That' great Dave. Thanks. I had no idea they were charging as much as an Aheeva seat. It's also great to know what the maintenance runs. Now if I just knew what to charge for installation....There are quite a few canned Asterisk PBX solutions out there. I don't want the install charge to be too high either. Me thinks I might keep that low, say $1500 for the PBX and 10 phones. I'm interested in the experience also.
Peter M. > I don't know about a full side by side comparison but I think the > disparity is so huge, you can make your case on just a few items. > > Assume that you spent the same money on the main system hardware, > which you wouldn't because the T1 cards alone cost 4x as much, but > assume you used top of the line server hardware etc and spent even > money on the core system hardware. Now Nortel can't say "ya, well > that system runs on a little PC and we're selling 5 nines hardware" > > I think you could probably save $50 or more per seat on phones just > because you've got options. You could buy an Aastra or another > enterprise grade phone for way less than you'd pay Nortel for one of > their 6 button display phones. > > Now consider consider licensing. Off the top of my head, I think I > remember a customer spending about $20k on either 25 or 50 Symposium > ACD licenses (I can't remember the quantity, I know they wanted 20 but > they had to purchase some minimum). Even if you take it at the low > end, that's $500/seat. As a general rule, licensing (RTUs in the > Avaya world) are about dollar for dollar with system hardware in a > call centre. Call centres are obviously on the higher end of the > features scale, we purchase all kinds of things that the average > business wouldn't use but that come free or cheap with Asterisk. > Compare: for $500, Nortel gives you one ACD seat and Aheeva (for > instance) would give you a seat that does ACD, Predictive, unlimited > supervisors, IVR, reporting, list management and the whole thing. > > Then look at a maintentance contract for the equipment. For a 100 > seat M1 Opt 11 running older software, it cost my client between 6 and > 12 thousand/year depending on the provider. Ask yourself if that's > something you could provide for equal or less money. Note, that's not > a support contract for MAC requests, just for emergency hardware > replacement and installation. "I want my voicemail password reset" is > still a $100+ billable call. > > It's not a full analysis but I think the comparison falls apart pretty > quickly, especially in a call centre where added features are being > purchased. > > Hope it helps, > Dave ******************************************************** Peter MacFarlane, ACP Network Administration & Programming Target Call Center/ Message Centre P.E.I. ********************************************************
