On-Premises soft PBX
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@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
If you are going to deploy freepbx, would you-
- Do it on-prem, VPS or have it hosted (https://www.freepbx.org/store/hosted-freepbx/)?
- If doing your own deployment, use the FreePBX Distro or do it all manually?
Not sure if you are asking for general opinions or something specific to a scenario listed somewhere above. But here we go...
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This depends on the customer and their needs and their calling patterns. Nearly always on Vultr cloud because of cost, features, and performance. Only very rarely does on prem make sense for a phone system.
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Distro
That is what I was looking for.
Watch my video from SpiceWorld. I had a question about hosted or not. The answer to it is it depends on where oyu need your survivability at.
As for your own. You NEVER install something manually unless you have a very specific knowledge goal.
In the case of FreePBX, what are you trying to gain by setting it up manually? Do you even have a clue what that requires if you do not use the Distro? I can tell you it involves compiling asterisk yourself.
Thanks. I will look for your video. I wasn't sure based on the differences between other products, i.e. turn key or virtual appliances, where it can be problematic. I did see that manual involves compiling Asterisk and was definitely not going to do that myself.
I linked it here someplace in the last few days.
IF oyu can't find it, let me know.
I did a quick search for spiceworld and didn't see it. If you find it, please post in this thread.
Just finished it. Good stuff in there. I will be pursuing ditching my "traditional" provider in favor of sip next year.
I will also be considering ditching Shoretel. One major cost point is the desk phones. We have a lot of people that are more comfortable with having an actual desk phone. Do you (or anyone else) know if these ShoreTel phones would work with FreePBX?
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IP230G (uses MGCP)
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IP480G and IP485G
I don't know - but you can always test it.
Yeah, very easy to test. But I doubt any of us have tried using them, while that comes up from time to time, it is very rare that people want to move from Shoretel and keep their old phones. Both events are decently rare, combined even more rare. But just take one and see if it will connect somewhere and that will tell you.
If you need, we can help test quickly. It doesn't take much if you have an existing PBX to test against.
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@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
Now, you can use any SIP compliant phone. but if oyu want to manage them through FreePBX, you need to stick to that list.
I'm about 60/40 on clients using EPM to manage phones.
We are more like 20/80, but have a large customer (municipality) moving to EPM this week.
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
If you are going to deploy freepbx, would you-
- Do it on-prem, VPS or have it hosted (https://www.freepbx.org/store/hosted-freepbx/)?
- If doing your own deployment, use the FreePBX Distro or do it all manually?
Not sure if you are asking for general opinions or something specific to a scenario listed somewhere above. But here we go...
-
This depends on the customer and their needs and their calling patterns. Nearly always on Vultr cloud because of cost, features, and performance. Only very rarely does on prem make sense for a phone system.
-
Distro
That is what I was looking for.
Watch my video from SpiceWorld. I had a question about hosted or not. The answer to it is it depends on where oyu need your survivability at.
As for your own. You NEVER install something manually unless you have a very specific knowledge goal.
In the case of FreePBX, what are you trying to gain by setting it up manually? Do you even have a clue what that requires if you do not use the Distro? I can tell you it involves compiling asterisk yourself.
Thanks. I will look for your video. I wasn't sure based on the differences between other products, i.e. turn key or virtual appliances, where it can be problematic. I did see that manual involves compiling Asterisk and was definitely not going to do that myself.
I linked it here someplace in the last few days.
IF oyu can't find it, let me know.
I did a quick search for spiceworld and didn't see it. If you find it, please post in this thread.
Just finished it. Good stuff in there. I will be pursuing ditching my "traditional" provider in favor of sip next year.
I will also be considering ditching Shoretel. One major cost point is the desk phones. We have a lot of people that are more comfortable with having an actual desk phone. Do you (or anyone else) know if these ShoreTel phones would work with FreePBX?
-
IP230G (uses MGCP)
-
IP480G and IP485G
I don't know - but you can always test it.
Yeah, very easy to test. But I doubt any of us have tried using them, while that comes up from time to time, it is very rare that people want to move from Shoretel and keep their old phones. Both events are decently rare, combined even more rare. But just take one and see if it will connect somewhere and that will tell you.
If you need, we can help test quickly. It doesn't take much if you have an existing PBX to test against.
It might be an easier sell to say that we can use some of the existing phones, as we have about 85 of them.
We are kind of in a weird spot when it comes to telephony. We are paying just over $3K a year in ShoreTel maintenance. I am comfortable with ShoreTel, but ShoreTel Connect's current iteration (as of Feb 2018) is not fantastic. It has some bugs and is sluggish. It is like they rushed it out, even though it was a year old when we migrated from version 14. The icons for the client have ShoreTel and Mitel logos, depending on where you look for them. The older client was much faster and intuitive for the users, although it was very dated looking (Windows XP). The admin portal (director), was also redone, but has its own issues. For instance the UI is kind of annoying. Search buttons to activate the search feature are below the lists of device/users/ext, but the search boxes pop up above the lists. Makes no sense. Also, the bulk edit feature doesn't work for most things; it should, but it never shows you that it didn't make the changes. You only find out when it isn't working and go back to find that the change was only made to the first selected item.
Another irritating thing about ShoreTel, is that they don't want to you to install Windows updates on the server. They don't test Windows updates on anything but the latest version. With our VAR, we get one upgrade of ShoreTel a year. If we want an upgrade (free of labor charges), we have to either have an issue that is corrected by a shoretel update or wait a year. Obviously, I can't just let Windows stay unpatched for a year, so I update it.
Our contact center (15+ users) has been moved out to a hosted solution with Nice inContact cxOne and Spice. It is not working out very well in terms of the integration between the two of those solutions. It appears as though we are pioneering new products in both companies and are running into all sorts of uncharted issues, double speak from support and sales and unfinished feature sets. Surprisingly (#sarcasm), I was not involved until after they (my boss, the CFO, and the contact center manager) pulled the trigger. It is now getting to the point that they are considering pulling the plug on the whole thing.
I am out of the office until next Thursday. I may take you up on a quick test of an IP480G in the near future.
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$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years. Not to mention any possibility of savings by moving to more common SIP trunk provider (Don't recall who you are using today).
You can build a sample PBX in Vultr for $5/m, get a system running using softphones as samples to show management along with a SIP trunk paying only the per min cost of any test calls, and $1/m for the DID.
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@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years.
More like 30, and if they are decently high end.
On the cheaper phone side, you could get closer to 85.
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years.
More like 30, and if they are decently high end.
On the cheaper phone side, you could get closer to 85.
The Yealink T42S is ~$90
The Yealink T46S is ~$130
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@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years.
More like 30, and if they are decently high end.
On the cheaper phone side, you could get closer to 85.
The Yealink T42S is ~$90
The Yealink T46S is ~$130
T19 is around $40
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years.
More like 30, and if they are decently high end.
On the cheaper phone side, you could get closer to 85.
The Yealink T42S is ~$90
The Yealink T46S is ~$130
T19 is around $40
That is junk.
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@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years. Not to mention any possibility of savings by moving to more common SIP trunk provider (Don't recall who you are using today).
You can build a sample PBX in Vultr for $5/m, get a system running using softphones as samples to show management along with a SIP trunk paying only the per min cost of any test calls, and $1/m for the DID.
We are not using SIP, atm, we are using a PRI. The last invoice I saw (several months ago), was for about $1700. I think we can save quite a bit by moving to SIP. I just have to do the math, like JB says.
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@wrx7m said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
$3k gets you around 25 phones, so your ROI would be around 3 years. Not to mention any possibility of savings by moving to more common SIP trunk provider (Don't recall who you are using today).
You can build a sample PBX in Vultr for $5/m, get a system running using softphones as samples to show management along with a SIP trunk paying only the per min cost of any test calls, and $1/m for the DID.
We are not using SIP, atm, we are using a PRI. The last invoice I saw (several months ago), was for about $1700. I think we can save quite a bit by moving to SIP. I just have to do the math, like JB says.
Wow, PRI? Damn. Typically moving to SIP would get you closer to $100 if you are on $1700 on PRI. (And nearly all PRI is delivered over SIP secretly anyway.)
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@wrx7m I'm obviously biased - but PRIs are a complete waste of money these days. Most SIP Trunk providers are delivering just as good of service as a PRI but at a fraction of the cost. I'd put our service up against any PRI any day of the week. So long as you have a good internet connection, using a PRI is a big waste of money.
Again though... I'm pretty biased lol
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@Skyetel plus, most PRI are delivered over SIP anyway and it's just a PRI in name, not a PRI in reality.
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Skyetel plus, most PRI are delivered over SIP anyway and it's just a PRI in name, not a PRI in reality.
This is definitely the case with Cox. They have no legacy infrastructure - it's all SIP on the back end.
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@Dashrender @scottalanmiller Almost all carriers are using SIP for Local Calling. Toll Free calling is the last refuge of TDM (which is one of the reasons its so expensive). If your carrier is giving your a PRI, I'd bet almost anything its pure SIP
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The CLEC at my last gig didn't even try to hide the fact. They told us outright that they were giving us PRI tagging via SIP
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@Skyetel said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender @scottalanmiller Almost all carriers are using SIP for Local Calling. Toll Free calling is the last refuge of TDM (which is one of the reasons its so expensive). If your carrier is giving your a PRI, I'd bet almost anything its pure SIP
We ditched our PRI to move to Cox SIP 2 years ago. It's still costing us a bundle compared to say - VOIP.ms or Trillian (or whatever the T company name was), but it's about half what the PRI was.
Sadly, my boss wouldn't let me go to one of these other providers - she didn't trust that it would be good enough.
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@Dashrender Yeah our phone person doesn't trust anything that is not Cisco. We pay 70k a year and i have no idea how it is that high. Around 250 staff/users here.
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@jmoore said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender Yeah our phone person doesn't trust anything that is not Cisco. We pay 70k a year and i have no idea how it is that high. Around 250 staff/users here.
you pay $70K to whom?
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@Dashrender said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Skyetel said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender @scottalanmiller Almost all carriers are using SIP for Local Calling. Toll Free calling is the last refuge of TDM (which is one of the reasons its so expensive). If your carrier is giving your a PRI, I'd bet almost anything its pure SIP
We ditched our PRI to move to Cox SIP 2 years ago. It's still costing us a bundle compared to say - VOIP.ms or Trillian (or whatever the T company name was), but it's about half what the PRI was.
Sadly, my boss wouldn't let me go to one of these other providers - she didn't trust that it would be good enough.
And even more compared to... what's that company called, oh yeah, @Skyetel
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@jmoore said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Dashrender Yeah our phone person doesn't trust anything that is not Cisco. We pay 70k a year and i have no idea how it is that high. Around 250 staff/users here.
The biggest "question" is why someone is trusting someone who only trusts Cisco.
Rhetorical statement.
