This Horse will never die.
It will continue to be debated here and other forums for a long time and the dividing line betweem VoIP&TDM supporters, VoIP only supporters and TDM only supporters will probably continue forever as well.
The only change is the dividng line size will change as VoIP replaces TDM.
At the end of the day its what the manufacturers continue to develop and support that will determine what you sell or if you need find something else to do.
This is just natural progression and some of you have already done this transition from 1A2 to Analog TDM (talk about a huge change) and most from Analog TDM to Digital TDM and now to Hybrids with whatever manufacturers you have been representing except now you will have to move from TDM/Digital/Hybrids to VoIP.
So until whatever replaces VoIP comes along it will be system of choice like it or not - so why not adopt it, learn and move your business forward?
As far as the support issues with Cisco they are no diferent than any other large manufacturer and quite honestly we have not had many becuse we took the time and spent the money to gain the competance on the product and the confidence of the clients.
Believe me my team and I have worked on and continue to work on most large PBX's - Siemens, Ericsson, Avaya, Nortel and Alacatel. I think most of the support issues are caused by the manufacturers causing there own problems by rushing everything to market before having full confidence in the SW/HW.
Small key system manufacturers are guilty of this as well but it becomes more pronounced when it is a larger more complex system than a litle 4 x 8 box.
Whether it is 1A2, TDM or IP/VoIP if you are not properly educated in the particular discipline and trained on the product - how can you support it and have competance on the product or even confidence in your self to install and maintain it?
At the end of the day if it weren't for all the people that did not understand simple TDM telephony, forums like Sundance, Cisco Support, PBX-Info, Tek-Tips and others would not be really needed to answer questions and address system faults and complain between each other about manufacturers etc.
All of these forums have great value for the day to day simple questions or brain farts - it happens to all of us.
As far as system competance goes this is where almost everyone gets into trouble thinking because they have past experience on System A they can now support System B - just doesn't work that way very well and if you are crossing disciplines it will never work.
Ride on Dead Horse!
