Cost effective UC solution for small companies?

[news2010a]

Hi,

Imagine small business (less than 10 employees) want UC solution to explore unified messaging and hopefully reduce costs by eliminating voice PRI.

Question:
1)if I use Cisco UC 520, which IP phones are most cost efective? Any experience using non-Cisco IP phones in case customer absolutely wants inexpensive IP phones in the market? (I know that cheap may not be good, but asking just in case you have seen non Cisco IP phones working ok with this)

2)Is it typically more economical to order SIP trunking from ISP instead of using PRIs?

[James Hawkins]

Hi,

The most cost-effective phones for the UC500 platform are the Cisco SPA300 and SPA500 ranges

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10998/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10499/index.html

I doubt whether you will be able to find any third party SIP phones that are significantly cheaper than these models.

If you only have 10 employees then it is unlikely that you would use a PRI. Multiple FXO or ISDN BRI ports would normally be used. Costs for these would typically work out higher than a SIP based service but arguably offer a higher quality, more reliable service. For green field sites I would probably go with SIP. For sites with legacy FXO/BRI ports then it makes sense to use them as you get the ports in the UC500 anyway.

[David Hailey]

This may not be the most popular answer but it's an honest one.  If a company has less than 10 employees and wants to use VoIP/UC to save costs and etc, then the most cost-effective solution may be to order a business VoIP solution from the local Telco and pay for it on a monthly basis.  From a technical perspective, this may not be exciting but it does highly reduce operational and learning curve costs.  I'm not telling you not to look at CME or UC500, I would just think long and hard about how much time you have to support the effort as well as how much experience is needed to get up to speed on the solution.  From there, you have to factor in break even costs and everyday support (operational costs) as well.

Hailey