So, we are looking to upgrade to an entire VoIP solution. There are various portions of this project, back-end message store (voicemail), call routing, phones, and PoE switches. We have an incumbent vendor at about 1/4 of sites for the phones, and the vendor has 100% of other pieces..It has worked well but has been pricey, especially the PoE switches. However, since we've started to meeting with our switch vendors, they can provide a very good solution. As a public servant and spending my neighbors, co-workers, and friends tax dollars (yes, I really put it in that perspective), we have to find a good solution and a good price. Now,we have to figure out how to write the RFP to make sure we are comparing Jonah golds to red delicious's. We have to avoid the cheap POS stuff that catches on fire, doesn't do some required feature sets, etc, while not forcing it to be the incumbent with a feature set we will never ever use.
As for the professional services...do I ever get frustrated by them. Often, I found by the time I've written an RFP that can adequately scale and scope a professional service engagement, either I can do it or I can send one of my staff to training, take him or her off queue for a month to test, and then they can do it. Plus my group is quite tenured (avg ~ 6+ years). I know professional services serves a purpose, but a lot of resellers that provide professional services...to be blunt suck. Just cause they carry the certification (woo..ccnp in voice -rolls eyes-), doesn't mean they can tell up from down (or is that H323 or from SIP?). Maybe someone knows a good way of evaluating these vendors. We are currently inviting a couple of the ones we've not used in to help on some 1 off projects. Gives them a foot in the door and us a chance to meet them.
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