Monthly Archives: January 2014

Redundancy and Resiliency with Avaya IP Office

IP Office has no moving parts and is a solid state phone system. No Hard disk drive or fans and so less points of failure with consequent increased resilency. In networked sites IPO provides IP Phone and vmail resiliency with preferred and advanced editions.

IP Office can have full redundancy by running multiple copies running at alternate locations or offices. You can have the IP phones from a primary IP Office cabinet fail over to a redundant alternate cabinet, and vice versa. This redundancy can be either local (LAN), or wide area (WAN)

For example, say you have a primary IP Office in Birmingham with 100 users, and alternate IP Offices in various offices with 30 users each. The handsets from London can re-authenticate to an alternate switche in one of the other locations if the system in London fails, and vice versa with London providing the back-up for the other system. Add SIP trunks, and you can have the dial tone fail over as well. With IP Office, you have the choice to set up your network as a mesh or star configuration. A mesh offers more failover choices than a star, by preventing overloads on any one particular server.

IP Office Voicemail Failover

Not only can the Avaya IP Office operating with release 6.1 support IP Office cabinet failover, it can also support an extremely elegant voicemail failover unprecedented in the SMB market. Various levels are available:

Centralized Voicemail

Centralized Voicemail Pro uses a single Voicemail Pro server to provide voicemail services for all IP Offices in the Small Community Network. Except for use of ContactStore, only the central IP Office hosting the voicemail server requires licensing for Voicemail Pro operation and features. The central IP Office is licensed as normal for Voicemail Pro operation and the voicemail features required. The other IP Offices only require licenses.

Centralized Voicemail with Fallback IP Office

Control of the voicemail server can be assumed by another IP Office if the central IP Office becomes unavailable. This is a feature of IP Office Release 5.0+ with Voicemail Pro 5.0+. The fallback IP Office that assumes control of the voicemail server requires licenses for Voicemail Pro operation and the features required during fallback.

Centralized Voicemail with a Backup Voicemail Server

The central IP Office hosting the voicemail server can be configured with the IP address of a backup voicemail server. During normal operation, call flows and other settings on the backup server are kept synchronized with those of the primary voicemail server. If the primary voicemail server becomes unavailable to the network, voicemail services are provided by the backup voicemail server. This is part of IP Office Release 6.0+ with Voicemail Pro 6.0+. IIS SMTP is used to exchange information between the servers, using only existing licenses.

Centralized Voicemail with Distributed Voicemail Servers

Other IP Offices in the Small Community Network can host their own Voicemail Pro server. That server is then used for the IP Office’s voicemail functions except message storage. This is a feature of IP Office Release 6.0+ with Voicemail Pro 6.0+; IIS SMTP is used to exchange information between the servers. The distributed voicemail server provides all voicemail services except voicemail collection for its associated IP Office. Each IP Office using a distributed voicemail server must have licenses for Voicemail Pro operation and the voicemail features required.

In all the cases above, the central voicemail server remains the store for messages and recordings (except for Exchange UMS users). The central voicemail server does message waiting indication and is the voicemail server used for message collection. Only when the central server is temporarily unavailable will the backup or any distributed server do message storage and collection. In those scenarios, when the central server is restored, messages collected by the backup or distributed servers are forwarded to the central server.

For more information on Avaya IP Office on the IP500 phone system, contact Ryan Altseimer toll-free at 1-855-929-9199.

New Year, New Phone System Gear!

Is YOUR business phone system 5-10 years old? God forbid it is not OLDER than that as it simply qualifies for display at the Smithsonian in that case.

The biggest improvements in telecom systems in the past 5+ years are things like #BYOD, Mobile Extension, Voice Mail to Email, improvements to integrated #UC (Unified Communications), SIP trunking, etc. If your business telephone system is older than that, there is a good chance it does NOT include capabilities for these advanced but necessary features in the age of improved accessibility from clients, suppliers, and co-workers.

In the spirit of New Years Resolutions, it’s time to propose a new telephony platform for YOUR business!

Here’s some choices in a varied range of features and pricing:

Avaya IP Office – After purchasing the SMB platforms from Nortel, Avaya captured an “Upgrade with us” capability and have been porting clients over to the Avaya IP 500 phone system by allowing Nortel users to keep their existing phones. This prevented the Nortel ICS line from eventually becoming a dead end for users. Expansion is a snap as well, with IP 500 Expansion cards and modules. Users can eventually add to and/or replace phones with a wide range of choices of new Avaya IP Office phones.

NEC SV8100 phone system – This system has all of the features mentioned below. We love Voice Mail to Email and Mobile Extension to keep in touch with your clients, even when you are not in the office.

Avaya / Nortel BCM – When Avaya took over the Nortel SMB lines, one of the exciting acquisitions was the Business Communication Manager – or BCM. The BCM starts with the small business BCM 50, a compact but powerful IP capable telephone system. The other currect BCM brought over initially to Avaya was the BCM 450 for enterprise clients. Both of these platforms are easily expandable with a variety of optional hardware, referred to as BCM Media Bay Modules, and software, often called BCM Key Code Licenses.

Regardless of which phone system you choose to upgrade to, think about all the things you wish to do with your business telephones and then call Ryan Altseimer toll-free at 1.855.929.9199, extension 3007, to match your requirements and budget to an appropriate system. Happy New Year from all of us at Telephone Magic – we hope to assist you with YOUR New Year’s Telecom Resolution!