How should we go about finding an IT company to partner that knows VoIP?

I also know of a company that would be glad to meet your needs. They are in South Florida but do most work via the www and remote access to customer sites.

Just email me also.

I believe that most partners that have the LAN/WAN capability you are looking for will already have preferred partners in place for providing IP Telephony solutions which may give you some issues.

A possible approach for you would be to set out the specifications for your network requirements and use an IT Service company to perform a network audit and accreditation on your behalf. In the UK Phoenix perform this function for most of the major players and they can be found at

http://www.phoenixitgroup.com/Phoenix_IT_Services/Home.aspx?id=877

Quite happy to go through this with you in more detail so please feel free to contact me directly

Best Regards

Richard

Thank you all for your responses to my question. I appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Ginny,

What VOIP systems do you sell / install? Also, where are your customers located?

We are a national Systems Integrator (voice and data), and we have a division that strictly deals with Converged Voice and Data Network careabouts. Our Converged Engineers are not "phone guys" that know some data. They are very strong "data guys" that also know phones very well.

We evaluate and document customers' existing LAN or WAN networks to determine whether their equipment (switches & routers) is capable of VoIP and whether they have enough bandwidth to carry the voice traffic. We also conduct Performance Evaluations by placing "test calls" on the network and analyzing the results.

Here is a brochure with an overview of our ProCare offering, which applies to your question: http://www.spscom.com/solutioncenter/services/ProCare/Check%20Point%20Assessm...

You can also go to this page on our website for brochures of the different services we offer (collectively known as "Total Care"): http://www.spscom.com/solutioncenter/services/Pages/Overview.aspx

Note: If your customers need more bandwidth, our Carrier Services division can supply PRI's, T1's, MPLS networks, SIP trunks, etc., and we would be the point-of-contact for those services moving forward.

If a customer has an AVAYA system, then there is even more that we can do (e.g., real time monitoring and reporting of their trunks, and drilling down as far as per-call statistics). We are very strong in the call center space.

If you need more detailed information, call or email me directly.

Best regards,

Jose Ruiz
Enterprise Account Executive
SPS / STRATEGIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
973.867.5313 (direct) / 888.777.7280 ext. 5313
jruiz@spscom.com / http://www.spscom.com
113 Gibraltar Road/ Horsham, PA 19044
www.twitter.com/AvayaExpert

You may be best to work with one of your competitors. This may sound strange but if you get a trusted agreement with a Telecommunications company specialising in hosted services, they can focus and supply/advise on lines, phones, routers and switches whereas you can focus on installation and service delivery.

Get in touch if you want further information.

Thanks,
Mike
www.ellesys.com

Internap has developed proprietary route control platforms that overcome the limitations of traditional routing policies. Our technology monitors the performance of each Internet backbone, routing your traffic across the best path to provide faster and more reliable delivery than traditional routing methods. The patented, Internap route control technology considers path
characteristics like latency, packet loss, route stability and congestion when making routing decisions. Decisions are made dynamically and automatically to account for network performance changes, without the need for manual intervention.

Long story short, you get 6-8 carrier IP paths (the carrier mix varies by market) across one transport circuit with the peace of mind that you or your client will always be routed across the best performing network at any given point in time, with one vendor and one point of contact for NOC Support.

Happy to provide a live demo, either in person or via a webex or livemeeting presentation.

Deanna Lawrence-Bourg
214-533-8776
www.internap.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/deannalawrencebourg

Depending on the size of the account, a good idea would be to ground your partnering affiliation with someone who uses a good MPLS network. At some point, in addition to VoiP, you account is going to ask about Video. You are going to need someone who is experienced with UDP, CoS markings and meshed networks.

Under traditional hub and spoke layer 2 WAN designs, the enterprise network administrator controlled all the QoS policies by configuring the WAN edges. Under a full-mesh topology, it is the Service Providers policies on the provider edge routers that ultimately determine how traffic enters the branch. The bonus here is that, with MPLS, you'll get guaranteed SLAs that you can add to your service warranties.