Solved: VoIP for small company

news2010a · ‎08-06-2008

Folks, imagine I have (1) Central site connected to MajorBranch and (5) small branches. Let's say total of 100 phone and PC users on central Site, 50 phone-PC users on MajorBranch and 8 PC-Phone users on each branch.

I just would like to know if Cisco has any feasible solution (price wise) for such small companies. Is there any whitepaper out there talking about solutions for small business like this?

Chris Deren · ‎08-06-2008

Take a look at Cisco Unified Communications Business Edition, which includes CallManager PBX and Unity Connection Voicemail on a single server supporting up to 20 sites and 500 phones:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7273/index.html

Also, here are some voice case studies:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/products_category_customer_case_studies.html

HTH,

Chris

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Chris Deren · ‎08-06-2008

Take a look at Cisco Unified Communications Business Edition, which includes CallManager PBX and Unity Connection Voicemail on a single server supporting up to 20 sites and 500 phones:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7273/index.html

Also, here are some voice case studies:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/products_category_customer_case_studies.html

HTH,

Chris

news2010a · ‎08-07-2008

Guys, imagine your just starting a consultancy company (no revenues yet) and have identified a mid-size customer which would like to deploy a PoC(proof of concept) with Unified Communications.

Does Cisco provide hardware and support to conduct a PoC (30 days trial, no money expenses)?

I worked for a Fortune 200 and I have Cisco directly supporting us lending us gear all the time. I am wondering how is the treatment from Cisco for small or emerging companies which do not have the money to show off yet.

Marwan ALshawi · ‎08-06-2008

see this linek:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7293/index.html

and this one too:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7273/index.html

above will give good overview and knoeldge regarding ur requirements

good luck

please, if helpful rate

Eugene Cheng · ‎08-06-2008

Hi,

That's a very open question and I'm sure the experts here can write an essay to answer your question.

As it is a small site, i would suggest either to use the Express solutions such as CallManager Express and Unity Express which is running the application on the router(s). If you feel the interface on the routers (CLI and GUI) is not suitable for your admins, you can maybe consider the Communications Manager Business Edition which is running both Call Processing and voicemail all in one windows server box.

But both of the previous solution would not have very good reliability and if you really require that, you may need to get a small cluster, maybe with two MCS715 servers for your call processing and maybe a Cisco Express.

Have a look at the cisco product page for small and medium business, there is a ton of information there:

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/products/voice_conferencing/index.html

But the key thing i would think you need to consider is:

- Scalability (for growth)

- Administrative effort (Windows may be easier)

- Features (Limited on the Express solution)

- Cost (Routers should be cheaper)

- Reliability

Maybe if you have a read through and you have more questions, you can ask it in the forum.

I may have missed out some stuffs, so feel free to correct me or add more stuffs.

HTH!

:)

Eugene

Chris Deren · ‎08-06-2008

Eugene,

Business Edition is an appliance (Linux) not a windows box :-)

Chris

a.gooding · ‎08-07-2008

i agree as well that BE and CME is an issue when it comes to redundancy. however, we normally identify these issues and have the customer decide. We also always try to sway them into reliability and have them understand what might happen in the even of failure.

for BE SRST is available to the main site as well so thats a plus. with CME you can have a second router as a backup but in the larger scheme of things we always go with a cluster, however small. we normally deal with small businesses as well 200-400 MAX and all our customers have clusters. Personally, with BE the only reason we dont drive it is because its on one server. there are obviously provisions for this but all in all its just a comfort level for us and as well for the customer. Everything is pitched to a different market and UC CME and BE are for the Small Market but every customer had thier own environment and may be doing big things, looking at Full redundancy BCP etc so its for us to help them decide what are the right components for thier environment :)