July 2000

Mission Impossible!

BY Tom Keating

GIMMEE THE SPECS
First I needed to know exactly what she needed, so I asked Mary Beth what her requirements were. She stated that she needed an inexpensive phone system, preferably under $1,000, five phones, and an auto-attendant that can eliminate the frustration of answering and transferring calls meant for other employees.

I asked, "That's it? All you need is a cheap phone system with an auto-attendant that directs callers to the proper extension? Are you sure you don't need desktop call control, Internet telephony features, unified messaging, or follow-me features?"
Mary Beth said she believes in the KISS philosophy -- Keep It Simple Stupid.

"Ho-hum," I thought, "All she needs is a boring inexpensive key system." But then I began to think she was crazy. I didn't think there was any way I could find a key system for under $1,000. Then I told her it was impossible.

She said, "Tom, nothing is impossible for you. You just touch my broken PC and it works. You have saved me countless times when it comes to technology and you have never failed me before. I have faith in you."

Her flattery made feel like Barney Collier, the technical wizard of the original Mission: Impossible television series. I told her "Yes, but you are asking the impossible."

"Tom, you don't understand. Our phone system is the pits and our MIS guys claim there is no inexpensive solution. You have to help me."

Next, she resorted to blackmail. "Should you decide to take this mission and succeed, I will disavow any knowledge of you dressing up as Xena the Warrior Princess for Halloween. Your secret will be safe with me. But if you fail..."

ANYTHING FOR A BUCK
Still, I wouldn't budge, and she resorted to a new tactic. She offered to have her company pay me to install the phone system. My eyes lit up as little dollar signs rolled in my head. "Well, maybe I can find something that would work."

Communications Solutions EXPO in Washington, D.C. was the following week. If there was a phone system to suit her needs, I knew it would be at this show or it wouldn't exist.

THE SEARCH BEGINS
I set off to Washington, D.C. on a mission to find an inexpensive SOHO phone system for Mary Beth (in addition to meeting with vendors in a press capacity). My first stop was the Samsung Telecommunications booth. I spotted a sign with the word "SOHO" on it, which naturally caught my eye. The product included VoIP features, and was still unreleased, so I continued my search of the tradeshow floor.
I then discovered a SOHO phone system that retailed for $495 at a booth run by Centrepoint Technologies and TEK DigiTel. Only $495? Could success be at hand? I examined the feature-set for Centrepoint's SwitchBoard product. It included features such as auto-attendant, voice mail, call forwarding, TAPI support, music-on-hold, caller-ID, and automatic redirecting of incoming faxes to a fax machine. It sounded perfect, except it only allows for two incoming trunk lines and four extensions, which is just not enough for Mary Beth's needs. Alas, my mission would have to continue.

DOES CLOSE COUNT?
Next, I found a good product from Bizfon, which was reviewed in the June issue of Communications Solutions. It's features include six trunks by eight phones (plenty of capacity for Mary Beth's needs), built-in voice mail, music-on-hold, auto-attendant, and the ability to transfer calls to any extension, as well as forwarding calls to any phone, in or out of the office. In addition, it automatically creates an extension number directory of all users for dial-by-name. Since Bizfon works with conventional analog telephones instead of proprietary digital phones, it is also inexpensive -- retailing at just under $1,500. Unfortunately, it wasn't under my $1,000 budget. I was so close! I was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as a four-line phone system with auto-attendant functionality under $1,000.

I scoped out Lucent's booth, as well as Nortel's, Comdial's, and other leading phone system manufacturers. None of them had what I was looking for. I then visited ESI (Estech Systems ), which demonstrated two versions of its newly-announced ESI IP Series Fast Ethernet telephone system -- the IP 200 and the IP 40 -- boasting 100 Mbps packetized voice performance, targeted at small to medium-sized businesses. ESI is well known for its user-friendly digital phones which feature a "Verbal Help Guide" that can assist you with any of the digital set's buttons simply by going into "help mode" and pressing the appropriate button.

ESI took the same design and casing from their traditional digital phone sets and used them on their new IP-based Ethernet phones, which lowers the learning curve for existing users of the digital sets. In fact, all of the features and functions of the digital sets are also included on the newer IP phones. ESI's products include enhanced caller-ID, live call recording, call screening, programmable feature keys, and auto-attendant functionality. Unfortunately, the feature set was a bit overkill for Mary Beth's needs and the cost was yet again out of my budget.

NOT QUITE OUT OF LUCK
Before I knew it, the show had ended and I still had not found an appropriate solution. Dejected, I returned home and asked some of the other TMC Labs engineers if they had seen any good SOHO phone systems. Evan Koblentz proposed that I check out Cygnion's CyberGenie. I checked out Cygnion's product on their Web site and was very impressed with the product's feature set. It includes speech recognition (just tell CyberGenie to check messages or call anyone in your address book), auto-attendant, support for 10 2.4 GHz digital cordless handsets, 20 mailboxes, notifies you anytime/anywhere when voice mail, e-mail, or faxes arrive, supports MAPI-compliant PIMs such as Outlook, conferencing, and many other features. This product only supports two incoming lines -- so once again, I would have to continue my search.

I called Mary Beth to tell her the status of my futile search. I asked, "Are you sure you don't want a really cool IP telephony system from Cisco or 3Com? Or at least get a nice PC-PBX such as Artisoft's TeleVantage 3.5! It'll even soon be CT Media ready!"

But Mary Beth wanted a no-frills system. I continued my research, and discovered Casio PhoneMate listed in the Communications Solutions Buyer's Guide. This product (SI-460) is a KSU-less phone system with KSU-like features. The way it works is that the Casio uses RF/IF technology to communicate among all the other SI-460s over line one's wiring (which doesn't affect regular telephone use). Other system information, like station status and line use, is also communicated over this common line.

The SI-460 features include a four line by twelve extensions phone system, auto-attendant, six selectable outgoing greetings, full digital duplex speakerphone (adaptive circuitry constantly adjusts the speakerphone performance to match the acoustic environment), station-to-station intercom, call transfer, all station page, station status display (busy lamp field), 20 autodial memories, and even voice mail! Hmm, all these features, including voice mail? It seemed too good to be true. I expected this product to cost thousands of dollars for five phones, but in fact the phones were just $179 each! (A 900MHz cordless model is also available) For five phones at $175 a piece, that would only cost $895, well under my $1,000 budget! I drove to a local Circuit City (Staples and other popular retail stores carry them as well) and picked up five of these phones. I hooked it up in no time at all. The result -- Marybeth is very pleased with her new phone system. Mission accomplished! 

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