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penelope · January 9th, 2007, 10:14 PM

Hi All,

There are 3 of us who do telecom for our entire company, 9 sites in US, one in Italy, one in Ireland, one in Hong Kong, several in Australia. We are working on an RFP to totally re-work the whole voice communications. The project and budget have already been approved. The kicker is that we were given less than a month to do it in. I'm working on the sections detailing everything about every system we have, voicemail requirements and ACD since I have the most experience in those areas and using the tools to gather the info.

The whole thing is being driven by a couple of executives who are pushing going to VoIP and they seem to be pushing Cisco (one of them is the AVP over network which is Cisco). We have Avaya G3si, Prologix, S8300s with either Octel 250s or IALX. I am feeling out of my depth. Not about the RFP but about the whole potential "new" way of doing everything if Cisco gets chosen. I love what I do and enjoy going to work every day. I've survived going from Siemens?ROLM and Nortels being replaced with 20 Avaya systems and then consolidating back down with office closures.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom? Experience in making the change? Books and training that is especially helpful? Change can be hard and I guess I am afraid of falling behind, not knowing what I'm doing, even being replaced with "network" engineers taking over voice. I've been with this company for 14 years and looking forward to retiring there.

If Avaya is chosen how much of a transition is there going from the Definity and Prologix to the S8700 with full redundancy in two of our major locations? With voicemail being centralized at our data center and LSPs in the field offices? I have no experience on the S8300s or the IALX yet since I was out on medical leave when they were installed in 3 new offices and I've only been back a couple of weeks. I have some limited VoIP experience and I managed to get it working all on my own between two sites (just trying it) by reading the manuals.

Thanks,

Penelope

January 9th, 2007, 10:14 PM	#1 (permalink)
penelope PBXtech GOLD 100+ posts Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177	Feeling Overwhelmed Hi All, There are 3 of us who do telecom for our entire company, 9 sites in US, one in Italy, one in Ireland, one in Hong Kong, several in Australia. We are working on an RFP to totally re-work the whole voice communications. The project and budget have already been approved. The kicker is that we were given less than a month to do it in. I'm working on the sections detailing everything about every system we have, voicemail requirements and ACD since I have the most experience in those areas and using the tools to gather the info. The whole thing is being driven by a couple of executives who are pushing going to VoIP and they seem to be pushing Cisco (one of them is the AVP over network which is Cisco). We have Avaya G3si, Prologix, S8300s with either Octel 250s or IALX. I am feeling out of my depth. Not about the RFP but about the whole potential "new" way of doing everything if Cisco gets chosen. I love what I do and enjoy going to work every day. I've survived going from Siemens?ROLM and Nortels being replaced with 20 Avaya systems and then consolidating back down with office closures. Does anyone have any words of wisdom? Experience in making the change? Books and training that is especially helpful? Change can be hard and I guess I am afraid of falling behind, not knowing what I'm doing, even being replaced with "network" engineers taking over voice. I've been with this company for 14 years and looking forward to retiring there. If Avaya is chosen how much of a transition is there going from the Definity and Prologix to the S8700 with full redundancy in two of our major locations? With voicemail being centralized at our data center and LSPs in the field offices? I have no experience on the S8300s or the IALX yet since I was out on medical leave when they were installed in 3 new offices and I've only been back a couple of weeks. I have some limited VoIP experience and I managed to get it working all on my own between two sites (just trying it) by reading the manuals. Thanks, Penelope __________________ Penelope