Hosted telephony services aren’t just about savings--it's about bundling, getting away from annoying service providers and gaining a certain independence from having gear/systems.
The day of cutover I thought I had it made: What could go wrong?
A financial services company that trades on the market is already using hosted Exchange services and wanted hosted telephony. My server buddy wanted his customer to speak to me about hosted telephony services, so I did and cautioned him about the perils ahead and to exercise ample time planning and iron out the details. I advised against the cheesy phones from several competitors simply because I don’t like them and am not willing to install cheap phones, and some of the competitors lacked strength in their solution.
I translated and documented what the customer wanted: prepend the existing extensions with two digits to give familiarity to their extensions (customer request), show the DIDs and hunt/ring groups and call/voice mail coverage and automated attendant/voice mail basics. All was delivered to the vendor to perform pre-programming of all the Mitel sets. The new phones from Mitel are self-labeling and the low-use phones for the kitchen, copy room and several guest phones were basic models. I really like the Mitel IP phone lineup, and I especially like the handsets with the molded rubber grip.
Of course I did a preliminary site visit and recommended the customer replace the existing retail LAN switch with a managed data switch and then add a PoE managed switch. The new Sonicwall firewalls are impressive because they have the ability to establish policy based QoS. Using the "X" ports on the Sonicwall--X1 was setup as the data LAN or VLAN1 and X2 was configured as the voice LAN or VLAN2. The new managed non-PoE switch is uplinked to X1 and the new managed PoE switch is uplinked to X2. The Cat5 drops are about 130 feet and were connected to an old AT&T Legend system--thus my easy transition of moving both ends of a patch cord to a new IP phone. All phones use dedicated cables without any PCs connected to them. Yes, it's an old phone man trick--but think about the Sonicwall trick and someday someone will call it an old IT guy trick. The Sonicwall has an unrestricted policy on the X2 port (voice LAN) and gives all traffic outgoing precedence over the X1 port (data LAN) for traffic. My server buddy made the Sonicwall changes remotely in under15 minutes.
During the first three hours we installed a UPS and the two new LAN switches and unpacked telephones and assembled them –keeping them with their original boxes! As we unpacked the new phones, we discovered the extension numbers on the boxes didn't match the numbers coming online and didn't jibe with the customer-requested dialing plan. Instead of stopping, we continued to collect a written inventory of what was what and located where. Next we started moving phones with names to the right locations then made a final list of what needed changing. The host forgot or didn't see the notes on the documentation about the prepended extensions and extension numbers--human error.
After 5pm we moved all the data LAN connections to the new managed switch and then tested each voice drop and moved each phone over to the PoE switch. Once the corrections to the phones were made we tested 911 and it worked perfectly, with the 911 operators giving me the correct company name and address.
Next we tested call completion--Intercom, local, long distance, 800 and international. There are two companies within this one company entity. We requested two different CLIPs (Caller Line Identification Presentations), one for each hunt group’s lead number. Again, within minutes this was working. The sorest sticking point is the "shared dial plan" of the hosted Mitel solution. Customers must change their dialing behavior, and that’s something that old phone people try to avoid. Users must dial 9+1 for all calls. The other "anomalies" that we discovered were that the date and time stamp of voice mail messages played Pacific Standard Time and not Eastern Standard Time. Then, Mitel’s Automated Attendant doesn’t have the capability to allow callers to "press your party's extension at anytime" and that means callers must press X to route them to a mailbox that is setup to allow extension dialing.
The customer wasn't not-guilty either, since they neglected to contact Verizon to request multi-path call forwarding on their hunt groups to route to the new DID numbers. This was problematic when I spent the next day (9am- noon) on the phone with the customer and Verizon's (Northern Virginia) contact center agents, which are among the worst in the Washington, D.C. metro area, just to get simple orders placed. Once the order numbers were given we thought we had relief coming for each hunt group that was limited to one call on call forwarding. Later with due dates arriving and only one call per hunt group ringing through, the customer learned Verizon wouldn’t process the order. A few days later the numbers were ported and calls were flowing smoothly.
My server buddy made a special request to satisfy our curiosity: Yank the T1 connection and see whether or not the DSL would support any traffic. It did, but the calls with voice quality issues were test calls made to 911. The phones took under two minutes to reestablish themselves to the host. After I replaced the T1 connection to the Sonicwall (it uses probes for overflow and failover routing) the phones would not reconnect to the host IP-PBX. Next, I rebooted the PoE switch thinking this would restore phones. It failed and after another 10 minutes of waiting, I ended up rebooting the Sonicwall and then the T1 reestablished connectivity, the phones following after just a couple of minutes. The Sonicwall acts as the DHCP server for both VLANs. So failover ended up being a bit dicey.
Now the one cool thing about the Mitel hosted solution: if the site loses power or the building shuts down, employees can take their Mitel phones home and reconnect. That is cool and that’s how any IP phone should operate anyway--but they don’t!
The customer ordered pizza and bottled water and around midnight we had time to eat and reflect. The next day was worse (dealing with inept Verizon agents) but it too would be quickly forgotten--again because of the substantial monthly savings the customer realized. The customer gave me all the quotes and I too reflected on them over vacation.
Clearly, our IP-PBX would have been even cheaper (we never proposed one) and could have provided what they need without the anomalies--for less money. Is the customer happy? Yes. I checked in again with the customer just days ago, as did a VP of the host company. All is well.
Here's my theory: some customers hate their Telco so much that bundling hardware and service is a cleansing experience. Washing their hands of the old Telco experience forever. The business side of the equation ignores owning equipment--at least the IP-PBX. Porting numbers now takes 24 hours.
This customer was savvy enough to cross out the Automatic Renewal clause in their contract. At the end of their contract (3-years) they can bail out, renew, buy or lease an IP-PBX or do what they want, as long as they adequately plan and prepare.
Hosted telephony services aren’t just about savings--it's about bundling, getting away from annoying service providers and gaining a certain independence from having gear/systems. These financial guys clearly just want to trade and make money. Maintaining a phone system isn't in their business plan and that’s okay; they've made a conscious decision that some enterprises fail to do upfront in determining: how much of a phone or IT company do you want to inherit as a responsibility in addition to your core business?
For my Interconnect friends that want to know just one thing--"How do we charge for an installation like this?" Charge as you normally would if you were installing an IP-PBX.
