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lxsw20

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#127512 13-Aug-2013 10:34
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Hi All,

At work we are in the process of upgrading all our comms gear over the next year or so. I'm kind of just after opinions and making sure we are somewhat on the right track. This is not a project we intend to fully tackle in house it's far too important and complex for us to guess our way along. 

We are a professional services firm based over 3 sites Dun/Qtn/Chch with around 130 staff. At the moment we have an oldish Sony Video Con system in all sites used almost daily in the board rooms for team meetings and the likes. Avaya IP400 in Dunedin and Qtn, and an IP500 System in Chch (was an IP400 but got stuck in our old building after the quake). This is used mostly with analog phones and phone manager...so nothing flash really.

What we are looking at:

Upgrade all 3 sites with Polycom RealPresense 500's to replace the Sony's for Video Con work and possibly some content sharing work. 

Phone system wise, nothing has been picked yet but ShoreTel is looking pretty good on paper for deskphones and phone system back end. 

Then the thought is we use MS Lync 2013 to tie it all together. Polycom gear looks to tie in with Lync pretty nicely, but while ShoreTel mentions they are Lync compatible I can't find a lot of documentation on just how compatible.

I guess the other option is to buy Lync Enterprise Plus licensing and use that as our Voice solution, I'm not sure how mature Lync is as a voice platform and how good the support would be if it goes pear shaped (support is important to us)

We are in the very early stages of this project, I would say the Polycom gear is pretty much a given, and Lync is likely to happen but nothing is confirmed phone system wise as of yet.

Your thoughts and ideas appreciated. 


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ubergeeknz
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  #876328 13-Aug-2013 10:37
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My 2c - unless you need contact centre type functionality, Lync should be able to stand alone as your telephony platform.  Many large companies use it exclusively now, it's quite mature, and there are plenty of skilled resellers in NZ who can make it all come together for you.



igorportugal
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  #876338 13-Aug-2013 10:47
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We do quite a bit of work with Polycom and also starting to do some work with Lync. Our system federates with Lync nicely.

I wouldn't advise using Lync on its own. In addition to call centre functionality, it also is missing reception features and many others that people take for granted.




andgor
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  #876422 13-Aug-2013 12:59
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Hi

We have a ShoreTel system at work with 2 main sites and one satellite site.  The single distributed system and ease of management (to an extent) are brilliant.  I'm happy to answer any questions you have that I can and/or I can put you in touch with the company that supports* ours.  The resellers generally have a demo system in a box that they can bring out and show prospective clients.

* We don't need to contact them that often as the system is so simple to manage we do most of it ourselves.



cisconz
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  #876448 13-Aug-2013 13:24
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What kind of call center functionality are you looking at using?
We use Lync exclusively and have no issues with the functionality provided out of the box.




Hmmmm


lxsw20

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  #876499 13-Aug-2013 14:30
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Call center functionality - nothing special. We have a reception per all 3 offices and everyone has a desk phone with DDI pretty much.

Call routing we use a bit Author on phone > call goes to Secretary, Secretary pod of about 4 people sitting together has it's own answer/hunt group in case the author's secretary is away or also on the phone.

We have an automated audio conference system also that we use a bit- all parties dial a DDI and put in a set meeting PIN. This is built on the Avaya Voicemail Pro platform at the moment. Probably have about 30-40 users with voicemail on that note.

Presence is not something we have at the moment, but it's something we would like to have, also the ability to do video conferencing with external parties that just have a desktop computer available, pretty sure you can do this with Lync.

cisconz
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  #876523 13-Aug-2013 15:05
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Seems to me that Lync Ticks all the boxes for you.
The Polycom's can also sit as a Standards Based Lync Converter when used in a conference call.




Hmmmm


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