Is the 3300 overkill for my needs?

[JJ_Smith]

Gents,

Noob here. My vendor is recommending these Mitel 3300 controllers at some small sites.

My concern is price and size. They look huge, what 2U at least? Space to mount them is a factor at some sites.

My requirements were simple:
  - always be able to call 911
  - If main fiber connection is down, auto-failover to a local POTS line for at least the main line. (so incoming calls on main line still come in normally)

We're only talking like maybe 4 lines (and 2 are analog - Alarm and Fax) with only 3 to 4 handsets at some sites. Is this 3300 overkill?

Does Mitel make something smaller that could work? 

[BlackSunshine]

Mitel 250 would be much better and cheaper

[Dogbreath]

Some handsets take an analogue module in the back for this type of scenario.

An entire 3300 chassis for 4 handsets sounds absurd, but on the other hand if you don't have reliable IP connectivity to a remote phone system that the 4 handset could use then you don't have much choice.

[acejavelin]

As the two previous posters alluded to, the answer is not clear in your situation because we don't have enough information.

The 3300 has a distinct capabilities the MiVoice Office 250 doesn't have, the biggest are redundancy, resiliency, and capacity, but these are not it's only strengths... The MiVoice Office 250 is an extremely robust hybrid PBX with it's own strengths.

The 3300, along with a Mitel Border Gateway, are often chosen for deployments like this but the 3300 system is usually centrally located or has 2 resilient locations, to cover a large number of remote locations with minimal hardware investment. It would be uncommon to drop a 3300 controller in each of these several locations.

As to the physical size issue, the two traditional Mitel systems out there now, the MiVoice Office 250 and MiVoice Business (3300) both have 2U chassis, although the MiVB is deeper and full width. Mitel does not have anything as a 1U solution unless you installed a 1U server and a MiVoice Business as a virtual machine.

[ZuluAlpha]

JJ how would incoming calls from the main line be coming in, if not already on the POTS line?

[johnp]

As to the physical size issue, the two traditional Mitel systems out there now, the MiVoice Office 250 and MiVoice Business (3300) both have 2U chassis, although the MiVB is deeper and full width. Mitel does not have anything as a 1U solution unless you installed a 1U server and a MiVoice Business as a virtual machine.

Don't know about traditional, but will let it slide 

[acejavelin]

As to the physical size issue, the two traditional Mitel systems out there now, the MiVoice Office 250 and MiVoice Business (3300) both have 2U chassis, although the MiVB is deeper and full width. Mitel does not have anything as a 1U solution unless you installed a 1U server and a MiVoice Business as a virtual machine.

Don't know about traditional, but will let it slide 

I understand... But that was meant more as reference to exclude the Aastra systems, just because I don't know them at all.