CISCO & BT - Help with configuration

[warren3945]

Hi,

I was sold IT Site manager and PC Support by BT Local Business - I am very happy with the ITSM side of life. However, they dont support CISCO so 30% of any issues, BT cannot help becuase I dont have their router. Despite my frustration with the sales person for clearly selling me a product he CANNOt support fully, I am prepared to move routers from my cisco ASA5505 (4 of) to a BT Business Hub. However, I am told that they dont support site to site VPN's and the sales person from BT Business said that a BT Secure services Box would allow this.

My question is thus 2 x fold.

Am I getting sold yet again another product at a cost of £70 pcm for 2 x years £1680 when I bought the CISCO's  just under 3 yrs ago.

Why cant BT just support my CISCO's? To make matters worse - becuase my CISCO's are 3rd party ie not BT, I am told that the engineer  may probaably not install and configure it. At a cost of £109 per site, I am not going to run the gauntlet of that happening.

Bt are really missing a trick here when itcomes to SME's - sending out a BT Business hub and expectthem to remotely configure it and as and when you say CISCO, everyone in BT pukes!

It seems like Bt are really trying to get SME's etc but really, you are missing a trick here

[alastair]

the 2700 doesnt do site to site VPN only PTPP

The secure services box i reckon is the way to go.

i cant remember but i think its BT global services that do that

[spank]

If BT uses Croft Engineering instead of Basilica for the installation then they can, on request, support and install Cisco.

However ongoing support will not support the Cisco router itself.  Cisco engineers can demand a higher wage, need to be specially trained, which costs money, and can easily take their skills elsewhere.

BT will have to provide support for Cisco at some point and I wouldn't be surprised if they are already getting something in place but it's not an option just now and would have to be a dedicated cisco team apart from ITSM

Message Edited by spank on 19-08-2009 01:34 PM