Greg,

agreed, that the Responsepoint software should not necessarily attempt to replicate all of the features that are in higher end PBX systems.

Having said that, however, I do not necessarily agree that the kind of email/voicemail integration which is the source of my comments is only important to the large PBX environment. In fact I will argue that any feature that improves user productivity is even more important in the small business than in the large business. I believe email/voicemail integration fits into that category.

Microsoft itself is learning how to standardize its software baselines and then derive specific products from those baselines by subtracting out features and thereby reducing the product price. Microsoft Office is a good example of this. at least on the level of subtracting out specific products to derive lower price Office product suites. Then too there are the various "flavors" of Windows Vista (home, business, ultimate, etc.).

What I am suggesting (and I have to assume that something like this could not happen overnight) is that Microsoft start to consider Responsepoint and OCS as really one product family and figure out a way to "bring down" some of the OCS features into Responsepoint. I have had lots of experience with exactly this kind of software and hardware product development/ management  with a common set of baseline software and I know it can be done.  We used to refer to this process of software feature subtraction as

    "bending the pins"

 on the baseline software (build if you will) in analogy to bending the actual pins on a piece of hardware to disable certain functionality, and offer the result at a lower price.

Now of course, since I have had very little training on OCS, I am speculating that OCS DOES, in fact,  have seamless and complete integration of voicemail and email. I hope I am correct in that speculation, since as Craig points out, even Shoretel has that capability.

John,

 

Your comments exactly explain why, I believe, RP should not enter into all of these tasks. RP is intended for a niche market. If you require all the same features as a large PBX then you need to purchase a large PBX and will pay accordingly for it. I do clearly remember in one of Microsoft's whitepapers, case studies, or presentations, they specifically said that this system is not intended to compete with those other phone systems. This would make sense since they also have OCS.

 

I do agree with some of the others, however, that RP is missing even some basic functionality that needs to be resolved immediately (with SP2) or we may see a decline in interest in RP.

----- Original Message ----
From: John Holmblad <jholmblad@acadiasec urenets.com>
To: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 2:48:47 PM
Subject: Re: [responsepoint] Re: RP hover mode

Craig,

thanks for sharing those insights/experience . 

After further thinking about the voicemail/email integration problem/opportunity , I see that the more accurate way to model the architecture of a modern PBX  is that the handsets, outside callers,  PC's and the PBX itself are able to interact with a "multimedia" mail system that supports both text based as well as audio and even video (why not?) inputs and outputs. The telephone handset then becomes another kind of i/o device that can interact with the mail system using whatever means (.e.g. numeric keypad, touch screen, etc) that that particular device supports. I suspect that what I am describing here is what Microsoft Office Live Communications Server (OCS) and its competing alternatives such as Cisco Call manager, Avaya, etc are already able to do.

Best Regards,

 

John Holmblad

 

Acadia Secure Networks, LLC

 

Serving the SmartDigital^TM home, entrepreneurial enterprise, and emerging network service provider markets

 

GSEC Gold,  GCWN Gold,  GAWN,  GGSC-0100,  NSA-IAM,  NSA-IEM

Cisco Select Certified Partner and SMB Specialist | Microsoft Small Business Specialist | Speakeasy Certified VOIP Partner | Linksys Authorized LVS Partner | Qualys Certified Qualysguard Specialist

 

(M) 703 407 2278

(F)  703 620 5388

 

(W) www.acadiasecure. com

 

primary email address:  jholmblad@acadiasec ure.com

backup email address:  jholmblad@verizon. net

Craig LaHote wrote:

John, ShoreTel handles it flawlessly: delete from email, and it's gone from your voice mailbox. Forward from email to another user and it's also in their voice mailbox (and the VM light on the phone comes on). Delete from voicemail, and it is zapped from your inbox. Change the status of an email message from read to unread, and the VM light on your phone comes back on! Put an future entry on your Outlook calendar marked as on vacation, and your phone automatically switches to vacation mode on the appropriate date, plays the appropriate greeting and can even invoke a different forwarding rule, then goes back to normal automatically post-vacation.
Granted, this is a higher-cost system, but then again, it ought to be a lot less costly for MS to implement these features, since they have the inside track on how best to integrate with their own products.
The other issue with RP is that voicemail messages can't be forwarded to someone else. If a caller leaves a message in your 'general mailbox' after hours, you can't send the message to the person that needs to handle it.
Email is a workaround, since you can forward at will. However, there are many people out there that don't want to listen to their messages on their PC: they may not have a private office and without headphones, don't have a way to listen in private. Or background noise may be so high that headphones are required anyway. In a doctor's office, HIPAA rules may preclude use of a speaker. They may not even have a PC available, or it may be in the middle of a task that prevents launching outlook and then media player just to hear a message. Or they may be on the road with a Blackberry that can't play WAV files, a WM phone that can only play them over the speakerphone, or a phone that doesn't even have access to email.
There's been some mention of the 80/20 rule, but we need to keep in mind that it applies not only to companies as a whole, but also to the individuals within each company. And at least in our limited experience, we've found that appeasing that other 20% is much more difficult with the current RP offering.
I believe that most if not all of these shortcomings are addressable via a software update. I hope we look at the next release of RP and say 'WOW'.
--- In responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com, John Holmblad <jholmblad@.. .> wrote:

Craig,
re:

 Email is great, but when I have to remember to delete the 

messages 

 from the phone that I've already listened to via email, I 

find the 

 term 'integration' a stretch.

That really blunts the value of "voicemail to email voice file attachment conversion. And as I think about this one, fixing it 

is not 

going to be easy unless the voicemail server inside of RP appears 

to 

the outside world as an IMAP or Exchange MAPI server. And it 

leads me 

to wonder how other manufacturers of PBX's solve this problem to 

the 

extent that they do solve it.
Best Regards,
John Holmblad
Acadia Secure Networks, LLC
* *
*Serving the SmartDigital^ TM home, entrepreneurial enterprise, and emerging network service provider markets*
* *
*GSEC Gold, GCWN Gold, GAWN, GGSC-0100, NSA-IAM, NSA-IEM***
*Cisco Select Certified Partner and SMB Specialist | **Microsoft 

Small 

Business Specialist | Speakeasy Certified VOIP Partner | Linksys Authorized LVS Partner | Qualys Certified Qualysguard Specialist*
* *
(M) 703 407 2278
(F) 703 620 5388
(W) www.acadiasecure. com
primary email address: jholmblad@.. . <mailto:jholmblad@ ...>
backup email address: jholmblad@.. . <mailto:jholmblad@ ...>
Craig LaHote wrote:

Trevor, I absolutely agree that no system will please everyone, 

and 

that there is a cost associated with every feature.
That said, the majority of our customers don't care much about 

the 

technical stuff that may get the rest of us excited; they want a phone system with features that are functional and reliable, and 

they 

look to me to support it, regardless of whose logo is on the 

hardware.

The overwhelming feedback we get is that voice recognition 

is 'cute', 

but for a small office (target market for RP), dial by name or a 

DSS 

button works as good or better (and is often also faster). If 

voice 

recognition sends a caller to the wrong person's voicemail, the 

lack 

of a way to bail out compounds the problem. The caller in that instance may hang up and call back, but some won't--what' s the 

cost 

of that lost call to a small business?
Email is great, but when I have to remember to delete the 

messages 

from the phone that I've already listened to via email, I find 

the 

term 'integration' a stretch. Ditto for Outlook 'integration' 

that 

doesn't support a screen pop, only a name lookup for the number.
There are a number of systems that provide functional and 

reliable 

service for small businesses within the RP price point--ESI for 

one 

comes to mind. They may not have the pizzazz of RP, but they do 

a 

better job of handling the basics: forwarding calls, day/night 

mode 

support, call pickup capability and a host of other features that savvy businesses expect in a system.
I hope that MS actively engages those in the RP community and 

pools 

our knowledge. The next release of RP could be a wonderful 

product, 

and the best chance for that to happen will be if MS listens to 

those 

of us in the trenches.
Craig LaHote, MCP
Director of Business Development
Computol, Inc.
(419) 874-2280
www.Computol. com
--- In responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com, Trevor Dierdorff <trevor@> wrote:

Craig and David,
While you make some good points, do you think MS will continue 

to 

invest in this product if it isnâEUR^(TM)t selling? It doesnâEUR^

(TM)t fit 

everyone for certain and perhaps compared to some other more expensive phones, it is not as feature robust. It isnâEUR^(TM)t 

supposed 

to be a robust solution. It never was. It is a small business solution that is simple to use and support.

If there is a market in it, MS will continue to develop and 

improve 

RP. I also think that phone experts are threatened by the 

simplicity 

of it all. Even a network administrator like me can set it up 

and 

support it.

Bottom line, can you name a system with the brand recognition 

and 

support of Microsoft, voice command, voicemail to email, and 

Outlook 

integration at a similar price point that is as easy to deploy 

and 

support? When you add all that up, Response Point stands alone.

Trevor Dierdorff
Trevor@<mailto:Trevor@>
[cid:image001. jpg@]<http://amnet. net/>
The IT Department for Your Businessâ"¢
(719) 442-6683 Colorado Springs
(719) 544-8324 Pueblo
From: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com 

[mailto:responsepoin t@yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Craig LaHote

Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 4:31 PM
To: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: [responsepoint] Re: RP hover mode
We are also in 'hover' mode. We've invested in a system for our
office and a few customers, and seem to have more than an 

acceptable

level of glitches, even given a V1 product (Syspine and Aastra
hardware). Voicemail jail, inability to answer an incoming call
unless the phone is ringing, and a host of other shortcomings 

make 

it

difficult to compete against more mature offerings.
We're a Gold partner and we wish to sell a Microsoft product.
However, anyone who has ever seen a ShoreTel in action 

justifiably

laughs at the current RP implementation. Microsoft is probably 2 

or

3 full versions behind offering the features that other companies
already have in their products today.
It is downright embarrassing when someone points out that the 

Outlook

integration in Cisco or ShoreTel's products is vastly superior to
that in a product developed by Microsoft!
It is hard to foresee how RP could possibly compete in the 50+ 

market

anytime soon, and it is difficult to envision that there will be 

much

money to be made in the under 50 device market, given the ongoing
commoditization of SMB products.
There's a limited window of opportunity here--I hope we see a
significant feature upgrade very soon.
Craig LaHote
Computol, Inc.
--- In responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>, David Burr <db@> wrote:

We are not halting RP just not being agressive at the moment. RP

will be a good system if the market tightens up so it's worth 

keeping

in the cards. I just wish they would fix some glaring issues.

db
On Oct 8, 2008, at 7:37 PM, "Trevor Dierdorff"

<trevor@<mailto:trevor@>> wrote:

David,
I appreciate your sentiments and your willingness to share a

solution that you like. However, my company is committed to 

moving

forward with ResponsePoint for several reasons.

ââ,¬Â¢ I believe that the current version paired with the

right infrastructure and connectivity is a solid offering.

ââ,¬Â¢ I am ramping up an RP website now and working on SEO so

that we can really attract the traffic.

ââ,¬Â¢ We are also investigating partnering with a company

that can offer SIP trunks which we have not worked with before.

ââ,¬Â¢ The SP1 feature set has ample features and when SP2 is

released it will be a bonus for our clients as the upgrade will 

be

free.

ââ,¬Â¢ For us to hold off would cause us to miss

opportunities. There are no dates yet for V2 or SP2, in the 

meantime

there are prospects who want what RP has to offer.

ââ,¬Â¢ For us to shift away from Microsoft to a Linux solution

is a total deviation from our business model. We are proud to be 

a

Microsoft shop.

ââ,¬Â¢ I have had the opportunity to work with the Response

Point team and I believe in their commitment to the product and 

the

partners who sell/support it. They have always been open to
suggestions and criticism and made huge strides to make this a
marketable and usable VoIP solution for the small business space.

That said; I am not focused on being a phone vendor. I am 

focused

on providing network/windows server administration in the SMB 

space.

My clients rely on me as their TBA when it comes to technology. 

We

have gotten into RP phones in order to protect the networks that 

we

are maintaining from phone guys who want to put devices on our
clientsââ,¬â"¢ networks. This is also a nice segue into a 

network

prospect who is looking to get phones as a foot in the door. 

Start

with the phones, move to a backup solution, firewall or server
project and end up with a managed services client. The phones
arenââ,¬â"¢t where the margins are. Itââ,¬â"¢s the network.

In the meantime, I still need an offering that will fill the 50-

100

user gap between RP and UC. Hopefully MS will develop a hybrid of
those two platforms to fill that space so that I donââ,¬â"¢t 

have 

to go

to something else.

Good luck with your solution. I hope that you do return to RP 

as I

think that youââ,¬â"¢re right that MS will continue to develop 

ways to

integrate VoIP into the space that we serve. I agree that itâ

â,¬â"¢

s not

for everyone but it is right for enough businesses that we will
persevere.

Trevor Dierdorff
Trevor@<mailto:Trevor@>
<image001.jpg><http://amnet. net/>
The IT Department for Your BusinessââEURz(¢
(719) 442-6683 Colorado Springs
(719) 544-8324 Pueblo
From: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

[<mailto:responsepoi>mailto:responsepoin t@yahoogroups. com<mailto:respo

nsepoint%40yahoogro ups.com>] On Behalf

Of David Burr

Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5:42 PM
To: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

Subject: RE: [responsepoint] CMP exiting RP channel
AMEN brother. Syspine had the first out the gate advantage and

Jerry was rock solid which is why I didnââ,¬â"¢t even bother 

with 

D&H.

But these Aastra phones are well proven in the SIP world. The 

style

is nice. So far Wesbell has been pretty solid.

However, we are in RP hover mode, not actively selling it right

now. Microsoft brand is great however overall customers either 

really

like it or hate it. Kind of a hard spot to be in. I think with 

these

recent announcements at the last ITEXPO there will be some cool 

new

releases that will open up the product. The way MS has handled 

this

new product I think we will see a SBS software version next year,
with 2.0 software the software will be awesome. We are testing 

out

the Asterisk magic button right now. No name brand but the 

product

seems more solid and functional with the same Aastra phones. If 

you

want to send me your contact info I will send over information or
fill out this online form: online
form<http://help. nexsip.com/ index.php?
_m=tickets&_a=submit&step=1&departmentid= 1> .

db
From: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

[<mailto:responsepoi>mailto:responsepoin t@yahoogroups. com<mailto:respo

nsepoint%40yahoogro ups.com>] On Behalf

Of Trevor Dierdorff

Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5:03 PM
To: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

Subject: RE: [responsepoint] CMP exiting RP channel
Until I see how this all shakes out with Syspine I am going to 

hold

off on selling their product. Jerry didnââ,¬â"¢t specify his 

exact

reason for departure but it makes me concerned to rely on Quanta 

as 

a

partner. Jerry was the face of Syspine and CMP was more 

responsive

than most of our vendors.

I am currently waiting on D-Link for an RMA. I setup an Aastra

6757i on my desk last week and am really impressed. The 

speakerphone

is the best of all of the brands and the cordless is pretty 

slick.

It is more expensive than the other two brands but we rarely
recommend the cheapest products to our clients anyway. Quality of
product and support are our top priorities. If Wesbell can be as
easy to work with as CMP I think that weââ,¬â"¢ll have a winner.

Trevor Dierdorff
Trevor@<mailto:Trevor@>
<image001.jpg><http://amnet. net/>
The IT Department for Your BusinessââEURz(¢
(719) 442-6683 Colorado Springs
(719) 544-8324 Pueblo
From: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

[<mailto:responsepoi>mailto:responsepoin t@yahoogroups. com<mailto:respo

nsepoint%40yahoogro ups.com>] On Behalf

Of Jerry Moore

Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 1:24 PM
To: responsepoint@ yahoogroups. com<mailto:responsepoin t%

40yahoogroups. com>

Subject: [responsepoint] CMP exiting RP channel
Subject: CMP exiting Syspine/Response Point Distribution
As of October 6, 2008, CMP will no longer be accepting orders 

for

Syspine equipment in any respect and is exiting the Response 

Point

channel.
I want to personally thank everyone who has worked with me on 

the 

RP

team for the last year for their excellent efforts to build the
reseller channel. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to 

meet 

and

talk with so many of the contributors to this group over the 

last

year. I hope to stay in contact with you all going forward on 

new

products and projects as they arise. I thoroughly enjoyed being
part of this new marketplace and wish you all success with RP 

going

forward.
As with any new product, the machine has many moving parts. We 

at

CMP had to decide what is best for us as a company. Simply put, 

our

service and support model of doing business does not fit into a
national e-tailer/retailer scenario now being pursued.
CMP will continue sales and distribution of our core product,
PhoneSuite, which is a PBX designed for hotels/motels under 500
ports. Feel free to contact me about that if you have further
questions or need/want information about it.
My new contact information:
Jerry Moore
Phone: 720-889-4044
Email: jmoore@<mailto:jmoore% 40phonesuite. com>

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