Hi All,
I’m sure most of you have seen my posts from time to time and might have even wanted to toss me out the nearest window every once in a while, but this is a completely serious request for proposal, no fun and games.
CODA Inc. is an addiction recovery non-profit located in Portland, OR (Pacific Time Zone) with 14 remote sites and approximately 300 Cisco 8845/7821 desk telephones on a Cisco UCM running version 10.5 UCM code. It’s fed from a PRI with 23 trunks on it. There ARE some SIP trunks coming into the network via a Cisco CUBE/ISR4321 that handle 911 for ONE site for unnecessarily complicated and ridiculous historical reasons I won’t waste time explaining here.
The WAN is a layer 2 metroE network that has a layer 3 routed network basically superimposed on it - the benefit of this being we have complete control over QoS packet prioritization for VoIP traffic.
The Cisco UCM is at max licensing and because it is out of support from Cisco we can no longer buy licenses for it. We do have a Cisco servicing company we have been working with for the last couple years that handles support for that system, but they are not interested in supporting any other telephone system than the Cisco UCM or Cisco Cloud Calling. (which we are not interested in due to the cost, plus we have existing PRI/SIP trunk contracts)
We are opening a new site in the fall at another location that will need around 80 extensions, almost all of them single extension number/line appearance. This is a controlled medical facility with residential treatment, no public access. It’s kind of like a jail but not a jail.
Cisco’s “by the book” solution is to migrate customers like us into their Cloud Calling. That’s a non-starter for us for a variety of technical plus some legal reasons (look up 42 CFR part 2 if you are curious)
I want to bring up the new site on it’s own FreePBX PBX, tie it into the existing UCM for inbound and outbound calls, then in a few years take a very serious look at moving the entire Enterprise over to FreePBX.
I’m going to need someone or a company who can consult on the back end stuff - the inter-PBX trunking, dialplan, trunk, and so on, and work with our existing Cisco phone vendor running the UCM, my tech, and Sangoma on any issues that might arise during the time the new site is being brought up. We are building a prototype of all of this right now in our test lab, and intend to get it all working months before GoLive date for the new site - it’s halfway done now actually - but I know from experience that if something is going to go sideways it will do it right in the middle of GoLive and I won’t have time to manage it.
I’m expecting that after a few months the excitement and changes to the PBX and the new site will die down and it will just settle down to Move/Add/Change work that we can do.
Anyone who is interested in helping us, please contact me at the following:
Ted Mittelstaedt
IT Director
1027 E. Burnside St.
Portland, OR 97214
Direct: 971-202-7783
Main: 503-239-8400
Cell: 503-867-6993
E-mail: [email protected]
www.codainc.org