Up and Running But No Where to Call

Installed Switches

We swapped our Netgear switches with the Cisco gear. Took an hour. The worst put was getting the cables plugged into the new switches. Since the stacking cards were installed at the integrators office and tested I knew this should be simple and everything would just work.

David, our CWPS engineer, then checked out the switches for any problems, such as loops.

We missed only one cable when reconnecting everything to the switch.

Connect the Equipment to the Switches

Fairly simple. David carefully connected all of the components (UPS network card, BE 6000, Cisco Router, CWPS monitoring station) to the switch. Then turned them on. Nothing blew up. I think my standards of success are too low.

I now have a cisco phone on my desk. It works but I can't do anything but leave voicemail for other staff right now. But I can start playing with it.

Integrating Cisco PBX to Open Directory

This is the first time David had connected a Cisco phone system to Apple's Open Directory. The Cisco gear is designed to work with Active Directory. It took a while, but a friend of mine, Jon Thomason, provided the key advice. Treat Open Directory as straight LDAP and then gave me an example of an authenticated bind he had done with his equipment. That was all of the information he needed. I have looked up staff names using the phone's Corporate Directory and it brings up the name with the phone number as listed in Open Directory. I have to figure out if I should include the entire number of just the extension in the directory.

So, in theory, the we should be able to tie in the Cisco ASA firewall into the Open Directory. Thus, a person creating a remote connection should just need their Open Directory name and password.

Next Step

Tomorrow we switch from the SonicWall to the ASA. Hopefully, with the exception of the remote users, no one will notice a difference. And it sounds like it will be easy for remote users to configure their Macs, though I suspect users with office MacBooks will need us to do this for them since they don't have administrative passwords.

And then try to get the Cisco phone system to download contact information from Kerio Connect via LDAP, or at least be able to do lookups.

One Small Thing

Previously I have complained about the Cisco phones not having a Home button to take you right back to the home page. So far if I press the button next to my name it does take me to the opening page, instead of having to work backups from being 5 menus deep. I think learning the phone's basics will be easy.

It's on the Rack

Progress.

The CWPS engineer arrived this morning and we installed new humongous UPS, the BU 6000, the router, the ASA firewall, and a monitoring unit on the racks. Nothing is plugged in yet.

Note to self, in future buy 4-post racks with square holes in them. Modern data equipment doesn't like our racks with round holes. We had to buy a rack shelf for the BU 6000 for that reason.

Tomorrow we replace our Netgear switches with Cisco switches. Oh happy day, I have to reboot the Netgear switches once a month in hopes that they don't stop working on their own accord. The Cisco switches have a faster backplane and support Power over Ethernet (PoE) for the phones and CWPS will monitor the switches for us. I am hopeful that this will improve our data network.

Because these switches will draw more power than the old ones I will make sure they are plugged into the UPS units that have the lightest loads on them. They are too distant from the new UPS to plug them into it.

Because we need to shut down our network to replace the switches I'll get to work an hour early so we can be sure to finish up the job by 8am. It shouldn't take an hour but I want to leave time for things to go wrong.

We will check out the Cisco ASA firewall to make sure it is properly configured to replace our SonicWall 4100.

On Wednesday morning at 8am I'll move all network connections from the SonicWall to the ASA. I will need to double-check that everything that depends on the firewall works properly. I will also have to set up a new configuration for remote access since the ASA will be our remote access server.

And we are still waiting to hear from WindStream for the circuit installation date.

The Best Laid Plans

The new equipment was delivered on Thursday but we have not been able to install it. Here is a lesson on what can go wrong.

The original order for a new circuit with WindStream didn't include a subtenant's phone number that we were porting over. Given the new information WindStream said they had to restart the order from scratch. ????? So the circuit may be installed on the original date of 1/10/13, or it may not.

Huh? is all I can think. I was told this wouldn't have been a problem with Paetec, our original carrier which was purchased by Windstream around a year ago. I suspect carriers still act like it is 1999 in terms of customer service. Why couldn't they just install the new circuit and then port the number?

To add difficulty we are in Washington DC and an inaugural is less than a month away. Any installation date after Jan 10 might be affected by the Secret Service closing access to all underground tunnels in case any new wires need to be pulled, pushing back installation date even more. Hopefully Windstream will meet the original Jan 10 deadline.

This puts CWPS in a quandary. The engineer assigned to our project has an installation job that could conflict if our go live date of Jan 16 is delayed. So another engineer has been assigned to us and he wasn't available to mount the equipment in the racks and set it up for testing Dec 28. 

On the bright side I had an unexpected doctor's appointment on Dec 28. Infected finger, worst the physician's assistant had ever seen. I would have needed the ER if I waited any longer.

So I have all of the fully configured pieces in my office waiting for installation. We have to set up new dates. I can't play with my new toys yet. I can show the new phones to the staff. I get reactions from "cool" to "I don't have room on my desk for those huge phones."

And a Happy New Year to all.

Some Thoughts on Security

Phone systems have their security issues that go back to companies owning their own PBXs.  In the early 90s our PBX was hacked and we became an international phone system. We paid the costs and some unknown person collected the profits. And the dangers of someone hacking into your voicemail system. Today the dangers are worse. Thanks Internet.

Security issues can be broken down to the following issues:

• Business continuity. What happens if your PBX dies, your building burns down, terrorism makes your city uninhabitable, or a backhoe operator goes "pops." 
• Become someone else's phone company. Someone hacking into your system so they can use your PBX to offer cheap international calling to their customers. Or using your PBX to impersonate you or your company.
• Stealing information. Voicemails and recorded conservations can hold confidential information.
• Just plain embarrass you. Some people enjoy reprogramming you systems and making new outgoing messages.

Hosted vs Premise Based PBX

Business continuity

Hosted phone providers promise improved business continuity. If your building burns down, they are still up and running. If their building burns down, they have backup facilities. I will let the hosting providers fight among themselves who offers the best business continuity plans. All I can advise is to get as much information as possibly about their own business continuity plans and if the backup facilities are automatically updated.

Even if the phone line is cut between their facility and yours, you are covered. Staff can access their phone accounts from any location with a fast Internet connection. Smart phone apps turn your iPhone or Android or BlackBerry into an extension of your phone system. Even a lowly landline phone can pick up your voicemail.

But if your company has multiple offices you can have multiple PBX's that replicate each other. Or you can put a backup PBX in rented space. Our Cisco system can do this if we buy a second PBX. I remember Avaya enterprises systems having this feature at least 6 years ago. All it takes is money.

For a smaller budget some phone carriers offer services where calls can be forwarded to backup numbers, often cell phones, if they can't reach your PBX. No access to voicemail but at least you can deal with incoming and outgoing calls.

So advantage to hosted systems but think what you really want. Just depending on your employee's cell phones might be sufficient.

Hacking

But what about unauthorized people accessing your system? If the hosted provided does all administration that can cut down on concerns. They will keep the phone system software up to date, as I've mentioned elsewhere the last time our current system's software was updated was 1993 because no one was paying attention. And updated software often includes security fixes.

But what about protecting user accounts. No hosted provided offered VPN only access to their systems. I'm nervous about any system that allows staff to access their accounts from home with a name and passwords, most staff have awful passwords and tend to write them somewhere easy to find. Even if that staff has no admin rights, their voicemail can be hacked and an exploiter might be able to use that account to exploit a security weakness.

I prefer a system where people outside of the office can only access the phone system with a dumb phone or through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). I feel that VPN adds a necessary level of security. Staff who don't care about remote access via computers or smart phones don't get VPN access. If someone takes a VoIP phone home it connects via a VPN. If they use their smart phone to get visual voicemail or reprogram their phone, it goes over the VPN. Our Cisco system will provide this security. None of the hosted providers mentioned VPN only remote access to their systems.

Many premise based resellers will offer to manage your system for you, so like the hosted provider they take care of the software updates and even adds, deletes and moves. So you might even avoid having any staff having admin rights. I prefer administering my own system but some companies might prefer outsourcing all of that work.

Voicemail via email

One of the big selling points of any modern system is the ability to e-mail voicemail to staff. We decided against this feature, WAV files going across e-mail isn't a good security move. We will have e-mail notifications when voicemail arrives, but users will have to log into the system or use their phones to access voicemail.

The computer interface

Is the computer interface for the average user a weak point? This didn't occur to me until we were close to selecting a proposal, but do you want a system that depends on running Java in the web browser? I'm not talking about administrators, who we assume will practise safe computer, but the average staffer who doesn't care that much? I am trying to move my office towards not having Java running in the browser. The Avaya One-X console, which is well liked, works in this manner. Are stand alone programs safer overall than browser based access? I do not know the safest approach but this is worth thinking about.

And for G-d's sake, change your default passwords

Our system was hacked in the early 90s because no one changed the default administrator's password. Make sure that you have a system that requires staff to change from their default passwords. Change all of the administrator passwords. Just do good computer security practices. You know, all of those recommendations to keep your computer data secure that most people don't follow.

What do you think?

Most phone people know more about phone security than me. Please post a comment or send me an e-mail about best practices or anything I've missed.

Progress Report #2

Cisco shipped the BE 6000 server to CWPS on Dec 7, a business day ahead of schedule. So we expect to install the new system on Dec 28 and to go live Jan 26. This will give me 2 to 3 weeks to play with the new system before we go live. We will have the PBX hooked up to 2 analog lines prior to hooking it up to our main circuit.

Licenses

Purchasing the correct number and types of user licenses can be complex. I didn't appreciate the intricacies until I was near the end of reviewing the proposals.

Licensing can vary with every system. I looked closest at the Avaya and Cisco licenses and came across a number of issues. Purchasing the wrong mix initially can cost you more in the long run.

What does each license cover? I needed a sales rep to walk me through Avaya's licensing options. The licenses you need by depend on your staff being mobile workers, office only workers, and/or remote workers. Do they need a phone or just a license and software? Do they need voice mail? I suggest making a matrix of features and licenses.

The licensing structure might change every few months so double-check that your information is current. For example, the Cisco license changed after the proposals were sent to us. The new license cutting our costs by $2,500 by eliminating the need to purchase separate licenses for mobile Jabber.

Can a license be traded in? I almost write "upgraded" but in some cases one license might be different from another but not necessarily better. In the case of Avaya and Cisco you cannot exchange or upgrade licenses. If you bought the wrong license you need to buy another one of the correct type. This can make planning painful since you don't want to overbuy the more expensive licenses, but if you plan the wrong mix you may end up buying more licenses later on even though your staff size has remained constant. I would like the PBX companies make it possible to upgrade or exchange licenses after purchase. A flatter licensing structure would also help.

The most important difference is between licenses for phone assigned to people and for public phones. A public phone license is usually used for conference rooms and guest phones. They do not include voice mail or any advanced features. 

Also think about any voice mailboxes that are not associated with any phone. We bought 3 voice mail boxes for department use.

Cisco & Mac OS X

Many of my readers are IT folks with Macs and are wondering how the Cisco phones will integrate with a Mac environment.

I hope to start exploring Mac integration at the beginning of January because our installation date is Dec 28. I'll have 2 to 3 weeks to play with the phone system before it goes live on Jan 16. I plan on investigating telephony products for the Mac, how well Jabber integrates with the Address Book and Kerio Connect, and other issues.

Progress Report #1

We started our installation process on Monday with our first meeting with Bob Chilcote of Connected WorkPlace Solutions (CWPS). In this 3+ hour meeting we covered a lot of ground and it gave us new ideas on how to take advantage of our new system.

PBX installation is a long road. I was hoping for a new system before Christmas but circumstances slowed down signing the contract, and the holidays will interrupt the installation of a new phone circuit. So we expect to go live around Jan 16, 2013, but we are waiting confirmation of the delivery date of the new phone circuit.

When I started down this road I read to expect to take 6 months to buy and install a PBX. This broke down to 2 months to prepare a RFP, 2 months to select a proposal and 2 months to install a BPX. This seems about right to me, though I took 5 years. Most of that time was spent educating myself about phones, though most of my work was done in the last 6 months.

To make life a little easier we are not switching carriers. We've been happy with WindStream with our analog T1 lines so we are using them for our new SIP Trunk. Our telecom agent, ARG, handles everything to do with WindStream.

I am currently filling out a spreadsheet for CWPS. Information about every user and station. Support related information. Hunt groups. Automated attendants. Lists of remote users. It's a lot of work. This spreadsheet is due to CWPS on Dec 14, and it does feel like a homework assignment.

CWPS is waiting for  Cisco to ship the equipment to them. They should have it by next week. CWPS will do all of the setup work of the PBX, switches and firewall at their offices and then deliver the equipment to us the following week. I hope to have the data switches installed by the end of the year and have all of the equipment in the racks. Final configuration might be done then or the first week of January.

At this point we will have a functional phone system that cannot talk to the world. We are hoping to of the SIP Trunk Circuit installed the week of Jan. 7. If that goes well we will switch over to the new system at the end of the day on Jan 16 and perform training on Jan 17. The reason for Jan 17 is that this is the first day our staff would be able to focus on phone training.

Between equipment installation and going live I will devote time to getting used to the system, both as an administrator and a user. We will set up a few of the phones so I can test out its use and features.

Plus the e-mails between me, CWPS, and ARG. CWPS has a long history of working with ARG on projects so CWPS and ARG should be able to coordinate their work without me being in the middle.

What's My Line?

If you are like us and upgrading from a very old PBX you might want to change your phone circuits. Here are the options:

POTS or Plain Old Telephone Service: Voce quality lines. You can buy one at a time. I don't even have this at home. We will have 3 POTS lines for our fax machines and modems. Each POTS line has a phone number assigned to it. Fun Fact: In many countries POTS used to stand for Post Office Telephone System because their post offices also ran the phone system.

Analog T1: Similar to POTS in that it is voice quality line. We have 2 T1 right now, one supplies 23 lines to our PBX, the other one supplies 8 DID lines, some analog lines that don't go into the PBX (faxes, modems). Each line has a phone number assigned to it. With the analog T1s were were paying a base monthly fee plus usage charges. Each line goes to our phone patch panel and gets connected to a separate port in our PBX.

T1 PRI: Stands for Primary Rate Interface. A digital phone line carried over a T1. Tried and true technology. I strongly considered moving to this technology, it would have saved us over $200/month over our analog T1s plus it would have bundled most of our usage. Each PRI would be a single cable that would plug into a PBX. Much simpler than the analog T1. Our current phone system does not support a T1 PRI but does support ISDN PRI.

SIP Trunks: We are going with this technology. Considered new in terms of phone technology but gaining ground. This is all digital. SIP Trunks can use a T1 or a metro connection. The number of simultaneous conversations it can support depends on the codec you choose, we are using an industry standard one and are paying for 30 channels on a T1. You can squeeze more traffic on a T1 but at the cost of lower quality by choosing a different codec.

One advantage is the ability to run voice and data traffic over the same pipe. Many vendors will offer to dedicate a certain bandwidth to voice and the rest to data. Some vendors warned me not to mix voice and data, others don't see a problem.

One disadvantage is that you shouldn't try to run fax over SIP trunks, some vendors claim to support it but I was warned that the results are often poor.

This is less expensive than the T1 PRIs. We will have all or most of our monthly usage bundled into the base price.

Being true digital there is no no relationship between the number of phone numbers and the number of channels. We could have just 5 numbers and 30 channels. Once everything is working we should look into eliminating some of our phone numbers.

Be sure that the SIP trunks you get are compatible with your PBX. Like all standards there is wiggle room and some SIP implementations have proven to be incompatible. It is cases like this one where phone guys laugh at computer guys.

DID lines: Direct Inward Dialing. This is really a service. This allows you to give different inbound numbers to different phone users without getting additional lines or regular phone numbers. DIDs are usually sold in 20 packs are are inexpensive. In our current system we have 8 DID lines, so our PBX can handle up to 8 people calling in on direct lines simultaneously. The 9th caller would be routed to our operator. With our new phone circuit and PBX we will be able to handle as many DID calls as our basic line can handle. In addition, we will have the option for outgoing calls to show the DID number instead of the number of the phone line it goes out on.

Paying for a PBX

Phone systems aren't cheap an how to pay for them is a common issue.

Very few PBX purchasers pay cash. Most lease the equipment. My knowledge of leases is limited but I can put in a few pointers. It is common for phone leases to allow for equipment upgrades by extending the life of the lease rather than increasing the monthly payments. A lease might allow for a $1 buyout or "fair market value" (FMV) buyout if you don't renew the lease. For the latter look for protections so the FMV isn't unreasonable. I've seen FMV for 5 year old computers that were higher than buying new computers. So read the fine print. There are many aspects of leases, such as tax issues, that I am ignorant.

Some PBX manufacturers and vendors will offer leases at very low interest or 0% interest so include lease costs into the cost of the entire system.

Hosted providers may offer special deals if you lease the hardware through them. They might offer free maintenance on the equipment during the lease period as long as you use their services.

We are using Tenant Improvement (TI) funds to pay for our new PBX. It is common to negotiate TI funds that can be used to improve the office when signing an office lease. TI funds are real money, but they are usually spent early in the lease. Unspent TI funds will disappear when the office lease expires. Normally these funds are used for construction work and on products that cannot be moved from the office. It is unusual to be allow to use TI funds for a phone system but our management negotiated a clause to allow for TI funds to be used to purchase a phone system. 

So we are in the rare position of paying cash for our phones. Our phone related operating costs —maintenance and carrier fees — will be lower than in 2013 than in 2012. A big win.

And there was competition for the TI funds. After I sent our the RFPs for the phone systems I discovered that we had contracted for additional construction work. I had to wait until the construction work budget was final because it would determine how much TI funds would be available for the phones. I ended up looking at another system in case I had to cut costs dramatically, and this delayed awarding of the PBX contract by a few weeks. Fortunately the TI funds available for the PBX were adequate to go with my first choice.

Paul Chernoff funny

OK, not a phone issue but amusing.

I do check searches people used to find my web site. Sometimes it gives me ideas for blogs. One person used a google search engine in Russia and looked for "paul chernoff funny" and ended up at my site.

I have no idea what s/he was looking for but I hope they found it.

Evaluating Phones

After 5 years of looking at phone systems I didn’t feel confident in making a decision.  So I changed how I was looking at phones. I changed the system to meet the goal of having a system that is easy for the staff. PBX systems offer similar features, so ease of use became a priority. I followed this approach:

1-Determine which systems to evaluate. Read reviews, ask for recommendations, talk with vendors. Eliminate systems that fall short in important areas. For example, if a system requires a MS Exchange server for important features, I eliminated it because we don’t run Exchange. 

Every time I talked with someone I asked “what phone system do you have and do you love it?” Most people didn’t know what phone system was used in their office. They just said it was this black box that sat on their desk and rang when they wanted quiet. Hardly anyone used the computer interface provided for their phone or advanced features.

2-Get volunteer evaluators. A few co-workers were willing to take the time to look at phones. The fact that they showed interest in our next phone system meant that the weren’t normal since most people said that they didn’t care as long as it had caller.

3-Decide evaluation criteria. I conducted internal interviews to determine the most important features I created survey forms for the volunteers to fill out for each phone system. Rate each system on each action on a scale from 1 to 10, with a place for notes. Here is our evaluation sheet.

4-Pick phones to evaluate. My controller and I decided that everyone will get the same phone. We were unhappy with having different phone models, it made training and inventory more difficult. We have a 1gb to the desktop so we needed 1gb phones. Then we wanted a multiline screens since this seemed to be important for ease of use. And excellent speaker phones.

5-Volunteer evaluations. Resellers either brought systems to our office or the volunteers visited their sales offices. We provided a copy of the surveys to the vendors so they would know what we wanted to see. We made it clear that we only wanted to see user functions and not administrative functions. After the phone demonstrations we tried out the computer interfaces. If the volunteers were interested in additional functions they would request a demonstration.

I made it clear to the resellers that we were trying out the phones and not the resellers. They would have the advantage if we selected their phone system, but no promises.

The results were not what I expected. The volunteers liked the Avaya system but not the ShoreTel, I expected the reverse. This is not to say that ShoreTel isn’t an excellent system, but our taste testers didn’t like it.

6-Have a shootout. Testing different phones next to each other gives new perspective.

After the first round we reduced the phone systems to 3, Broadband based hosted systems with the Polycon VVX-550, Cisco 7945G, Cisco 8961, Avaya 9611G, Mitel 5312 and Mitel 5324 phones. Everyone was invited to try out the phones, they were all live and connected to the Internet.

The Polycom VVX 500 was well liked and is probably the future of office phones. It was mostly touchscreen operations and reminded us of the iPhone. It was also the smallest of the phones, a plus. The speaker phone tested poorly and I realized a few months later that this was probably because of the codec used by the hosted PBX company and didn’t reflect on the phone. One problem with a revolutionary phone is that the PBX makers have to catch up and support it. We did find some other issues with the phone and while the screen is hi res it had a narrow viewing angle. For some reason, after I put my phone number in the phone’s directory, the phone would spontaneously call me. One Monday I had over 60 voicemail messages from the phone. Maybe it was lonely.

The Avaya also did well. While it had a smaller screen than other phones it was well designed.

The Cisco 8961 was better liked than the 7945G. The most important difference to us was the 8961’s hi res screen. Numbers and letters looked normal and readable, the same on the 7945G was chunkier. I suspect that an easier to read screen will result in better usability. There is a touch screen version of the 8961 its interface design does not take advantage of the touch screen and it is better to save some money. My lease favorite part of the phone was the lack of a home button.

Staff didn’t warm to the Mitel phone. I know people who are very happy with their Mitel systems.

Summary. This process help me narrow down the systems to include in our RFPs. Based on user feedback we sent our RFPs hosted providers based on the Broadworks software, Avaya dealers and Cisco dealers. I had met enough dealers over the years that I didn’t have to look for any. Plus once it is known that you are looking for a phone system

What we have

Before looking at phone systems you need to know what you already have. To  put my comments in perspective I am listing what we have.

85 staff and 1 location with no remote workers. That is the most important information in choosing a phone system. If we had 85 staff distributed among 10 different locations our needs would be very different.

Why is this important? Costs and features. If you are considering a hosted pbx, also known as phones as a service, or pbx in the cloud, you are trading lower capital costs against higher operating costs. When I drew 5 and 10 year cost projections of hosted systems they proved to be much more expensive than having a pbx in our office. If we were much smaller then a hosted system might be less expensive. If we had multiple locations, hosted might have made financial sense.

Our staff size has been stable over the years. With most pbx systems in addition to a phone you buy a license per user. If your company shrinks you could end up with many licenses that you can't use. A hosted solution might allow you to add and remove licenses as you need them, allowing operating costs to grow and shrink with your staff size.

There are non financial criteria in considering hosted systems and I will cover those in another blog post.

Avaya Definity System 75 r3 pbx. Our old system is intended for much larger offices. Feature filled but not user friendly. It had its last software upgrade in 1993 or 1994, so we were stuck with various software bugs a no support for newer features, such as call ID. It was also End of Lifed (EOL) by Avaya a few years ago.

Why is this important? If you system is old enough you don't have to worry about carrying over how things worked. Almost anything will be better provided it is properly installed. I joke that tin cans and string being an improvement if only it could include Caller ID. If you were migrating from MS-DOS to Windows 8 or Mac OS X would you care about remembering those DOS commands?

Hunt Groups but no call centers. A hunt group is when someone calls in a line and it can be answered by multiple people. Pretty simple. Call center software is more sophisticated. It allows supervisors to listen in on calls and handle incoming calls in a more sophisticated manner.

Why is this important? Call center software or modules can increase the cost of a phone system. Not just software but installation and maintenance costs. Get it only if you need it.

3 public area phones. These phones are not assigned to staff. They may there for guests, or in conference rooms, or in a server room. 

Why is this important? Licensing is usually less expensive for public area phones since they lack voice mail or advanced features.

2 analog T1s. One T1 provides 24 simultaneous calls. The other one provides 8 DID lines to our PBX and 3 lines for our fax machines and fax modems. Twice a year we peak at 23 simultaneous calls. Some offices might need lines dedicated to alarm systems.

Why is this important? You need to know how your phone traffic volume. You need to decide if fax machines will get their own POTS lines or if they will be connected to the PBX. Some features that allow you to use a cell phone with your system might use additional lines.

1 100mbps and 1 6mbps Internet Connections. We have a very fast Internet connection and a fast backup Internet connection.

Why is this important? Consider combining voice and data lines? In our case it was less expensive to keep our data and voice lines separate.

Your computer infrastructure. We use Mac desktops and laptops, a Kerio Connect Mail Server, 1GB switches that do not support Power Over Ethernet (PoE), use Apple's Open Directory.

Why is this important? Phones and computers may share resources and interact. Some phone systems require a MS Exchange Server or for computers to run Windows to provide some features. You may need to upgrade infrastructure to properly support the phone system. Some systems do a poor job of supporting Macs. Some systems might require replacing data switch and/or firewalls.

We aren't moving. We will use our existing Cat 5, Cat 5e and Cat 6 wiring.

Why is this important? If your office is moving you probably want to avoid paying for both voice and data wiring. If you have Cat 3 wiring throughout your office then you can consider buying digital or analog phones that would not be part of your data network. The advantage would be having a simpler network and cutting costs.

Summary. My office is rather boring when it comes to our phone needs. No one is asking for an office phone at home and we have a single location. Our server room and network is ready for a migration to a VoIP system. And most staff say nyet to fancy features so we focus on the basics.

Welcome to My Adventures in Phone Land

This blog is about buying a phone system for non-phone people. 

I’m an IT guy who took responsibility for phones around 5 years ago. Previously our corporate parent had responsibility for phone sysem purchases and maintenance. Accounting handled basic administrative tasks. When we separated from our corporate parent all phone responsibility was given to IT.

Around the same time Avaya had dropped support for our phone system, an AT&T Definity System 75 version 3. It was purchased in 1993. While we found a vendor to support our system, the writing has been on the wall for some time. And my staff really, really wants caller ID.

Over the past 5 years I’ve learned how to simplify some of the administrative tasks, do some of my own phone wiring, and do various tasks. But the manuals are thick, dense obscure. Modern phone systems are much easier to administer than what was state of the art in 1993. 

And people want Caller ID more than most of the features touted by the pbx vendors. And it is important that features can be discovered without reading a thick manual or hours of training. 

In this blog I am not going to tell you what to buy. I cannot tell you if a Cisco or Avaya or Panasonic b or Asterisk based system is best for your office. I can’t even say if VoIP better for you than traditional phone wiring. Or hosted vs. premise based. Or if you should get a capital or operating lease or pay cash. I will discuss the pros and cons of these issues as I see them. 

Now that we have ordered a new phone system I am prepared to share what I have learned. I will blogging about the installation in addition to the many issues of selecting a system.