Cloud Therapy Podcast: EP 013: SIP Faxing Best Practices

If your company is moving to SIP or VoIP, don't forget about the faxes!

Faxing is a little boring to discuss but it is commonly overlooked and therefore, often a post-install thorn that is a pain for the IT team.

You may or may not want to keep the faxes on analog (POTS) lines but it has to do with things like T.30 vs. T.38, provider support and a few other things. Listen to Level 3's long-time voice engineer, Rich Prohaska, review the best practices for faxing when converting your voice over to SIP.

Here is a snazzy infographic I made, walking you through some questions that will help you choose which WAN technology is the best fit for your company.

I'm new at the infographic thing so it took me forever but I'm pleased with how it came out.

I hope you find it useful.

Does your company have 30+ users on-site and you're using SIP?

If so, what kind of access are you using? 3rd party Internet or a dedicated circuit from your SIP service provider? How's it working?

This topic came up in a recent podcast where, Fusion's sales engineer, gave many wise yet little-known tips on how to transition to SIP without a hitch.

This is a hotly debated topic within the industry so I'd like to hear from the source... IT Pro's that are actually deploying SIP today, in an office with more than 30 users.

Cloud Therapy Podcast - E003

So you’ve decided to move to SDWAN. What should your IT department do to make sure you have a smooth installation?

To answer these questions, we invited an expert SDWAN engineer, Jack Dolan from Aryaka, to speak with us. Aryaka has been doing SDWAN as long as anyone so they absolutely know what needs to be done!

Jack explains 5 specific tactical items that IT Departments need to do in order to transition from SDWAN from MPLS or any other type of business WAN… flawlessly!

For more episodes, find Cloud Therapy on iTunes!

The VoIP Haunting: Episode 2

In IT, your work can easily go unnoticed (since many bosses barely understand what you do), but we all know that is a career killer if you want promotions and raises.

Do you have any strategies that you use to get your boss to see your great work, without sounding boastful?

This discussion idea came to me because in this Podcast with Brian Gracely from The Cloudcast, he tells a story of a time where he strategically had his direct reports attend meetings and present a summary of the projects they've completed... which resulted in a good experience for his direct report, as well as an opportunity for his boss to see Brian's great work without him having to brag about it.

Cloud Therapy with AeroComInc.com E010: SIP Security Tips with Bill Bollinger

VoIP pioneer and co-founder of Appia, Bill Bollinger sees thousands of hack attempts every day. In this episode, he tells Mike his tips on how your company can avoid having their SIP service hacked. He also tells a story of a company that could've done something very simple to avoid getting hacked and paying $10k in fraudulent calls.

I've known Rich for a few years and every time we talk, he teaches me something new. This day was no different.

Like many of you, Rich Erickson learned IT in the military and then took his skills to the private sector, holding rolls like Sys Admin, Network Admin, IT Director and is now the Director of Sales Engineering for a high-end cloud service provider, Matrix IBS.

He's one of those sales engineers that we (as salespeople), love to bring into customer meetings because we've learned that when he speaks, our credibility grows. He's also just a nice guy.

Listen to Rich school me on several ways I can increase our company's cloud performance, at the local level.

Cloud Therapy: Episode 14 - Local Fixes for Cloud Latency

What would you do if your management team told you that the company's growth was so strong that according to forecasts, they needed to double IT infrastructure... but they didn't have the budget to increase cap-ex or monthly spend?

"Impossible" was their first thought.

In this episode, United Layer sales engineer, Saad Saleem, tells a story of an IT team that faced this dilemma six months ago. He details how they pulled it off... and were applauded and viewed as heroes by their management team.

Cloud Therapy: EP 016 - Growing Infrastructure without Money Creates IT Heroes

Like many of you, I love Halloween. Always have.

During October, I'd happily accompany my Mom to any store... just so I could go gawk at their selection of rubber masks in their seasonal Halloween costume aisle.

When my wife's busy, I love indulging in those Ghost Hunter reality shows...

So, when I had to create an October promotional item to advertise an upcoming webinar, you can guess what I was thinking...

Yep, I made a low-budg, creepy/goofy, 3 part video, called "The VoIP Haunting."

For all of you Halloween lovers out there, how'd I do? Did it make seeing a normally business-speak, VoIP webinar ad at least a little entertaining?sle

Disclosure: Business VoIP Broker

We sell Jive (as well as 100+ of their major competitors), and with 100 stations and only 30 call paths, I probably wouldn't recommend Jive.

Jive (like RC and many others), charges $20+/user and includes a call path with every user. This is obviously overkill for your company.

Instead, I'd suggest looking at providers who cater to larger companies, and therefore, price call paths separately than users. For instance, several of these providers are approx. $5-$10/user and $20/call path. That pricing would probably reduce your company's cost by more than 25%.

These providers also have feature/functionality that better-caters to larger companies, such as the ability to create user templates, hybrid capabilities (allowing you to install 1 site at a time, yet still have all phone systems integrated, etc.).

I'm happy to give you some recommendations but just need more information on your company's requirements, since each provider has their own niche.

@wrx7m Yes, those are good SIP providers but can you describe a little about your call/usage patterns? It will help with which providers I'd recommend.

Did you want the call center to be connected to your regular phone system? What workgroup functionality (ideally) is you CS manager looking for?

@scottalanmiller
A quick ping on a cable-co's shared fiber Internet ckt. will quickly show how cowboy it is to run hosted VoIP with 300 users on that line. But like I said, it was working without issue.

I hate to disagree but this isn't just theory. I continually see clients contact us because they are experiencing problems with their real-time apps running on their Internet connectivity... which is always plenty of bandwidth for what they're doing. Then, MPLS fixes it.

I do, however, also run into companies doing things I typically would be cautious about, but they've never had a single problem with... like having 300 on-site employees on a hosted VoIP platform, running on a single fiber line, from a cable-co. That's going pretty cowboy but hey, if it works, great.

@jaredbusch
I get what you're saying, and that's true for a lot of small companies (i.e. less than around 500 users), but I think a lot of mid-size+ companies would disagree their apps are not critical. It depends on the company and who's on the phone, on the video bridge, etc.

Ever called your bank and received poor call quality? Happens once, okay but the second time? Not exactly going to give customers the warm fuzzy they're banking with the right company, which just isn't worth the risk.

How about having thousands of employees having issues with their remote desktop app, running from a server at your HQ?

I've had a lot of people ask me if they should dump their company's MPLS network in place of high-bandwidth fiber and an IPsec VPN... I wrote a blog about it.

Like to hear it? Here it goes:
MPLS or IPsec VPN: Which is the Best? [Network World]

Did the AeroCom Fiber Hunters find a business fiber ISP installed within 500 ft. of Ford's Theatre?

The AeroCom Fiber Hunters: E004 - Ford's Theatre

Fiber Hunters: Equinox

What famous US building should we investigate next?

@Dashrender Take a peek at our instant quote tool. It's really accurate with business class cable, which has a lot of A-Synchronous options. http://www.aerocominc.com/get-quotes/

@Dashrender Wow, that's a lot. Are you in a remote area? When your agreement is coming up, you should definitely have us check for others or other technology that can give you a 20/20 circuit.