Last place we did a phone migration we got quotes for Nortel and Avaya but they
wanted to do too many changes to the core network to "make their stuff work".
Cisco was not even on the short list as the person holding the purse string
refused to consider using something the main campus would/could hijack control
from us. (The main campus and at least one regional campus just loved the
Cisco product at the time since it was tightly integrated with Exchange!) We
ended with 3Com system. We had the contractor put in upgraded POE Cisco
switches for the core and moved the older non-POE to none core use. Last I
heard it was still going strong.
Nortel shot themselves in the foot by telling us their previous installation
failed as a result of our contractor not installing it correctly....too bad
they did not check as THEY installed it. They also wanted to trash ALL the
network switches and replace them with their switches. They wanted us to allow
them to deal with ALL network changes which meant the switches would have been
exposed to the Internet, was NOT going to happen!
Avaya wanted and said pretty much the same thing Cisco was just an up and comer
but not really able to handle VOIP traffic, plus they had to have a technician
come on site anytime we had to move a phone from one office to another.
During the 3Com pre-quote we found out the previous (Avaya) contractor had use
Cat 3 instead of the quoted Cat 5 cable which meant the main building where the
core was located needed to be rewired completely. We were not expecting that
which only made it even harder for Avaya to get in the door. Neither Nortel or
Avaya wanted to do a pre-quote check of existing conditions.
During the install we found out the original cabling and system were so badly
installed we had to make major changes to the roll-out schedule due to the
rewiring and removal of previous hardware had to be done in one day. The
contractor pulled one wire pair (as in pulled the wire from the punch down not
cutting it) to switch over one office to the new system and half the phones in
the main building went dead. Try explaining that to 7 very angry directors and
one executive director, 3 were on the phone when it went dead.
Current place has Shoretel and they are happy with it.
Jon
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 17:52:18 -0400
> Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] How much to implement a Cisco telephone implementation
> To: [email protected]
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Stefan Jafs <[email protected]> wrote:
> > ... Avaya IPO ... test with 15 phones, I have one of them, (9641G), I hate
> > the phone, it's touch
> > and you have to push very hard ...
>
> Yah, touchscreens get way overused currently, and those are are a
> good example. FWIW, the 9611G (which is a traditional UI design, with
> hard buttons), is decent, within the Avaya family.
>
> > ... the whole thing has left a bad impression of Avaya ...
>
> That's a pretty common reaction.
>
> -- Ben
>
>
