IP Telephony - 600 handsets

[blueboy2001]

I need to replace a 3Com VCX 7000 IP telephony system in the next few months. It's a good system, but it's no longer properly supported by HP who dropped it after the 3Com takeover.

We've got about 600 handsets but due to the proprietary way these download their OS from the server on boot my understanding is that they can't be used with anything else.

Where should I be looking? We need something with HA/redundancy, it must be reliable, easy to configure and just work - I don't want something that needs a lot of tinkering with. The 3Com is often left for months with no attention and it's fine.

Lync Enterprise Voice has been mentioned, but that's a bit up in the air at the moment with the move to Skype for Business.

Cisco is an obvious one, and I'm seeing a supplier offering Shoretel next week.

 

[blueboy2001]

We've currently got Macfarlane for our small 30 seat contact centre, but if a single solution could do that we would make a significant saving on support.

Contact centre needs are pretty basic - multiple queues, call recording, recorded message out of hours and a couple of wallboards, plus reporting functionality.

My only concern with Shoretel at the moment is Mitel keep trying to buy them! I don't want to get into the situation we've been in with 3Com where we have a decent system that meets all our needs but has been dumped due to a takeover leaving us with a forklift upgrade.

I'm not bothered about having to replace the servers after 7 years, it's binning 600 perfectly good handsets that grates, especially because our users like them because they're simple and easy to use. The biggest problem when we went from an analogue system to the 3Com was training the users, some of whom are extremely resistant to change!

Are Shoretel handsets fully SIP compliant - ie could they be used with another VoIP system? For the reasons above I'm loathed to buy proprietary handsets again.