Interesting…
Appreciate the input as we are going to do a Lync2013 rollout for VoIP (most likely), and we have Polycom desksets we are piloting currently, but expect a fair number of telecommuters as well.. Thanks. -sc From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 11:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation Actually, everyone used CS50-USB headsets (http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/cs50-usb) so the connections to the computers were always wired. (Wireless from a base station to the actual headset, but that was never a problem unless a battery died.) Those technically inclined users could deal with the issues, but most had real trouble. I think the problems were related to both the devices we used and the client. We tried it for several months, but just gave up and went with 'real' phones. ShoreTel has a VPN concentrator solution for their phones where remote ones connect directly to that, independent of anything else. For my remote users (these are not road warriors, but home-based sales reps who spend all day on the phone), I just pre-configure a phone, ship it out, and they're ready to go. I have read some negative things about the ShoreTel VPN solution, but it has worked very well for us. On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Steven M. Caesare <[email protected]> wrote: Hmm.. given that a headset is simply presented as an audio I/O device by the underlying OS, was this an issue with the headset connectivity to the platform (i.e. the Bluetooth stack didn’t re-associate with them after sleep, power-down, etc…)? Or was it an issue of the softphone client itself not being smart enough to dynamically refresh it’s device selection list one a new device arrived? I ask because in our environment, Lync, Adobe Connect, WebEx, etc… doesn’t really seem to differentiate between a hardwired mice, a wired headset, or a wireless headset… they are all just “Audio Input” options as far as the clients are concerned. That having been said, we don’t’ have a huge population of folks using Bluetooth/wireless devices with laptops, and I could see the re-association time perhaps causing issues… Thanks. -sc From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 9:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation More time between flights now. When we went with shoretel, we went 100% softphone. It was fine for most local users at our main location, but not all. It was a disaster for remote users who were using VPN for voice. Call quality was all over the place. The headsets would drop off of the list of default devices, and my users could never remember how to get them working again. Help desk calls for this went through roof. The minute we ditched softphones for handsets, all my problems went away. Not having a user's (particularly a remote user's) phone tied to his computer has been very successful. On Mar 26, 2014 6:55 PM, "Richard Stovall" <[email protected]> wrote: Ours were ShoreTel softphones. Very sketchy with the Plantronics USB headsets we bought. On Mar 26, 2014 6:41 PM, "Michael B. Smith" <[email protected]> wrote: Would you develop that thought further? I use Lync and Skype extensively as softphones, and I’m pretty happy with their performance…. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 6:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation Softphones are, umm, interesting. Definitely do a trial with a number of different types of users before going whole hog. On Mar 26, 2014 2:16 PM, "Stefan Jafs" <[email protected]> wrote: Yes strictly Outlook and Exchange, and this is also about UM, not just a phone system. The client for smart devices is very important and you are correct we do not need phones for all desks, may use Softphones on quit a few. We do not really care much for video and web conferencing, however we are planning to use the Desktop sharing. __________________________________ Stefan Jafs From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Frank Ress Sent: March 26, 2014 12:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] RE: How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation Depends on a lot of considerations that you don’t mention. Are you an Outlook/Exchange shop? How much value is there in unified messaging and the features that go with it (e.g. voice-to-text and vice versa)? Do you even WANT desk sets? (We’re looking at the same migration, and intend to almost completely move to soft phones and headsets.) It’s not either-or, you can save a lot with soft phones, but use desk sets where you’d like. What about web and video conferencing? Again, that’s one of the attractive features to us in a Lync solution. We could do more self-hosting for these services. We looked at Cisco several years ago, when we first entertained our PBX replacement. They didn’t yet offer soft phones, and the Cisco desk sets were pretty expensive. I have no idea how well they’d interoperate with the rest of a Microsoft environment today – and I don’t know how much you care. We’re a fairly pure Windows/Exchange/SQL Server/Sharepoint/Office environment. Lync fits well. I just wish that I had a budget. Unfortunately, management usually perceives this as a pure voice play, and it’s anything but these days. Frank Ress From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stefan Jafs Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 10:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation We are looking at replacing our old Nortel BCM 450 for about 275 users. The shortlist is Cisco and Microsoft Lync. We are leaning towards Cisco a bit more expensive but also only 1 vendor (the President likes the “hardware” platform, even though Cisco runs with VM’s). Anyhow implementation is about $66k (Lync is about $56k), to me that sounds like about twice too much, has anyone have done a similar implementation, and / or is it a fair price? And we would do the placement of the phones ourselves. __________________________________ Stefan Jafs ________________________________ This communication is for the use of the intended recipient only. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. 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