IP PBX System for Hotel

The IP side will be used for wireless WiFI phones, Newer more capable calling features, intigration with Jabber XMPP, Email, Voicemail to Email, Voicemail from Web Browser, Conferencing, Dial from Computer, remote soft phones, call back.

Also, IP would give us the convience in setting up large number of phones for a client.  for example, a client would like to rent 24 phone lines for a meeting room.  Instead of running 24 phones to a room (If we are lucky enough to have the capability to do such a thing), we can just drop in a 24 port  ethernet switch an hook up 24 IP phones.

I think so long as Fax/Credit card machines work it will be acceptable.  The entire place is wired (an unwired) with free broadband Internet access.

I recenlty discovered a company called "MiTel" (http://www.mitel.com/) are they well known? any good?

When you say " For a hotel where guests will not be happy if either their phone or network isn't working I would recommend staying away from open source." do you mean that the product is unstable or can't provide the near 100% uptime that a traditional PBX does?

I would never roll out an Asterisk solution this big and critical by my self, this is why I am looking at companies like Fonality and Signate.  Besides a well known reputation, what is the major diffrence between the open source product and the proprietary product that companies like Avaya, cisco, nortel, etc, provide.

The time line for this is in the next 6 - 8 months.  Right now I am in the research phase, gathering information on diffrent products, the companies involved, and some quotes.  So far the 2 companies I spoke with (Fonality & Signate) are offering to work very closley with me to develop some costum features and functionality that are specific to the property.  Would a vendor such as Avaya or Nortel be willing to do the same?  For example, both Signate and Fonality offer an extenstion to intigrate with Mozilla Thunderbird in the same way it would with Outlook, or they are willing to program a wake up call interface into thier product.  Dispite these advantages, my major concern with going with either Fonality or Signate is niether of them has had any experiance with Hotels, they haven't been around very long, and they can probably disapear.