3CX offer to 54 hotels needing to integrate with Opera

[matthew weste]

we are looking to Quote on a Hotel Chain with currently 54 Motels and adding another 16 so 70 in total. They are running Opera and would like to know if a single instance in a VmWare environment with a suitable tail can be migrated to all hotels being on the same instance to take advantage of the pooling of available sessions.

Does the Opera integration need to be on a site x site basis or is there an alternative?

 

[cobaltit]

I don't know the answer definitively but I'm going to say no. Even if you could technically connect them, logically I don't think it would work as you would have an overlap of room numbers making administration a nightmare.

 

[iron]

While you technically could, I would not do a single instance. You will have a lot of admin issues if these sites spread across time zones. I would look to do multiple instances and bridge them instead.

 

[lneblett]

Most likely not. Cobaltit hit the nail on the head, but there may be a bigger issue still associated to the same nail.
1st, 3CX, to include the hotel aspect, is based upon extensions. As you have multiple properties and these likely will overlap room numbers, then I assume the same will happen for the extensions (room 100 = extension 100). There is no way to distinguish room/extension 100 from the hotel in Perth for the same extension at the hotel in Sydney. It would impact all aspects - wake-up calls, maid codes, etc.

The bigger issue may be about the emergency numbers. You have a single instance of 3CX, when a call is made to emergency services, where do the responders go....Perth or Sydney?

Opera needs to be site-by-site. Consider each property as unique from a hotel perspective - time zones may be different, incoming call paths may be different at each property, call accounting for cost might be different, etc.

 

[N_G]

In addition to the points mentioned above by our partners, i assume each hotel runs its own Opera instance? Well of course then you need to configure it to work with each opera instance. You will need 54 instances.

If you are doing this to save on license costs its futile as the license cost difference will be minimal. (pricing does not go down for more lines because our system actually is more competitive with more lines) One could argue its easier to manage one system but you will have a complex setup if one system and wont be able to cater for any requirements from each hotel. You would then have a much harder time separating out the costs to each hotel. There are other factors such as having to do an upgrade for all hotels at once and so on.

Best way to go is to is a stock 3CX linux system in the cloud or on an appliance to minimize admin. (intel NUC or Gigabyte industrial version) Buy all the licenses in one go and i am sure that you will get a discount such that the license price will be a small part of the total qoute. To make bigger savings, use a low cost phone such as the Fanvil H3 - Shop around, make sure you get a good price and the impact on total cost will be much higher? If you need to use FXS gateways, again ensure you use a good but low cost FXS gateway.

Finally, if you are going to host ensure that the hoster is not overcharging you as this will be a bigger component of total price. Same for SIP trunks. The price differences are phenomenal if you work it out.

I hope this helps.