In this showdown BleedingVoIP will look at the two of the leading VoIP vendors across a variety of categories important to enterprises. The key to a successful VoIP deployment is planning. Making sure to take into consideration every possible issue which may arise with a full system in a production environment. Both companies have been in the networking scene since the early daysof IP and both have a good stake in the global VoIP deployment scene. For this showdown I will be looking at three categories - best out of three wins the match.

• Price Perspective
• Ease of Installation
• Ease of Configuration/Management

Price Perspective 

When it comes down to price for any major vendor, expect on paying for anything and everything. The pricing is pretty aggressive, with a base system running an enterprise setup with a Communication Server 1000 (CS1000) running anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 for a small company. Nortel also offers solutions to the SMB market via their Business Communication Manager (BCM) series which start in the $5,000 range.

Two advantages of the Nortel offering is that the pricing can easily scale to the size of your organization. If you are a small business looking to harness the infrastructure of VoIP then the BCM is a great model since is handles everything from analog phones, digital sets and Nortel handsets. Going to larger organizations, they are more well suited to go for the CS1000 route as it scales to a larger audience.

Moving along to phones, when it comes to Nortel, from personal experience, they are lacking in the overall model selection. Their main phones, the IP Phone 2002/2004 series and 11xx series are probably the main phone which you will see deployed. These phones can range is price anywhere from $200-400 each. The 11xx model of IP Phones which have a smaller form factor and much nicer appearance than the 2002-2004 IP Phone can be found for around $300-500 a piece. Just recently, Nortel decided to expand their endpoints and have introduced a more stylish IP Phone 2006/2007 which has a colour touchscreen and depending on the model, more feature-rich.  This move was probably a result of taking a look at the competition, namely Cisco, and seeing how most of their upper-tier enterprise phones had incorporated these features long ago. I digress, these 2006/2007 phones have a higher price tag in the $500-800 price range. Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to use these newer phones, but I will shortly.

Nortel has been in the telecom arena for years and as a result, they designed their VoIP platforms around the compatilbity of traditional TDM phones which doesn't force an organization to go out a spend a whack load of money on all new phones. Many companies by nature have always had phone systems, many of Nortel's legacy systems such as the Meridian systems, have the ability to be converted to a Hybrid VoIP system ranging in price from $5,000 to 20,000 depending on how large the PBX was to begin with.

End consumers can find Nortel solutions devices in a variety of manners these days; if it is buying directly from a Nortel reseller, or a favourite of mine, eBay. Why buy something brand new, when you can buy something somewhat new for a fraction of the cost? My personal preference is to shop around; even going to different resellers can get you a better deal. Overall, Nortel's pricing is good, but is it actually worth it to spend less on hardware when you will need to spend that extra amount on training and support maintenance?   

Cisco is a much newer player into the traditional "telecom" market, but have a very strong presence in the IP industry. The reason for their strong presence is that they have a variety of solutions to suite a large variety of end consumers. If it is to outfit a small business or large organization, Cisco has the solutions ready, with a very good pricing model to match. Again as with all vendors, you get what you pay for. Cisco's devices are very rich in features, so expect to pay extra for the little features that sometimes makes life a little easier. Cisco's main line of VoIP equipment include all of the 79xx IP Phone's as well as their newly renamed Unified Communications Manager (UCM formely known as the MCS).

Cisco has such a large presense for a simple reason; they are able to cater to a large variety  of consumers leveraging affordable pricing models. The price of most Cisco's IP Phones start at an affordable $200 for their entry 7940 IP Phone. This phone features a large display with 2-line functionality. From here on, the price increases varying to the feature richness of the phones.  Prices of your standard IP Phone range from $200-550 where the higher end models have a full color, touch-screen capable display.

For call systems; depending on the size of a deployment, Cisco has two different platforms. They have an Express style platform or a standard platform. The Cisco CallManager Express is a solution meant for smaller deployments (up to 240 users) where there standard UCM platform can handle up to "60000 users per server cluster". The Cisco CallManager Express resides on a variety of Cisco routers and base pricing can start in the $2,000 range. Meanwhile, the UCM platform which is usually deployed on a dedicated server, starts around the $8,000 range. They also offer a voicemail solution named the Cisco Unity. Again, this is available in both an Express and Standard platform. Pricing again starts at the $2,000 price range for the Express version.

 When it comes time to actually installing and administering one of these systems, it is recommended that a trained professional install the unit, but in my personal opinion any compotent  network administrator can easily install.configure and administer a Cisco unit. Again, for larger organizations where there is a large budget and enough resources, it is highly recommended to have a trained professional or have an employee be trained by Cisco to manage your VoIP network. The last thing you want is your VoIP network going down because you were trying to save money. 

Winner: Cisco

Ease of Installation

Even though it may sound very old school, I cannot stress how important it is to read the documentation before deploying and VoIP system. The VoIP equipment from these vendors have made configuration a bit more complicated than programming the time on your VCR. I repeat, read and follow the documentation. At times you will need to deviate from the documentation, but otherwise, read read read.

Nortel is a legacy company, so its only appropriate that an installation from a legacy company would require a legacy style installation. I have had the pleasure of doing a few installations. Installations which include the BCM 200, BCM 50 and a CS1000S system. Have to admit that the BCM installation was much easier as it is a much more modular and robust system, but unfortunately it has a much smaller consumer base than the more popular and standard CS1000 system which can upgrade your Merdian PBX system into a IP-based setup.

For the CS1000 setup, as mentioned before, make sure to follow the manual. The systems you receive from Nortel are already pre-installed, but because the documentation starts from a base setup, you have to reinstalled all software to ensure there was no inconsistency when following the documentation. In one of my particular setups, we have the Option 11 MG1000 chasis, Call Server chasis and Signaling Server. In total, the entire setup takes approximately 8U of server rack space, so make sure to plan appropriately. The installation is pretty straight-forward as the documentation provided is very straight and to the point. Initial configuration of the installation on the other hand is a bit more time consuming and difficult to follow. The one thing that the documentation does not provide is how to actually configure the system. They tell you how to do all commands for initial IP setup of the devices but nowhere do they specify how to setup the actual cards and any phones. For this I had to resort to online forums for help. This was still the free alternative and did work to a certain degree. I was not impressed to say the least, going to forums to get help when I just payed thousands of dollars is ridiculous.In the end, I had to have a Nortel Certified Technician dial into our system to finish the configuration. Once two phones were in place, I was able to retrieve the configuration and duplicate his settings for all future phone installations. Nortel still relies on their 20 year old CLI system, so in that respect, Nortel has still not adopted a moderm way of configuring their systems. After talking with Nortel technicians, everybody agreed that Nortel is still far behind competitors when it comes to the configuration process.

Cisco's line of products on the other hand are systems that are much easier to deploy. In the majority of cases, Cisco allows there software to be installed on approved third-party hardware, which means working with much more familiar platforms. For the majority of the UCM Call Manager series, these platforms are installed on standard 1U platform or desktop sized PC cases. Cisco's documentation covers everything from the order in which CD's are installed, to configuring the first initials phones, to setting up the link between your Call Manager, whether it be the Standard Call Manager or Call Manager Express, to your voicemail system, again, whether it be Standard Cisco Unity or Cisco Unity Express. Very nice compared to my experience with Nortel.

Cisco does encorporate a CLI system, which can be used by the more technical users, and may be required at times of configuration, but again, if the documentation specifies it, they document the exact commands, and expected results ensuring that things are installed properly. Once initial installation is complete, the user can manage their entire VoIP system by accessing the IP-based web management portal. A true plug'n'play system.

Winner: Cisco

Ease of Configuration/Management 

In many of Nortels' newer enterprise systems, they have started to introduce more and more web-based configuration management portals. Unfortunately, these web-based systems still do not harness the full capabilities of the underlying system, so knowledge of the core CLI system is still a must, as I reiterated above.

Nortel uses two core tools for the system management, an Element Manager and their own OTM system. In Nortels SMB line of products such as as their 4.0 releases of BCM's, they have started to allow more funtionality and management through their Element Manager. This becomes an adminstrators best friend as it allows you to manage everything from new phones, to changing voicemail and IVR prompts. When it comes to managing phones, using the Element Manager, the administrator can customize each phone via a graphical interface of the actual phone at the specific extension, which makes it easier to see which buttons will have which feature. Unfortunately via the CLI system for the CS1000 version 4.5 and lower, the administrator must know the FEATURE code for each specific feature as well as the button id, which can become a hassle when an environment has a multitude of different phone sets.

Overall, the administrator managing a Nortel VoIP network must be well skilled and well versed in the Nortel CLI system. Being in a Web 2.0 world this seems like a messy and uncomfortable alternative. Hopefully, Nortel will soon realizes this and somehow can adopt their LOAD based CLI system to a much neater web-based interface, but until then, unless you feel like spending months in a classroom learning the Nortel system, it is probably much cheaper, in time and money, to hire a third-party reseller to manage the configuration of a Nortel VoIP network, unless the system in question has adopted the much neater, Element Manager, web-based alternative.

Cisco's approach to everything they do, almost from the beginning, has been integrating things onto the IP network. When I mean network, I refer to them using latest Web 2.0 technology. They still heavily rely on their CLI system too, for those with the experience, but almost everything that can be done within the CLI system, can be executed through their Web-based portals.

Before the UCM/MCS 5.0 was released, almost all of Cisco's Call Manager's where installed on a core Windows NT system such as Windows 2000 or 2003. Cisco's latest Call Manager's are now being deployed on a mix of Linux and Windows based systems. Good job Cisco! Linux is a good move. As an administrator, having partial or full-access to a systems base OS is always a plus. This allows for greater knowledge of their system in the event something goes wrong, and for those willing to take on the challenge, can sometimes debug and fix an error with the system on their own. This of course is not what the vendor wants, but when you own the hardware, most of the time an administrator will want to know how things work outside of how the vendor specifies (at least thats how I like things).

Cisco's approach to managing their systems is very smooth and user-friendly. Everything is laid out nicely in their web-based interface and for those who work remotely, it allows for a more unrestrictive working environment, which is how VoIP was intended from the beginning. Managing separate phones, changing voicemail extensions, adding and changing Music-on-hold is all done from a single, user-friendly interface. The provided documentation is very well laid out too, providing detailed diagrams of the interface and the appropriate response messages, which ensures that the administrator is doing everything properly. Overall, managing a Cisco VoIP deployment can be done by a single Junior System Administrator, which in the end lowers overhead of hiring or contracting out the work, again, allowing you to get faster ROI.

Winner: Cisco

It is pretty obvious who wins this one. 3 out of 3 for Cisco.

Overall Winner: Cisco

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