sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Phone system recommendation request

I am looking for a recommendation for a small system, with a couple of requirements.

We are in the process of overhauling our complete phone system to a VOIP solution, this is a 2-3 year process as we are a non-profit/charity and of course funding is tight. We are currently looking at Shoretel to fill this need to the tune of around $65,000 installed (13 locations, 73 handsets).

In the meantime I have one remote office that requires the following items immediately:

- auto attendant
- individual voicemail boxes - 6 plus a general mailbox
- individual extensions - 6 in total

Location has a T1 installed for Internet/VPN.

I would like to install a Shoretel system as we can later plug it into the main system, but am being told I need UC server regardless of the size of the system and that is currently out of the budget.

So do I pick up a small Nortel/Toshiba system and later move it again to Shoretel or is there other options out there for me to consider?

Or do we just bite the bullet on the UC server now and go from there?

Thanks in advance

Brian

you could try vertical products, their SBX is a small inexpensive system and the MBX is a larger VOIP system

Never heard of them, I will look into it.

Thanks

For the small site you could use the ShoreTel SMB server (sold through ShoreTel) which is only a few hundred dollars from the ShoreTel dealer. The SMB server will not work for all 13 locations as it is limited to 3 but it could later be used as a distributed application server with the larger ShoreTel solution so that there is not lost investment.

Steve

You might want to consider the NEC SV8100 for the entire thing if you aren't completely going the Shoretel path. Would give you loads of extra options like regular digital set on a VOIP network.

That sounds like a plan. I will ask our vendor about this.

We do plan on going with a complete Shoretel system, but its going to be a site by site upgrade, I like Shortel as it will allow us to tie them together as we go. Well within the limitations of the licensing/software.

I'll bet that someone here will tell me what that means.

13 offices/locations with 73 telephones...but it reads facetious.. :confused:

I THINK it means they have small offices all over and are tying them together.

Sorry I asked...I think.