Originally posted by PhoneSol:
[QB] with all due respect to tampasteve, I'd have to disagree. The statement that ALL of the major manufacturers are moving very quickly to being all IP systems is inaccurate. Look across almost any product line of Avaya, Toshiba, NEC, Samsung, ESI, Nortel, Vertical, etc, etc, and you will find that they ARE in fact offering IP products, but most offer systems that are "converged" or "hybrids" as they are called where the stations and trunking can be traditional or of the VoIP variety. The only companies that are putting all of their eggs in the IP basket are the startups that are counting on customer recognition of the VoIP acronym without really knowing what it will do for them.
I must also respectivly disagree. While it is very true that some manufacturers are coming out with digital systems that can do IP (ex, the Vertical SBX 120) nearly all of them have made a very important shift in the market over the last 2 years. 2 years ago the market was mostly pure IP, pure digital, or hybrid digital/IP. Recently with most new product offerings it has changed to pure IP, hybrid digital/IP, or hybrid IP/digital. The last one is the most important. Most manufacturers have switched to making IP system that can do digital, not the other way around like it was in the past. Examples include the Vertical Wave, the Nortel BCM series to an extent, Siemens HiPath systems, Avaya IP office, Tadiran Coral Sea and IPx Office, or more to the point, the takeover of a large and growing percentage of the market by pure IP systems such as Cisco, Shoretel, Allworx, Avaya 1X Quick edition.
Few digital systems will be on the market in 5 years? I doubt that, although it may happen, but the digital system will live on due to the legacy equipment saturating the market, and that there still isn't a good argument that is reasonable as to why IP is any better than digital.
No, I said "few digital systems will be marketed," there is a big difference. Of course there will be digital systems installed around for years, I would not doubt that some of the ones we are putting in today will still be in 15 years from now, heck we just replaced one of our last 1A2 systems, and he has it installed in 1974. But I do firmly believe that few of the major manufacturers will activly be marketing, or activly trying to sell digital systems. There will still be IP/digital hybrid systems that allow people to keep their lagacy phones, but that is not the same as activly marketing a hybrid digital system that can do IP too.
Taking your stance, if you or your company is selling your customers anything else beside pure IP based phone systems, you are doing them a disservice and scamming them out of their money, right?
Absolutley not. We are still at the point where price can make a large difference to the smaller customer, and to the larger customer too. I can tell you with 100% honesty that every job that is quoted receives a hybrid quote and a pure IP system quote. Different people choose diferent systems depending on their desires and a lot of times the price, currently the IP system is a bit more, but the prices are dropping where it is going to be very close soon. Different situations require different quotes. Our customers also see the value of working with a business that has been around for over 20 years.
Steve
