Connecting two sites via IP trunking vs. SIP trunking

[petr.necas]

Hi Mitel gurus,
   maybe you can give some hint, we are planning two sites that should be able to call each other. One possible solution is to get both sites on enterprise licenses and use IP trunking and the other configure two sites with standalone licenses and interconnect them via a SIP trunk. The second is obviously much cheaper but some features may be missing.

Do you have any experience with this?

[acejavelin]

SIP trunking will basically just give you inter-zone calling capabilities and nothing else... No BLF, resiliency, or any clustering features.

Using an enterprise license and IP trunking can basically make the systems one big system (with some caveats) which also opens the door to license sharing, resiliency and failover capabilities and so much more.

Honestly, for two Mitel PBX's I would never use just SIP trunking, far to limited and these things work together so well. Even if you don't think the customer will use these features now, they likely will in the future.

For us, they are either purely stand alone, or their are enterprise and networked... we don't consider any other option.

[petr.necas]

Hi acejavelin, thank you for you answer. They would just use the trunk for calling, no advanced features like you have mentioned. But you are right things may start getting complicated when they decide to use more features.

Regarding the licensing, with one customer having two standalone systems, the licenses cannot be moved from one to the other on AMC?
 

[acejavelin]

Hi acejavelin, thank you for you answer. They would just use the trunk for calling, no advanced features like you have mentioned. But you are right things may start getting complicated when they decide to use more features.

Regarding the licensing, with one customer having two standalone systems, the licenses cannot be moved from one to the other on AMC?

Yes, they are two distinct systems, you can't share the licenses or move them once they have been assigned... In order to use license sharing in an enterprise you designate one as the DLM and the rest are elements under it, it requires SDS Sharing (so clustering).

[VinceWhirlwind]

If they are clustered, then the customer (or whoever administers the controllers) can share licences around by web-browsing to the controller and editing the "License and Option Selection" form.
 
If they are stand-alone, whoever administers them in AMC has to transfer licences around using AMC.
 
A DLM requires an additional licence.
 
You'll get a much better system if you cluster them.
What price do you put on having a least-cost routing option, resiliency and having a shared directory on the phones?

[johnp]

I agree with the comments. Usually find those that try to cut corners complain the most and waste your time. 

[petr.necas]

Thank you guys for your answers.

Unfortunately here lots of companies are just looking at price and sometimes it hard to explain why the additional cost is there.

[acejavelin]

Thank you guys for your answers.

Unfortunately here lots of companies are just looking at price and sometimes it hard to explain why the additional cost is there.

In this case I wouldn't even put this option on the table as an option to use just SIP trunks... Seriously, because in 2 years they are going to want some feature that requires clustering and then get mad at you because you instslled them the wrong thing.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[VinceWhirlwind]

Thank you guys for your answers.

Unfortunately here lots of companies are just looking at price and sometimes it hard to explain why the additional cost is there.

If they need licences moved around in AMC, they would have a cost associated with that because their Mitel partner would have to do it for them.
Also, having a shared phone directory would provide a productivity dividend.
Not to mention administration/maintenance/support is simplified.
What is the cost difference between enterprise and stand alone?

[acejavelin]

Thank you guys for your answers.

Unfortunately here lots of companies are just looking at price and sometimes it hard to explain why the additional cost is there.

If they need licences moved around in AMC, they would have a cost associated with that because their Mitel partner would have to do it for them.
Also, having a shared phone directory would provide a productivity dividend.
Not to mention administration/maintenance/support is simplified.
What is the cost difference between enterprise and stand alone?

Once many licenses has been allocated and committed to a controller and it has sync'd, you can't move them from one stand-alone system to another. When you go to unallocate the license (to return it to your license bank), the option won't show up for user, trunk, acd, etc and most other licenses.

[petr.necas]

Once many licenses has been allocated and committed to a controller and it has sync'd, you can't move them from one stand-alone system to another. When you go to unallocate the license (to return it to your license bank), the option won't show up for user, trunk, acd, etc and most other licenses.

We have a client (installed more than a year ago) with a resilient setup and the licenses can be reassigned to the other controller (at least it looks like is can be done).  Licenses cannot be returned back to the license bank any more as the grace period already expired.

The licenses are in red state: Products have been active on the system beyond the grace period and are only available for reassignment. To complete the transaction, the system must communicate with the AMC.

[petr.necas]

What is the cost difference between enterprise and stand alone?

I'm not sure if can put here exact pricing, but:

The price of "MiVoice Business Standalone S/W for 3300" is 50% compared to the price of "MiVoice Business Enterprise S/W for 3300"
The price of "MiVoice Bus License - Standard User" is a about 55% compared to the price of "MiVoice Bus License - Enterprise User"

When quoting the whole system including HW, SW and SWAS for 1 year the price difference for 50 phones (50x6920 with 1xMXe III) system was about 10% that is not so much.

[VinceWhirlwind]

Once many licenses has been allocated and committed to a controller and it has sync'd, you can't move them from one stand-alone system to another. When you go to unallocate the license (to return it to your license bank), the option won't show up for user, trunk, acd, etc and most other licenses.

I have a customer with 7 standalone 3300s and they got me to transfer licences between their controllers twice in the past 2 months. Seeing as they had all different software versions running on them, some very interesting things happened, but it all worked fine for user licences, mailboxes and ACD licences.