Prepare to be schooled, James. :-) Let's talk phoney stuff! We use Teams just not as the PBX. We have 300 phones running Enterprise firmware that are Cisco 7821's and 8845's. Cost to switch them over the MPP firmware that would work with Teams would be around DOUBLE what we will be paying for the Asterisk system which will also work with them. And 3PCC calling firmware isn't even certified with Teams calling, not that that matters, it would work. However, I can pick up used Polycom phones way cheaper than converting the 8845's to MPP firmware and those ARE certified under Teams.
Cost to switch the phones over to the Cisco-vendor-locked version of MPP firmware that ONLY works with Cisco's version of a virtual PBX is free - however I'm adding around 100 more phones. So let's use 400 for a nice round number. For basic calling, no trunking costs, just extension only, Teams virtual PBX is around $40k a year. We don't operate outside of Oregon so we PIN-lock LD calling which makes it a nuisance enough that users usually reach for a cell phone when making a LD call (we pay around $15 a month per cell phone for those so this is by design to encourage them to not use the local carrier for LD and it works pretty well, our LD minutes are negligible) Note that this $40k a year figure is the same whether you are running desk phones or soft phones on a PC. For basic calling no meetings etc. going to Cisco's virtual PBX is around DOUBLE the Teams cost. Plus once you convert a phone over to Webex cloud calling firmware it's burned - while it's technically possible to change the license on it to the 3PCC that works with any PBX, it's costly and a PIA. Once more this figure is the same whether you use Cisco desk phones or Webex soft phones running on a PC. I currently pay $500 a month for a 23 trunk PRI that feeds the PBX and that's not even ever made it to 50% utilization, ever. If I were to go to SIP trunks over the Internet it would be even cheaper but I kind of like the QoS "hear a pin drop" on the desk phones, ya know. And our current on-prem PBX is an older Cisco pre-subscription/Smart License era. There's ZERO yearly subscription costs on it. We do pay around $20k a year consulting fees for a Cisco-certified tech to configure it but this is mainly for back-end routing work, we do our own extension provisioning - which would be the same thing if we did Teams or Cisco virtual PBX. And once I pitch the UCM that will be cut in half at least. So, roughly, $26000 a year for 400 extensions. That's a good bit cheaper than Teams virtual PBX and in a completely different universe than Cisco's virtual PBX. The ones who are really stuck are the admins running enterprises like Keiser Permanente. Every one of their hospitals is stuffed to the brim with antique Cisco 7962 phones, like you see in The Office. And they are still running 20 year old antique SCCP firmware. This is because it takes like around 3-4 flashes of different firmware versions to get those phones up to SIP firmware and Keiser either doesn't want to spend the labor or they just don't know how to do it. Which is crazy since you can pick up used Cisco 7962's for like $20 a phone then upgrade them on a test bed network with the staged updates then just do a swap. Then the phone can register into any PBX not just the Cisco one. It's technically impossible for those phones to run on anything other than an on-premise Cisco PBX so I know for certain Keiser has an on-prem PBX. And it's NOT an old one since they have some newer phones also, and their newer phones are running version 14 Enterprise firmware and that version isn't compatible with any version of Cisco UCM that is 12 or older. And all UCM versions 12 or newer require subscription for the on-prem software. So they are for sure, paying buco bucks in subscription fees to Cisco for the latest on-prem Cisco UCM It costs approximately $60k a year in licensing fees alone to run a Cisco UCM PBX for around 400 extensions. I have a recent quote if you don't believe me. Of course, probably to Keiser, that pricing is a screaming deal than going to Cisco/Webex cloud calling which is why they don't do it. Likely, they have 10 times more extensions than I do so just add an extra zero to my figures I literally could walk into there and go from phone to phone to phone in their enterprise and upgrade all of them to SIP and tie them into an Asterisk system that would probably cost them around a tenth of that a year in maintenance fees and do exactly the same thing their Cisco UCM is doing. Or I could do the same thing by sourcing Polycom phones and tying those into a Grandstream or Switchvox PBX But I have my own Enterprise to do that with. Maybe in a year or so once I'm finished I'll write up a whitepaper and send it to one of the online networking ragazines and they might see it. It's completely shameful what is going on in the on-premise phone system market these days with Cisco. They have always treated the UCM as a cash cow with "pull-through" revenue. It's not just the PBX itself it's sales of Catalyst switches and Cisco routers all tied around the damn phones and their oddities. The entire goal of Cisco IMHO with PBXes is to kill the demand for techs out there by pushing Cloud Calling as a total lock-in. Then nobody gains anything by learning how a PBX works and so IT departments and techs all sort of forget how. Then outsourcing the PBX is no longer an option it's a requirement and these companies then get screwed on fees. And I just saw on reddit that yet again, Cisco Cloud Calling is having partial outages. NO THANK YOU! Virtual PBXes like Microsoft Teams, or Ring Central or it's OEMs, are certainly the way to go if you’re a 20 extension company forking out trunking costs on a 4x16 hybrid key system that nobody knows how to program anymore nor wants to learn how, and your "phone guy" just retired or died of old age. 30 years ago I couldn't throw a rock in Portland without hitting a Northern Telecom tech who could configure a Meridian PBX. But NT went bankrupt, NEC pulled out of the on-prem market, all that's really left is Panasonic and Toshiba, and costs for their proprietary phones on the used market are rising. For a small company with no IT staff, using OneDrive for everything, sure. Hit up Ebay and drop $20 a phone on a "lot of 20 Polycom VX 411" spend a few hours flashing them and you too can join the Robot Overlords running Teams and get the world's most advanced AI listening to your phone calls for advertising keywords that Microsoft sells out the back end. You ultimately won't save anything on the monthly cost but maybe you can get back that 3 sq foot of space on your telephone backboard when you dismount your hybrid key system. But frankly - that same small company can probably go to T-Mobile and setup a "virtual PBX on cell phones" and give everyone cells and spend even less money - since they probably already are spending money on mobile phones for them. There's no point in even bothering with Teams calling then. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <plug-boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of James Tobin Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2025 12:28 PM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <plug@lists.pdxlinux.org> Cc: Keith Lofstrom <kei...@keithl.com> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Ghosted? (posted payscale) On Wed, 30 Jul 2025 at 15:24, Ted Mittelstaedt <t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote: > Over the past 2 years I've saved over $200k at my current employer > just by throwing convention to the winds and changing up vendors, > software applications and so on. And that's just the savings anyone > has bothered tracking there's tons more stuff I could list project > after project. The latest one being pitching the PBX and going with Asterisk. [JTOBIN] No Teams? >
