Alright, so I'll start off that right now, i'm feeling a little overwhelmed and think I need some knowledge dropped on me to help me reset myself to the right place, correct some expectations and just in general, help get started.
I myself, the Network admin, feel very confident in doing anything networking wise, network is in a good place, but i also do the Voice/Security and those are maturing since i've joined last year I work for a company of about 480, domestic in the US, with about 12 remote offices and 2 more on the way this year(SD-WAN with either MPLS or public ISP). My Voice experience really is CUCM and it was basic at best, enough to say keep something running and sort of hold a conversation with a real voice engineer about CUCM. I understood enough at my last job to be dangerous and get by was about it.
What my boss wants/is requesting:
Voice - No more desk phones, a solution to remove desk-phones from the environment. We give almost every user a cellphone, I myself dont have a desk phone, just a cell. We have Shoretel(old) for the desk phones.
Chat collaboration - Private chat, Group Chat and File sharing. Teams is the flavor, this is mostly because it just comes with our M$ licensing. It has been brought up about using this as the "soft phone".
Video Collaboration - Meeting rooms that are video capable, mobile friendly and client joinable. Bluejeans is what we have now, talks about Zoom.
Lets break this down further:
Voice -
We have a old Shortel system, the environment consists generally of users assigned DIDs and a voicemail box, we have a front desk phone at most sites that they transfer calls to the users that actually have phones(about 150). Ive setup some hunt groups that allow locations with DID's and no physical phone on site to ring to the main receptionist phones. Nothing beyond that in the system such as hunt lists for say ring to a Custom Service, helpdesk team or anything, and to boot, most phones are call forwarded to a cell phone anyways.
Chat -
IT has put for effort to encourage users to use Teams, and with general success, many users use it to chat and sharing files internally, but nothing more than that, we don't use the meetings feature, we don't use the VOIP calling.
Video Collaboration -
We are using BlueJeans, this is used for internal and external customer facing meetings. We run the BlueJeans Relay to integrate our meeting rooms with BlueJeans. These rooms consist of PolyCom Trio 8800 + Collab and Cisco SX20s(one SX80).
The play money here to make a solution work - about $40,000 is what in total we spend yearly on bluejeans and to maintain our Shoretel system(with is EOL), my reality sensor here says this is not even close to a realistic number to achieve the goal.
So, as my brain thinks about this.
Idea A.
Voice - Maintain the Shoretel system, but upgrade it to be modern. I can integrate Polycom/Cisco with Voice at this point, ditch the desk phones and forward DIDs to Cells. (messy!)
Chat Collab - Keep at it with Teams
Video Collab - I can integrate the Polycom with Teams for Chat and Video Collaboration, but not the Cisco gear (AFAIK) *The hangup and no idea on cost*
Idea B.
Voice - Ditch the Shoretel system and switch to a hosted solution (I think Zoom offers something )
Chat Collab - Ditch Teams and use Zoom
Video Collab -Ditch BlueJean and go with Zoom
Im not very educated on this however and is more theorycrafting right now and seems like a expensive switch
Idea C.
Voice - Move the voice to Teams(AFAIK this is expensive and feature lacking)
Chat Collab - Keep Teams
Video Collab - Keep BlueJeans and my existing Gear
This probably isn't enough info but i'll try and responds as I can.
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