New Phone System
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@anonymous said:
I have started testing 3CX, but now I am wondering if there is something easier.
I found 3CX to be unnecessarily complicated. A bit harder to use than more powerful and less constrained alternatives like Elastix and FreePBX. And needing a Windows license makes 3CX extra complicated and normally costly too.
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@IT-ADMIN said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@IT-ADMIN said:
yes, for us we have a call center, if the phone system is down only for short period of time that would be a real disaster
You can get failover SIP connections and use two internet connections. We even failover our DIDs.
The cost is still cheaper than PRIs.
how we can use 2 internet connection while we have only one ISP in the country,
do you mean having 2 different internet connection from the same ISP ??Maybe for you, but this is not the case for the majority.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I found 3CX to be unnecessarily complicated. A bit harder to use than more powerful and less constrained alternatives like Elastix and FreePBX. And needing a Windows license makes 3CX extra complicated and normally costly too.
That might be true if you already have a linux admin on staff.....
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I found 3CX to be unnecessarily complicated. A bit harder to use than more powerful and less constrained alternatives like Elastix and FreePBX. And needing a Windows license makes 3CX extra complicated and normally costly too.
That might be true if you already have a linux admin on staff.....
Why would you need a Linux admin for an appliance? Obviously better to have one, but you don't normally use one as it is an appliance, not an exposed Linux system. You don't talk about needing a Linux admin to operate a NAS, right?
And the reverse is true too. 3CX requires a Windows admin. But unlike Elastix or FreePBX, which are appliances, 3CX is an app so it ALWAYS requires a Windows admin (and people who understand the licensing.)
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@IT-ADMIN said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@IT-ADMIN said:
yes, for us we have a call center, if the phone system is down only for short period of time that would be a real disaster
You can get failover SIP connections and use two internet connections. We even failover our DIDs.
The cost is still cheaper than PRIs.
how we can use 2 internet connection while we have only one ISP in the country,
do you mean having 2 different internet connection from the same ISP ??Maybe for you, but this is not the case for the majority.
yep, you are right
let us do a comparison in terms of cost: which is better having 2 internet connection (to use SIP trunk) or having 4 POTS line (+PSTN gateway) ?? -
@IT-ADMIN said:
let us do a comparison in terms of cost: which is better having 2 internet connection (to use SIP trunk) or having 4 POTS line (+PSTN gateway) ??
Better? The one that meets your business needs best, of course.
But with rare exceptions like the country you are in, most companies of any size already have dual internal connections so for normal businesses, the one means no overhead and all of the reliability built into their IT systems will apply to telephony because it is part of IT too.
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I found 3CX to be unnecessarily complicated. A bit harder to use than more powerful and less constrained alternatives like Elastix and FreePBX. And needing a Windows license makes 3CX extra complicated and normally costly too.
That might be true if you already have a linux admin on staff.....
Wait what? I run FreePBX in-house right now and while I do know a bit of Linux sys-admin stuff I haven't once touched the Linux CLI (I have dived into the asterisk CLI a bit) This is a complete misnomer FreePBX, and Elastix, are designed as "drop-in" appliances you really don't need to know anything about the underlying hardware to use them.
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@coliver said:
Wait what? I run FreePBX in-house right now and while I do know a bit of Linux sys-admin stuff I haven't once touched the Linux CLI (I have dived into the asterisk CLI a bit) This is a complete misnomer FreePBX, and Elastix, are designed as "drop-in" appliances you really don't need to know anything about the underlying hardware to use them.
That's where this description difference is important:
- 3CX, a VoIP application that runs on Windows
- Elastix, a VoIP appliance
Nowhere in the description of what Elastix or FreePBX "is" do we talk about Linux, because what underlying code is used to make them work doesn't matter. Just like the Linux running on your Playstation doesn't matter.
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@coliver said:
@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I found 3CX to be unnecessarily complicated. A bit harder to use than more powerful and less constrained alternatives like Elastix and FreePBX. And needing a Windows license makes 3CX extra complicated and normally costly too.
That might be true if you already have a linux admin on staff.....
Wait what? I run FreePBX in-house right now and while I do know a bit of Linux sys-admin stuff I haven't once touched the Linux CLI (I have dived into the asterisk CLI a bit) This is a complete misnomer FreePBX, and Elastix, are designed as "drop-in" appliances you really don't need to know anything about the underlying hardware to use them.
Yeah you don't need a full time linux admin for a PBX they don't need to be attended to that often , It's nice to learn more about how it works though.
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Just skimmed the begging of this thread and have do not have time to read the rest yet, but I will read this in an hour or so and make more replies.
But the number one thing here is you all need to STFU about his PRI. He clearly stated that the PRI was not going away. He is aware of other options.
Answer the question the person is asking. Do not go on for more than 20 posts about a requirement that was stated.
Yes, it is good to say things like, "Why PRI?".... But it was clearly stated that it was a company policy decision. This implies a fixed requirement that is not currently in the hands of the IT department to change.
Before @scottalanmiller goes off on a tangent about management decisions, just don't. This is the real world not the hypothetical best world. IT does not make all the choices. things in a business are always a negotiation and compromise.
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@JaredBusch said:
Before @scottalanmiller goes off on a tangent about management decisions, just don't. This is the real world not the hypothetical best world. IT does not make all the choices. things in a business are always a negotiation and compromise.
I've not said anything about his choice on PRI and if you notice above, I even said that POTS lines can be (in rare cases of course) the better decision than SIP. I've spoken to him before and his case is very rare and one where PRI does make sense.
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@JaredBusch said:
Just skimmed the begging of this thread and have do not have time to read the rest yet, but I will read this in an hour or so and make more replies.
But the number one thing here is you all need to STFU about his PRI. He clearly stated that the PRI was not going away. He is aware of other options.
Answer the question the person is asking. Do not go on for more than 20 posts about a requirement that was stated.
Yes, it is good to say things like, "Why PRI?".... But it was clearly stated that it was a company policy decision. This implies a fixed requirement that is not currently in the hands of the IT department to change.
Before @scottalanmiller goes off on a tangent about management decisions, just don't. This is the real world not the hypothetical best world. IT does not make all the choices. things in a business are always a negotiation and compromise.
Either way if he can use VoIP internally he can easily get a PRI/T1 card for his new phone server and be that much better off. I would still recommend looking into an Asterisk based system it seems to be one of the most powerful IP-PBX systems around.
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@JaredBusch said:
it looks like you didn't read very well what options he had, when i suggested to use POTS, it is based on what he have actually because he mentioned that he have some POTS line !!!@anonymous said:
We already have POTS lines. Do they make a POTS to VoIP Gateway that is cheaper?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
Before @scottalanmiller goes off on a tangent about management decisions, just don't. This is the real world not the hypothetical best world. IT does not make all the choices. things in a business are always a negotiation and compromise.
I've not said anything about his choice on PRI and if you notice above, I even said that POTS lines can be (in rare cases of course) the better decision than SIP. I've spoken to him before and his case is very rare and one where PRI does make sense.
Actually my response here was not about the OP's case but the other mentioned case.
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The OP here, @anonymous covered the PRI situation correctly (by acknowledging it as a requirement and why, the why being management policy.) While I'm sure at a management level there is a great discussion to have about why management would be making IT decisions, @anonymous handled this exactly as it should be. IT gets requirements sometimes, sometimes those requirements are foolish, odd, poor, random, etc. But they are requirements. If you are going to have a requirement against common or best practices, you need to acknowledge it and state it so that we don't have to go around trying to figure out why it is. He did, which is why I didn't bring it up at all. Because that's how you handle putting a requirement into a thread - with enough information to know it is really a requirement.
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@anonymous said:
As much as I would like it to, the company policy will not be changed, no matter how much I beg,
Even if you save them $300+ a month going forward? -
@anonymous said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Why does the fact that you are already paying for justify counting to pay for it?
They had to run fiber to the building so we are locked in for 5 years.
OK.. that makes sense... when that contract is up... definitely time to start looking..
But the definitely shouldn't be a company policy.. that would possibly be one of the worst company policies I've ever heard of.
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@Dashrender said:
OK.. that makes sense... when that contract is up... definitely time to start looking..
But the definitely shouldn't be a company policy.. that would possibly be one of the worst company policies I've ever heard of.
Agreed. Having a lock in and having a policy are very different things.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@anonymous said:
Have to try to do this for 5K
Ok? What part are you referring to that has to do with POTs lines. You are throwing out random facts that don't mean anything. Why do you needs POTS with a VoIP system? What part are you referring to that's so expensive?
Agreed - We need the whole picture.
Do you have a PRI or do you 4 POTS lines? or both? You say you only allow 4 people on the phone at one time... that seems to imply that you only actually have 4 POTS lines, and maybe don't really have a PRI?
Also, the costs of the 4 POTS lines is probably around $100/month. Assuming your ISP sell SIP service, you could look at having them convert your POTS lines into SIP trunks inside your contract, which could put you in an even better position than you are now - i.e. you might be able to et 6 or 8 SIP trunks for the cost of the 4 POTS lines.
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@IT-ADMIN said:
@coliver said:
@IT-ADMIN said:
for this reason personally i will never rely on the internet connection for my phone system
Is the cost of being down equal to the yearly cost of a PRI? I don't know that would be a question for @anonymous.
yes, for us we have a call center, if the phone system is down only for short period of time that would be a real disaster
The call centers I used to work in were all SIP before left. You have TONS more options with SIP then you do with PRI.
