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Nortel, Avaya, and Shoretel VOIP Systems

GeekDrew

GeekDrew

Diamond Member
I'm not sure which forum would be best for this, so I'm going with Off-Topic.

My agency badly needs to replace its telecommunications system (currently a mix of analog and ISDN lines in a common Centrex group). We've received bids from vendors representing ShoreTel, Nortel, and Avaya. I'm one of three votes regarding which solution is most acceptable from a technical standpoint.

I have specific questions about administrative features on these systems. The most important question regards call trees / auto-attendants / IVR. We are a local government with multiple elected officials. Some departments want the ability to change the call trees that pertain to them - we (the technical team and current administrators) agree that they should have control of their call trees, but *only* their call trees. For example, if the Elections office has 2 DIDs, each with their own call tree, an employee of the Elections office needs to be able to do whatever they want with their call trees, but *only* their call trees - they shouldn't be able to add more call trees, delete any, or change any that do not belong to them.

We've been told by Nortel and Shoretel that their solutions can do this, and that Avaya cannot -- I personally question whether or not Nortel and Shoretel understand our needs.

Does anyone have any experience with Nortel, Avaya, or Shoretel VOIP solutions, and would be willing to shed some light on my above question as to whether it is possible?

Time is of the essence... and if you don't want to post here, please PM me. Or, suggest a resource where I could learn more about it on my own.
 
Maybe, maybe not. We're well aware of Nortel's financial turmoil... I'm concerned with the technical aspects, not financial, right now.
 
My only options are Nortel, Avaya, and Shoretel. They were the only manufacturers represented by vendors submitting valid RFPs. RFP requests were sent out to plenty of vendors of many more manufacturers, and those were the only manufacturers represented by the response. I'm informally told that Cisco was not represented because our solution requires (per the RFP, at least) a converged solution of digital/IP rather than IP only.
 
I have some experience with VoIP implementations. The requirements you mention are fairly simple tasks for the systems you mention. I'm surprised you were told Avaya could not handle the call tree option -- I would think it's the more robust system of the three. Anyways, your best best is to get a solutions architect/sales engineer to answer your question, as there's a lot of variables that go into these types of things.
 
Originally posted by: gar598
I have some experience with VoIP implementations. The requirements you mention are fairly simple tasks for the systems you mention. I'm surprised you were told Avaya could not handle the call tree option -- I would think it's the more robust system of the three. Anyways, your best best is to get a solutions architect/sales engineer to answer your question, as there's a lot of variables that go into these types of things.
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I know there are... I was posting here because I have a meeting about this stuff tomorrow (not a final meeting or anything) and want to get some more information, however informal, that I can later verify.

The Avaya engineer that I talked to said that it couldn't do what I wanted because if an administrator is given permission to alter call trees, then he can alter any call tree on the system, not just specific trees. I just did some reading on Nortel's website, and I'm coming to the same conclusion with them, even though one of their sales engineers said otherwise.
 
While I'd still appreciate any advice/comments on the above manufacturers or about telecom deployments in general, unless we decide to go with an internal deployment model - such as Asterisk and off-the-shelf hardware individually purchased, etc - we cannot consider any other manufacturers at this time, even if we want to.
 
we use shoretel. by call trees you mean the press 1 for this and press 2 for that? yes you can delegate that down to a dept level.
 
Originally posted by: syee
Originally posted by: Rubycon
What about Alcatel/Lucent?
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Avaya was the telecom spin-off of Lucent.

Cisco could be another manufacturer that you could look at.
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being in hindsight now SHOULD have looked at.

The OP is probably screwed, but anyone else curious should definitely always give Cisco a try.

Also make sure they get a 'real' partner in any tech they are picking, there are far too many fly by nights out there.

 
Originally posted by: Citrix
we use shoretel. by call trees you mean the press 1 for this and press 2 for that? yes you can delegate that down to a dept level.
Click to expand...

Thanks! 🙂

Originally posted by: alkemyst
Originally posted by: syee
Originally posted by: Rubycon
What about Alcatel/Lucent?
Click to expand...

Avaya was the telecom spin-off of Lucent.

Cisco could be another manufacturer that you could look at.
Click to expand...

being in hindsight now SHOULD have looked at.

The OP is probably screwed, but anyone else curious should definitely always give Cisco a try.

Also make sure they get a 'real' partner in any tech they are picking, there are far too many fly by nights out there.
Click to expand...

We did look at them. We had the manufacturer demo their equipment (over a year ago). Multiple vendors representing Cisco did receive the RFP, and as we got zero responses involving Cisco equipment (beyond switches), we can only assume that no vendor felt Cisco telephony would be appropriate for our needs.
 
That's unfortunate. I've been looking at VOIP systems and the Cisco was fairly impressive, at least for my company's purposes.
 
Originally posted by: GeekDrew
We did look at them. We had the manufacturer demo their equipment (over a year ago). Multiple vendors representing Cisco did receive the RFP, and as we got zero responses involving Cisco equipment (beyond switches), we can only assume that no vendor felt Cisco telephony would be appropriate for our needs.
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That's pretty odd, but possible. Most send out RFQ's first though...you may have shorted yourself sending out the other.

Here in S. Florida one of the best freebies is to contact Cisco's partners to get them to bring a nice proposal and show. FREE!

One of the reasons I am cert'ing for CCNP now.
 
Without Googling extensively, isn't Cisco only IP? We also require TDM. Does their VOIP server accept SIP clients and trunking? Can Cisco phones connect to VOIP servers using SIP, if we want them to? I honestly don't know enough about Cisco's VOIP solution to know why no vendors recommended them -- the knowledge I have of VOIP systems is several years old, and I'm forgetful.
 
no need to google. Just tell them what you need and not add into the mix any 'requirements'. Chances are you may be killing your deal with them. AFAIK Cisco does TDM, SIP....trunking is a given today.

I have a friend that always fucks themselves because for something as simple as a furniture quote he will put in a requirement for Henry Miller chairs at $20 each because he saw some scam ad on eBay.
 
We did tell them what we needed, but we do have some requirements that we have to work with. Some buildings only have Cat3 cabling for the telecom infrastructure, which won't run IP IIRC. Therefore the vendor would have to either use a TDM solution, or include in the bid package the cost of upgrading the building infrastructure. We didn't specify any manufacturers, costs, or etc. We defined what our existing infrastructure is, some certain boundaries (they can't touch our existing data network except in a few cases that were explained), and laid out the features we need for a system to provide.

As far as I recall, aside from that, our only strictly defined requirements were some switchboard requirements that none of us have the authority to override, and the ability to use SIP for client connections, and a couple of unified messaging requirements that I'm certain Cisco can handle easily. Unfortunately it was not just me (or my department) that had input into issuing the RFP, or I think I would have worded things a bit differently.
 
Originally posted by: alkemyst
I don't know why'd you'd upgrade then if keeping your cat3 was a requirement. ... It's hard to say...
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The RFP didn't say that keeping the Cat3 was a requirement, it said something along the lines that some buildings are currently wired for telecom with only Cat3, and that responses need to address that issue (vendors could either use the wiring, use wireless, factor in the cost of upgrading the infrastructure, or whatever their preferred design calls for). The majority of our buildings have Cat5e or Cat6 telecom cabling.

We need to upgrade in the immediate future because right now we have a mix of analog and ISDN phones, all in a common centrex (no on-site PBX at the vast majority of our sites). Our monthly service costs are absolutely outrageous. Some of the ISDN lines bounce up and down with alarming frequency, dropping calls, etc. We file trouble tickets with AT&T, and they always send a tech out, but I know more about ISDN than many of their techs in this area do, which is saying a ton (because I know next to nothing). The problem eventually just goes away, and they mark the ticket as resolved, coming up with some excuse for it now working. The analog lines aren't as bad, but they're far from good. Finally, we currently have no unified messaging system, we want the capability to fax to/from the desktop, we want calls to be able to follow users to wherever they are logged in, and we need something that's much, much easier to manage administratively.

That's the short list for why we're doing this.
 
I also administer a Shoretel system and I can confirm that can in fact delegate the administration of individual call trees with it.
 
Originally posted by: GeekDrew
We did look at them. We had the manufacturer demo their equipment (over a year ago). Multiple vendors representing Cisco did receive the RFP, and as we got zero responses involving Cisco equipment (beyond switches), we can only assume that no vendor felt Cisco telephony would be appropriate for our needs.
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When your RFP was written as it was it was written to exclude particular vendors.

No sane RFP would be written with the must haves you mentioned. Cisco didn't respond because they could not meet the must haves.

Trust me, I can write a RFP to exclude manufacturers and have done it many times. It's the game.

Cisco offers a complete IPTel solution that integrates the same way any PBX would even in TDM world but interfaces with the proprietary COM of digital PBX elminates them.

Nortel is dead, Avaya and Cisco are the only real players.
 
Originally posted by: spidey07
No sane RFP would be written with the must haves you mentioned. Cisco didn't respond because they could not meet the must haves.

Trust me, I can write a RFP to exclude manufacturers and have done it many times. It's the game.
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I have no doubt that an RFP can be written such that it can exclude vendors without naming vendors. But how could we have changed the requirements that I've told you about? I assume you're talking about the Cat3 infrastructure in some buildings. We know that it needs to be upgraded if we want to use IP stations in those buildings (which we do). We wanted RFP responses to include upgrades to that part of the infrastructure, if the vendor chose to use IP stations in those locations. One of the four vendors indicated that all stations must have a minimum of Cat5 cable, without quoting the price to upgrade it. That was a design issue. They were technically non-compliant (in my opinion only, and I'm not representing the review committee for this RFP), but we can work around that if it's their product we like the most -- I suppose we could bid it out to other contractors, or do it in house -- but it's a financial issue of nobody wanting to give us the money to do this until someone outside of the agency says that it absolutely must be done or the phones won't work.

I don't know much about RFPs; I didn't write this. A consultant hired by the folks that pay the bills wrote it, and then asked for our input (and we didn't know what input to give, since we don't know much about RFPs and telecommunications as a whole).

 
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