Hi Nicholas,
So am I to understand that the key system will assign the fxo to key-1
of any of the phones? This is my first venture into Cisco voice as my
background is asterisk and Nortel as far as voice goes. Layer-3 and
VOIP, so I get the gist of the technology more then most people.
In essence yes, however you do not need to put the system in full KTS mode, as stated during the setup process you can request for it to be put into Hybrid mode, this then gives you the best of both worlds without the loss of the PBX features that often occurs when going into full KTS mode.
The 320W to me is identical to Asterisk and does more than just compete with it on price, it beats it both on up front and ongoing management due to the way Cisco have designed the UC-320W (But cannot be deployed on a larger scale sadly ). I too am an Asterisk guy and have deployed some of the largest voice networks using Asterisk as both the SBC and Voice management system with very complex billing systems, dash boards and call management systems, we did some funky stuff with it, and just recently (The last 10 months before I come back to working with Cisco products) deployed an extensive global voice network using Asterisk which spanned 40 destinations... SO I have a pretty good ability to measure and compare systems against each other
I am so surprised with the lack of automated fax handling on this
considering its target market for SMB. Are there any new developments
regarding automatic fax handling and passing off to the fxs in the
pipeline? I would think this would be a feature SMB customers would find
highly desireable.
In fairness I still do not trust any PBX to manage faxes, not even the UC-500, no matter how or what I do I still cannot get it to be as stable as just plugging a phone line into the FAX itself, yes it creates an extra cost because of having an extra phone line, but this is part of the sales cycle process, we get the clients to put their DSL on that same line and also any Eftpos machines (Eftpos machines are for your ATM cards, not sure what they call them in other countries), this way the cost is shared across more than one appliance, and guess what? Everything just works
But you do highlight a downside to what is available on the market today...
The UC-320W Addresses the following in my eyes, and I hope you can see it this way as well
- Cost entry for SMB's into the IP-PBX market, $ for $ the UC-320W beats most embedded Asterisk based systems and smaller analogue systems such as Panasonic and LG-Nortel (Although each country may have different price points to where I am located)
- Ease of use, which is always a huge thing with clients who are migrating from an old KTS to an IP-PBX, but in saying that they still have a very long way to go as the KTS in most instance is still easier to use, they generally have less key strokes than the UC-320 to complete a task (This is based on customer feedback and personal testing)
- Reliability which is key to everything, Asterisk whilst awesome for what it does has a tendency to not be reliable at times and to keep it reliable you have to spend time managing it, they are not a deploy and forget system as some would like to have you believe, those who deploy it like that end up leaving customers in the lurch
- Support which again is very key, Cisco to me provides second to none industry support for their hardware, whilst Asterisk has a very very very large community and in most cases if you can get passed the egotistical idiots, you get good pretty good support, Cisco ensures that the client is covered, and lets go a little further with that, they make sure the partner is covered and is able to perform their duties with easy... A MASSIVE PLUS from me
- Good looking and quality products, as much as one does not like to admit it but cosmetics is a big part with Cisco products, people like good looking phones they hate ugliness and phones that require almost a whole desk just to cater for it. generally the quality of the Cisco products are normally second to none, but they do have their days and bad batches, it is how you handle it I guess that sets you apart from the product and the problem
I could rattle of much more but I am sure you get the gist of it, so if you are thinking of going out there and hocking of the Cisco wares, here is the advise I can give you
- Buy the NFR kit and sit there and break the system in every single way you can and then learn how to repair it without just resetting it to factory defaults, knowing how the system can break and the best route to resolve it will set you apart from the plethora of other Cisco partners, who sadly just do not have a clue
- Spend time going to Distie sponsored boot camps, they can give the best insight into deployment guides and the best way to manage and build the systems, you can always take so much from them and incorporate it into your own style of doing things
- Be prepared to spend time with your clients "PLEASE" and make sure they get at least a good hour of training after the install, factor this into your install costs, sacrificing this small cost only sets the precedence of damage to yourself and other Cisco partners who work hard to do the right thing by the product and the client
Hope you get to the right deployment on that system and you get the FXO lines sorted out
Cheers,
David.
Cheers,
David Trad.
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