I am not sure I want to sit down and figure out the hours. It has been a ton.
I now have a firm understanding of what needs to be done at each remote location to make things work. So the time spent at each will be much lower in the next week.
As for installation. It was quoted at 30 hours to do the entire setup from start to finish. This included all testing and final cut-over.
I spent that many hours in the first 2.5 days....
As for the systems we had quoted:
Hosted solution - through local cable company, lowest up front cost, highest monthly cost and I had little control over it.
Panasonic solution - lowest cost, but quote did not include any installation fees, not a very good feeling from the salesman.
Cisco - 2nd lowest cost, we had an existing Cisco network and it was coming from a large company. Plus they gave us a price break on the PRI if we ordered the equipment, this was the deciding factor.
Allworx - This was a VERY close 2nd, and I was very much wanting to go this way but the price break on the PRI tipped it in the other direction.
Toshiba - current vendor wanted to tie 3 existing systems together, add more systems at remote locations and basically keep building on what we had, this was in my eyes a mess and a bigger administration headache. Plus it was the 2nd highest cost.
Shoretel - great product, great presentation, even greater price, was just out of the budget as it was twice what the Cisco system came in at.
2nd quote on the Cisco solution. Had another large vendor quote the same cisco system, came in quite a bit higher then the one we went with.
That was the quoting process and solutions we were presented with. I really really liked the Allworx setup, but the price breaks on the Cisco were the deciding factor.
And now I know why.....
