Hello all,
I'm looking for some advice on replacing my aging phone systems. I'm looking at the NEC Aspire systems, mainly due to the networking capabilities that seem to be far above what I have currently.
I have two sites joined by both P-P T1 and internet VPN. The VPN is new and is also used for data between my two sites and a third location, my corporate parent. The P-P T1 has been around for quite some time and I have multiplexers at either end to give me voice and data channel seperation.
My current phone systems are two Lucent Merlin Legend Release 4.1. The multiplexers I mentioned earlier break down the P-P T1 into 4 tie lines, two off premise extensions, and the rest of the bandwidth to data. The Legend's each have a 4-port E&M card for tie line communication and the off premise extension capability is used to access paging from one site to the other. Voice mail systems are located on both sides.
So far, I am pleased with what I've been presented as far as the NEC Aspire goes. For the near-term future I plan to use the P-P T1, segment the entire circuit for IP and dedicate to the phone systems. With centralized voice mail and the ability of the two locations to have the appearance of a single site to my receptionist, it looks like a good setup.
My real questions to this group are:
1. Why not use the Aspire in my situation? So far, everything I've seen says it should be a good solution.
2. Where might I find information to help me evaluate the pricing of the Aspire system? I'm used to buying mostly commodity items, servers, PC's, routers, switches, etc... For these types of items there's enough competition and definitely I know when I am getting good pricing. These phone systems aren't nearly as easy to sort out from that perspective.
Thanks in advance for any advice
