One aspect of a VOIP system you may want to consider is the potential for redundancy.
If you should happen to choose to go the Asterisk (open source) route, the Asterisk@Home distribution installs straight off a CD and can be backed up / restored through a web browser. This means that if you exclusively use IP connected components -- T1 or POTS gateways and IP connected phones -- then you only need to shove the Asterisk@Home install CD into another server should one fail and restore a recent backup -- voice mail, configuration and all.
In addition, you can get a much higher level of service (potentially) from a service contract with an Asterisk consulting firm than your traditional Nortel / Toshiba / Avaya vendors. For example, if your phone system itself should suffer a meltdown, it is easy (in a small to medium office) to swap it with a PC. If a switch or T1 gateway should bite the dust, they are generally inexpensive enough to keep a spare around. My experience with the "big heavy" vendors is that a service contract will get you up & running in a day or less -- while a asterisk solution could potentially recover from the same type of hardware failure within an hour.
I have to recommend against using a VOIP phone service however -- getting a T1 line from a good provider is likely to be cheaper and much more reliable.
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One aspect of a VOIP system you may want to consider is the potential for redundancy.
If you should happen to choose to go the Asterisk (open source) route, the Asterisk@Home distribution installs straight off a CD and can be backed up / restored through a web browser. This means that if you exclusively use IP connected components -- T1 or POTS gateways and IP connected phones -- then you only need to shove the Asterisk@Home install CD into another server should one fail and restore a recent backup -- voice mail, configuration and all.
In addition, you can get a much higher level of service (potentially) from a service contract with an Asterisk consulting firm than your traditional Nortel / Toshiba / Avaya vendors. For example, if your phone system itself should suffer a meltdown, it is easy (in a small to medium office) to swap it with a PC. If a switch or T1 gateway should bite the dust, they are generally inexpensive enough to keep a spare around. My experience with the "big heavy" vendors is that a service contract will get you up & running in a day or less -- while a asterisk solution could potentially recover from the same type of hardware failure within an hour.
I have to recommend against using a VOIP phone service however -- getting a T1 line from a good provider is likely to be cheaper and much more reliable.