Business voice-over-IP has a reputation for being expensive, difficult to configure, and challenging for small business administrators to manage. While consumer-focused platforms fit the SMB budget very well, very few of them actually meet business needs. The situation has improved recently, as small businesses can now choose between affordable cloud-based systems and SMB-optimized appliances. Barracuda Networks delivers enterprise-grade features in CudaTel Communications Server 270a via a well-laid out interface that shows administrators exactly what to do to deploy a full-blown phone system.
A small business may decide to switch from a normal business phone service from the local phone company to a VoIP system to save money. VoIP will also give the company more options, such as setting up specialized messages for after-hours, creating phone menus to play pre-recorded messages, and directing calls to different extensions according to pre-defined rules.
Barracuda offers four different models of the CudaTel server, depending on the number of concurrent calls it can support. The CudaTel 270 is a 1U "mini" rack-mount server which can support up to 10 concurrent calls and 2 conferences. The CudaTel 370 can support up to 50 concurrent calls and five conferences, followed by CudaTel 470 which can take 100 concurrent calls and 15 conferences. The CudaTel 670 can support 250 concurrent calls and 50 conferences. At $2,999, the CudaTel 270 seems really expensive, but the fact that it can support an unlimited number of users mean organizations would be able to grow and not worry about outgrowing the server anytime soon.
Looking at the Hardware
The CudaTel 270a is a "mini" 1U rack-mountable server (measuring 1.7"x16.8" x14") and weighs 12 pounds. The size of the server may intimidate some administrators, who may feel more comfortable with desktop-form factors, such as the Operator Box [[link to review]] offered by Kerio Technologies. The rear panel has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a VGA port, and two USB ports, along with the power button. The front panel has LEDs for power, status (usually means disk activity), and two maintenance ports. The server has the distinctive Barracuda black-and-blue pattern and logo.
The CudaTel 270 can store up to 50GB of voice-mail. Barracuda sent CudaTel Phones—essentially a Polycom phone with the CudaTel software already pre-loaded—to configure with the server. The system can work with Polycom, snom, and other major VoIP phones.
Getting Started
Setup is not that difficult, unlike many business-class PBX systems which generally require a technician or a reseller to come on site to help with the deployment. The CudaTel comes with a default IP address, but since that address wouldn't work on my network, I connected a keyboard and monitor directly to the server to access the configuration screen. After changing the IP address, I connected the server to my network switch. I logged into the Web-based interface from a different computer on the network and was able to finish the rest of the setup.
I really liked the simple interface, with menu area for "Dashboard," "Switchboard," "Extensions," "Providers," "Reports," and "Configuration" laid out at the top. Relevant options appeared in the left menu pane for each section, such as "people," "Groups," "inbound call queues," "call parking extensions," "multi-user conferences," "Automated attendants," "unassigned phones," and "All extensions" under the "Extensions" menu. This made it easy to find options right away by using a very logical layout.
No comments:
Post a Comment