiations put in place by cell phone providers. I've tapped into our paging system with both a cell phone and a desk phone and there is no comparison between the clarity coming out from the desk phone versus the cell phone.

So I guess as long as baby boomers and gen-xers are around, desk phones will be. After that, I assume they will be dinosaurs.

Joe

****New Forum - E-Metrotel UCx****
Joseph Sus-Nortel Installer/Programmer-"JoetheUCxguy" on Youtube
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-sus/12/1a7/856

I worked on a pair of Vertical 500's with SIP trunks the other day. Complaint? Static. Yeah, so is it on every call?

"but just think of the money you're saving"

LkEErie

I was at a Seminar the other day, with the big names and you know what, they say the PBX is pretty much dead, but only in the traditional sense of a black box, only doing voice.
The industry trend is now to provide a full UC platform running on a generic x64 bit of tin, when you see it working, it makes sense.
You plug a bluetooth headset into your smart phone, it changes your status to "ring my mobile (if you set that profile), no more pratting around with forwards. You calendar has you in a meeting, you're calls can get routed to VM. You are in a 3 ways call, but you need to share a document, you drag and drop and a IM / whiteboard session opens, maybe chnage to a video call if needed, no readialling, no dropped session.
For me, I just need a phone and a laptop, but if I'm working from home, I don't want mess around setting up VPN's and forwards, just get the bloody call to me.
However, these can be done on premise or in the cloud.
They will still do a black box solution, but it's a shrinking market.
So is the PBX dead, no not yet, but it's moving on.

Quote:

I worked on a pair of Vertical 500's with SIP trunks the other day. Complaint? Static. Yeah, so is it on every call?

Not sure if being sarcastic, but if getting "static" on a digital line, you have some SERIOUS issues, especially if it's fibre!

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

I am still annoyed by the 25 year old twit calling an 1165E IP set dated.....it's the best dam looking color IP phone on the market.... :)

****New Forum - E-Metrotel UCx****
Joseph Sus-Nortel Installer/Programmer-"JoetheUCxguy" on Youtube
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-sus/12/1a7/856

Not sure if being sarcastic, but if getting "static" on a digital line, you have some SERIOUS issues, especially if it's fibre!

Sarcastic? Me? No, it wasn't on "fibre" it was a SIP trunk on ethernet. The local copper trunk was fine. The intercom calls from the DECT phone to IP phones were clear.


LkEErie

That's nothing to do with it being a SIP trunk, it's lousy bit of copper.
It's also why we insist on fibre on anything over a 2mb circuit.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk