Is Brand Name Significant When It Comes To Buying VoIP? Submitted by Louis Sokol & Michael Mosier, Select Phone Solutions 281-501-6464 / lsokol@tservgroup.com / mmosier@tservgroup.com / www.SelectPhoneSolutions.com When computers became the mainstays of the business world there was a common expression created that seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophesy: “Nobody ever got fired for buying X”. Depending upon your situation, “X” stood for IBM, Intel, AT&T and several other giants of their industries. The rationale was that if you bought the mainstream brand name that ‘everyone’ used, then you couldn’t be blamed for problems on that project and would never get fired. While there was certainly some safety in going mainstream like that, there were also some factors that were very questionable from a “What’s best for your company long term?” point of view. Imagine a Geek Angel on one shoulder and a Geek Devil on the other guiding you through the decision on what technology to buy for a huge project. Would you minimize the safety of buying the X product brand name if you asked yourself these introspective questions? • Is this solution the most cost effective solution short term and long term? • Is the technology it brings to my company the right technology for this project? • Does it solve the entire set of problems or is it only a partial solution? • Is it scalable for company growth in the next year? In five years? • How well does this technology meld with the rest of our company technology? • Does this technology require extra investments in hardware, software or training? When you have objectively answered these questions and compared the X name brand technology to that of other companies, you may find that with due diligence the lesser known brand name is the better choice for your company. Let’s consider VoIP phone systems. A name brand that companies tend to consider first is Cisco. While Cisco products are high quality, they are also relatively high cost to buy and high cost to maintain with yearly service contracts and licenses. When you are weighing which brand name of VoIP to purchase, do you consider TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) over the expected lifetime of the technology? An Asterisk / trixbox VoIP phone system is capable of performing every important function that a Cisco-based system can do. Both provide essentially the same VoIP fundamentals and advanced features. However, Cisco requires yearly licensing and service contracts for both the hardware and software in most cases whereas an Asterisk / trixbox system does not. Thus the cost difference at the start is significantly lower for Asterisk / trixbox and there is no mandatory maintenance fee just to keep the system running every year. You may have a service contract with your phone vendor to make changes, adds, deletions, etc. for you but that is your choice. When you consider ROI (Return On Investment) for your VoIP phone system, an Asterisk / trixbox choice will be half to two-thirds of the startup cost relative to a Cisco-based system. Compare the Cisco cost to all of the other phone vendors and you will also find that a large number of companies that use Avaya, Nortel, Iwatsu, Panasonic and other products have pricing not too much lower. The phone systems are good quality but they just cost more than you should have to pay for a VoIP system. Their TCO and ROI are much higher than that of an Asterisk / trixbox system while gaining no technological advantage. Check your Geek Angel and Geek Devil and see whose shoulder your company should rely upon for this choice. Ask for your free phone system audit from Select Phone Solutions by calling 281-501-6464. About Our Show Advisors: Select Phone Solutions is a specialist in VOIP and especially for small businesses. We have 16 years experience in IT and because of that we know computers, networks and the infrastructure that makes the system work. Many phone system vendors today only know what the manufacturers tell them on sales sheets. They have to defer to tech support lines when anything goes wrong with your phone system. Can you wait for them to learn how to fix your phones? Because of the nuts and bolts experience of Select Phone Solutions technicians, they can both design the system that you need and also provide firsthand tech support for you without the need to first learn the system. Whether your system is 2 phones or 50 phones, you can have 24x7 monitoring of your system and an SLA to let you sleep at night. “Productivity Through Technology”