We're looking for 2 things right now: an affordable VoIP and an auto dialer. We're located in California, USA.

We're on an antiquated Nortel MICS system. There are about 12 phone lines here and every office has an ethernet port. Right now, I've been looking at Asterisk but am interested in more information about Cisco's solutions and people's experiences with it.

We're also looking for an auto dialer that can easily be easily used by our office staff. We spend a large amount of time having office staff calling parents. Typical calls home right now include absence, tardies, detention, suspensions, school events, state tests, etc. The only service that I have found right now is One Call Now but I'm looking for a solution that we can host in-house.

I'm looking to hear about free or paid products (within reason!). Our needs aren't overly complicated as we're a small school but something that's better than the Nortel system and easy to use for office staff would be great. If it's a paid product can we get a ball park figure on pricing.