One of our branch offices which is 2,000 miles away wants to be on our VOIP network. So we just shipped them a few phones. This office will handle all of our sales and business development work so the phone infrastructure will have to be rock solid. All they have now is a four port ISP wireless router. What I want to get them is a 24 port PoE switch but I'm kind of torn between the side of me that wants to get them something reliable and rock-solid and the side of me (cheap) that says, "Hey, this site's running off of a cheap ISP router right now, just get them a cheap switch and call it a day!"
The problem is that this branch office is on an island. They use VPN clients when they need to connect to HQ but other than that they are off network. I've never been to this place and don't plan to any time soon (only VPs and sales travel to this location). So IT support there is minimal to none. The phone vendor will dispatch a tech to set everything up, but after that it's all on us.
So I've been gravitating towards Meraki cloud managed switches. This gives us the ability to manage the switches remotely without having to telnet into the location. The problem is that the switch is $2500 with the non PoE version $500 less.
Is that overkill for a site that small? The way I see it is that it's phones connected to it. Phones are important. People expect phones to be up all the time. I don't want to risk getting a cheap Netgear and having it die on me 2,000 miles away with no tech to back us up.
Are there any less expensive models than the Meraki that are just as reliable? I'm looking for no more than 24 ports to support a maximum of 16 phone lines.