Key Purchase Decision Criteria for IP Phones?

[kimcneil]

When considering purchase of a Unified Communications (UC) solution, research tells us that IP Phones play an instrumental role in the UC purchase decision as this is one of the most "visible" parts of the solution, touching your entire user community.

If you have recently purchased a UC solution OR if you're now in the exploration phase, what are the attributes that you feel are most important in an IP Phone solution? Attributes that would highly influence your purchase decision?

For example, how important to you is a vendor's breadth of portfolio so that you have choice in solutions to meet your user's needs? What about the ergonomics (look and feel) of the IP Phone? How important is it to you that a vendor's IP Phones support color displays versus monochrome/grayscale displays? Is display size important in your business? What about support for wideband audio (CDROM quality voice)? Is this key in meeting your business objectives? Support for Gigabit Ethernet ports on the phone?

And...of course, let's not forget price...

Are there other attributes, not listed here, which are key in your decision making?

And if you had to prioritize your decision critieria, what would be the top critieria item for you?

What are your thoughts?

Regards,

Kirk McNeill

Cisco Systems

[gmcgill]

Yes, the phones are important but the 80/20 rule applies here; 80% of my users just get dialtone and voicemail. They get no fancy features and we have not yet discovered an application that will justify more than a 7941 equivalent.

Now, as to the other 20%. Half of them are moderately to extremely mobile so it seems a bit excessive to give them color display phones. I suspect they will migrate to dual-mode mobile phones with a docking station when the cellular companies get out of the way and allow some real innovation. That last half is the sweet spot for new devices. They may actually benefit from color displays and built-in video conferencing. But, that is only 10% of my install base!

Priority order:

Gigabit support

price

advanced functionality

[kimcneil]

Greg,

Thank you for the feedback and perspective.

Would your users find value in unified communications applications such as Visual Voicemail and Presence? If you believe the answer is yes, does this impact in your view the penetration rates for desk phones with color displays? For example, being able to more easily distinguish read vs. unread voicemail and see message progress playback or tell presence availability or unavailability of your friends at a glance via the IP Phone? Or not?

What are your thoughts?

Regards,

Kirk McNeill

Cisco Systems

[mdoliveira]

Here in Brazil we faced a lot of competition and the decision in 90% of the cases is price. Maybe it's a behavior in the market of Latin America. The technology is not accessible due to the high import prices. But, returning to the question, Cisco wins in appearance (ergonomic), shortcut keys and display in all our sales / projects, really makes a lot of difference.