atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems ESI Telephones & Systems ESI-600 PBX

I am evaluating 3 different Hybrid Digital/IP Voice systems including the ESI-600 from ESI. I have very limited experience with PBX's and need a fair opinion on the ESI products as compared to the Ayava IP Office 400 Series and Tadiran Coral IPx 500 System. My company (50 employees now, growing staff at 15% yearly, and need next generation voice system) is moving and has out grown the current Phone switch (Comdial DX80, which is very difficult to manage, and few advanced features).
The Tadiran appears to be our current choice, but I have not been able to get any unbiased feedback on any of these systems.
I want to hear from techs who use either the X Series or E Series from ESI, or any of the Tadiran Systems.
Thanks! :confused:

If you want an opinion from an installer of Tadiran you might PM Coral Tech. He is pretty familiar with the Tadiran line.

We sell ESI and Tadiran. If you are that big and getting bigger it's a no brainer go with Tadiran. The ESI is a REALLY neat system and easy to use but very limited in comparison. Basically you are comparing a really good key/hybrid vs a true PBX. And I am sure you have noticed the extra features the Tadiran comes with like in skin fax server/unified messenging, flexicall and a a true conference bridge. Also, the Tadiran is more flexible in it's numbering plan to accomodate weird DID numbers ranges that you can get today. I like the ESI don't get me wrong but for large scale deployment or even mid looking to grow..I would say no.

I am a huge fan of ESI and sell ESI and Avaya. The Avaya IP Office is hands down head of the class in the entry level mid-market IP PBX market. Get an evaluation from an ESI dealer and an Avaya dealer. You probably won't even consider the Coral if you fully evaluate the IP Office.

"You probably won't even consider the Coral if you fully evaluate the IP Office."

We recently did a comparison between the IPoffice and the IPX500, now of course we aren't an Avaya dealer so we had to go with telecom tactics as the source. In every aspect the Tadiran surpassed the IP Office feature per feature even IP. Is the IP office capable..yes. Is the ESI capable..yes. Is the Tadiran capable yes.

i sell and use the ESI class of system. it has been a great system for us as users and installers. we have the least amounts of call backs from customers mostly because of the ease of use for users. we have not sold any 600 yet but knowing ESI it is a great product. great looking phones. VIP pro has alot of useful 'stuff', text messaging, call log, and once again easy to use. i do not know the IPX500 but unless you have some odd call center or hotel application the ESI will do every thing you want plus more. i have heard from other avaya ip tech that the ip office has been a problem but that is hear-say (or is it here-say). the question of size are you going over 400 phone? that is what a 600 can do.
have the dealers do a demo
see how many dealers there are in the area(god forbid the one you choose goes under)
no matter what you do going from a dx-80 what ever of the 3 you choose will be like a Ugo to a Cadillac :toast:

I do not expect to grow to 400 for at least 5 yrs. I have been to a Avaya IP Office demo, and Tadiran has a RV Road Show Demo that I saw 3 recently, both of these system appear to exceed our needs. I previously worked for Ericsson (sold the MD PBX Series), and my wife has worked for Lucent as a Bell Labs Eng for 26 yrs, so I know what class of product Avaya offers. My company is very cost conscience, so the Tadiran is coming out on top. I simply have very little knowledge of ESI. Quotes from the ESI Reseller and the Tadiran are within $500, with the Tadiran less costly. The IP Office is about $5000 more. I have a ESI E Class demo this week and the Reselelr has a partner that has installed a ESI-600 beat site with 120 phones coming to discuss it. Thanks to all for the input!

wow! MD110 now thats a switch, did you think about the Webswitch. my boss has worked MD since the '80

Let us know what your thoughts are after being shown the ESI demo. If the demo is done well, you should come away from it very impressed.

Have you checked ESI's website for their video that tells about the company? It might be worth checking out.

www.esi-estech.com

Ok, having had experience on both the IP Office & Tadiran I'll put my 2 cents worth in here.

I have worked on the Tadiran since about 1999 (installer & tier 3 support), and the IP Office (tier 2 support & Avaya Certified Instructor) since 2004 and there is a clear winner.

Having seen the inner workings of the IP Office working at a distributor, having access to information that resellers don't have, and also training on the product, if I was an end user looking to buy a system I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole! I wouldn't even consider it, not even for a second. The problem is that end users who aren't technicaly just see the big Avaya name and the fact that it is sold a lot and, mistakenly, assume that it must be a good product. Don't get me wrong, it has some good features and theoretically should be a good product. Unfortunately, for the end users, it is FULL of bugs. And when I say full I don't just mean a handful, I mean thousands. Just read the release notes for a new software version - it lists all fixed bugs since the last version. And these are just the ones that they know about and have managed to fixed. When I was providing support to reseller engineers I was finding new bugs every day.

They rushed v3.0 out to make more money and it was horrendous. Systems were resetting for no reason, the applications on PCs would lock up etc. It got better with the maintenance releases but still bad. Now v3.2 is out I thought it might be better but no. The problem appears to be the way the software has been written - if they change something to fix one issue, it affects and breaks something else. It just hasn't been written very well.

But the Tadiran, it's a real system. Just like Nortel, NEC, Ericsson etc they actually take them time to write it properly and, more importantly, test it thoroughly before releasing it to the general public. With the IPx Office now (basically equivalent of the IP Office) you can go from 10 users to 6000 with the FlexiCom 6000/IPx 4000 all using the same system software and most hardware. All features are the same across the platforms.

Also there's the Coral Sea product which is a platform that's been designed from the ground up as a SIP based enterprise server. It still uses the Coral hardware for connection to TDM devices (phones, trunks etc) but is limitless in the number of users and is completely redundant across an enterprise network.

Back to the IP Office - if you're looking at a small system then there are much better products out there. You need to think about what the customer will use. Most customers I know of don't use all the features that the IP Office promotes - networking, Phone Manager etc. Even then, if they do use those features do you want it to work reliably or be irritating your users by breaking every 5mins?

Depending on what country you're in, the Coral might be the same or even cheaper than an IP Office and offers thousands of times the reliability with the same features.