VoIP equipment and requirements

[WILLIAM STEGMAN]

I'm trying to budget for a VoIP solution for my office, and am having difficulty finding what equipment, hardware and software, is necessary for a VoIP solution. My office has about 120 desks, and we have about 6 other similar sized offices, and even more smaller ones connected via either MCI's PIP, frame-relay, or VPN site to site.

Our Internet connection is provided by another site. We have non PoE switches, 2948Gs and a 3560, along with a 2811 router. Do I need a Media Confergence Server, and Cisco Call Manager? Do I need an IP based PBX, and where does it fit in?

Thank You,

Bill

[Erik Peterson · Accepted solution]

Cisco CallManager (CCM) is an IP PBX application that runs on Cisco-branded Media Convergence Servers or approved third party servers (specific HP and IBM platforms). Servers are clustered for redundancy, using a replicated configuration database. This replication capabability is built in to CCM. There are a couple of options for server deployment, centralized and distributed. At a minimum you'd want a couple of CallManagers (software licenses plus hardware), a QoS-enabled LAN and WAN infrastructure, and Cisco IP phones. PoE is ideal, it simplifies things, but there are alternatives.. You didn't mention voicemail, Cisco has a couple of options, including Unified Messaging for Exchange and Lotus Notes, or you can integrate with legacy VM. You may want to talk to a good Cisco partner, so you don't have to learn the hard way.

[WILLIAM STEGMAN]

thank you very much