Cisco Phone System

Cisco 8900 and 9990 Series Handsets

Cisco Phone System Overview

A Cisco Phone System provides a business with a unified communications system throughout the entire organization. The direct benefits are better manageability, ease of use, convergence of voice and data network, and framework for deployment of improved voice and data applications.

Adcap Network Systems, Inc. deploys the system in a controlled process that takes into account the current voice system usage methods. Adcap’s project management and deployment processes have been built up over years of experience on systems from 12 to 3000 phones. Training and ongoing support are part of the overall package.

The Cisco phone system is deployed on top of a secure, voice optimized data switching infrastructure. The switches have the capability to provide a secure, high speed path that differentiates voice from data traffic and prioritizes voice above other traffic in order to provide a high quality phone system running over the data network.

There are a number of voice applications that are available for installation once the basics of the Unified Communications systems are in place. The basics are phone handsets, connection to the phone company, and call control. Some of the voice applications are:

• Unified Messaging or Voice Mail.
• Client presence monitoring and chat systems.
• Automatic Call Distribution System with call queues, Interactive Voice Response System.
• Voice Recording
• Video Telephony, Video Conferencing.
• Fax Server.

The goal of every Adcap VoIP project is to put in place the new  system with a minimum of disruption to the ongoing operations.

Adcap Network Systems and Unified Communications

The voice system recommendations and upgrade plan is based on industry best practices as well as the specific experience that the network engineers at Adcap have in installing new unified communications system at a variety of different customers. We are experience at upgrading from an existing PBX, installing complete new systems, and optimizing voice in a data environment.

Adcap has well established processes and procedures for the implementation of voice system upgrades in a controlled fashion that accomplishes the upgrade to the VoIP phone system while minimizing the disruption of current business operations.

Our Cisco trained and certified technical consulting staff has many years of experience with the installation of secure unified communications systems as well as the LAN and WAN that these systems run over. The Adcap voice installation staff also has extensive experience with the implementation of advanced voice systems applications like unified communications, interactive voice response systems, automatic call distribution systems, voice recording, voice and video conferencing, and video telephony.

Return on Investment

The implementation of the VoIP voice system involves costs to the customer both in dollars and time. It can be important to have commensurate benefits in order to make the change from the existing phone system. There are a number of benefits that our customers have found after completing the process. These involve hard dollar cost savings, productivity benefits creating soft dollar cost savings, and changes in working methods that may free up personnel from performing repetitive task.

The hard dollar cost savings are the result of replacing existing recurring costs with fixed costs. For example, it is often possible to replace numerous analog and T1 voice circuits with a secure voice-optimized Wide Area Network in conjunction with a faster internet connection delivering voice over a SIP trunk.

The soft dollar cost saving are based on saving the time of employees and providing a more rapid and targeted customer service response level. There are benefits, but they are harder to quantify:

• Rapid phone moves, adds, and changes.
• Higher level of employee reachability with presence and single number reach.
• Single phone system throughout company enables 4 digit dialing to any phone.
• Teleworkers have full PBX voice system capability.
• Better conferencing capabilities.
• More complete call reporting capabilities.

There are other intangible benefits as well to a Cisco phone system. These include:

• Convergence of business continuity planning for voice and data.
• PR benefits of company use of modern, high-quality phone system.
• Video calls reinforce company culture over long distances.

Cisco Hosted Unified Communications System

Cisco’s market leading phone system is now available in a hosted version, with the top level Cisco voice partners able to offer the same capabilities as the premise version in the datacenter. This provides a number of important benefits:

• Cloud based Cisco Unified Communications delivered by Adcap Network Systems, a Cisco Gold and Master Unified Communications Partner.
• Cisco’s full and latest telephone system, with servers, software, license,  management, and support provided by the Cisco voice and video experts at Adcap.
• Lower overall price than system purchase, faster time to system operation, management by reliable, certified, and experienced system operators.
• All of the capabilities of Cisco Unified Communications without the requirement of maintaining a technical support staff.
• Increased workforce productivity with communication that is designed around the way the organization actually operates.

SIP – the latest industry voice buzzword

SIP is used in two main ways, and it can be a confusing buzzword. It means Session Initiation Protocol, which doesn’t mean much to most people, so people usually just say SIP.

Click here to watch Adcap’s video on SIP Trunking.

The first meaning is in the type of handset. SIP compatible handsets can be used with any SIP phone system, and is a baseline for compatibility. Most phone systems are designed for specific types of SIP handsets because there are other features that customers want that go above and beyond the standard SIP phone feature set.

The second meaning for SIP is the type of connection to the phone company, as a replacement for 1FB analog and T1 PRI phone lines, and is typically referred to as a SIP trunk. This is where large cost savings to an organization can occur, because if a site has both a voice and data T1, it can be replaced with a single data T1 carrying the voice over SIP, saving about $400/month T1 local loop charge.

Adcap first started connecting customers to production SIP trunks in 2006, and has experience with many different providers. All providers are a little bit different in how they work, so it is important to work with a vendor that has SIP trunking experience. Furthermore, the SIP voice runs on the data network, so it has to be given inbound and outbound priority through the router and firewall.

Video Overview of How a Cisco VoIP Phone System Works

Adcap Has Your VoIP Phone System Solution

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