I'd suggest taking a look at the Zultys product. We have just installed one inhouse and it works well out of the box.
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Cisco vs Avaya VoIP System
We are currently trying to decide between Cisco and Avaya for VoIP functionality. We will be connecting 1 remote office via 2 dedicated T1s and we will be using call center agents for hunt groups etc. The VoIP will tie into oour PBX so we can grow into teh VoIP system without a forklift upgrade. Does anyone have a good pros and cons list between the two vendors? The prices are comparable and from what I have seen so are the capabilities. Any advice or past experiences are very welcome.
Thanks.
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Answers
Darren,
Thanks for your input. My CIO is actually leaning towards the Avaya and us network guys are wanting the Cisco. I'm not sure how it will shake out but if you have any documentation or links to any info supporting this I would love to have it. I have looked pretty hard for a direct comparison but they are never form a third party so the legitimacy is taken away somewhat.
Thanks for your help.
Darren,
Hope I can be of some help. Cisco at the end of the day has only been in the voice industry for a few years. Their voice product is centered around what hey do best: networking. Now based on your physical enviroment of only a few sights the routing/switching requiremnts are not intensive which can be handled my a number of other manfacturers, less you have 300 applications needing QoS.
Avaya on the other hand has been in voice for many years (formerly AT&T) and its is what they do best. You mentioned that you will have a call center? Well Avaya is one of the best. Cisco is far behind in the call center enviroment.
You mentioned that the new VoIP system will tie into the old? What make model is the old? There may be some solutions that will help you migrate over to a VoIP enabled enviroement.
Another big question to ask is why? Why do you want VoIP?
Kindest regards,
Joel_Sisko
Joel,
We are tying it in with a Nortel PBX. We have looked at the Nortel IP solution but we feel that the Cisco or the Avaya will give us a more scalable and capable system. We have several reasons for going to VoIP. We have DR iniciatives and VoIP can be set up in a co-located fault tolerant environment fairly easily, our current PBX is nearing the end of its support life and we currently have it maxed out. To add any more functionality or devices we will need a new shelf. For that price we can get a whole new VoIP system. While Avaya does have more phone experience we are looking at VoIP which is technically data and Cisco has the lead on data networking. I personally think it boils down to a few things. Features, price, administration, scalability, maintenance, and support. Does anyone have any experience with Cisco's Smartnet or Avaya support and maintenance. Were you satisfied with the performance?
Another thing I have found out with Cisco's IPCC call center software they allow scripting. Do you know if you can call external code in these scripts to possibly write your own database interfaces etc.?
Thanks for any comments,
If you are using Nortel, assuming the MICS since you are maxed out, the 3COM SS3 NBX may be a perfect fit. The 3COM NBX supports the Nortel digital phones using its VoIP PBX system. So you can transition little by little into a VoIP solution. Also this probably will price out about 20 percent less for the NBX than Cisco or Avaya.
http://www.at2.com/downloa
http://www.citel.com/produ
If voice was just data then why do we not speak in 1’ and 0’s? Communication from human to human is up to 75 percent non verbal. The other 25 percent is made up of sounds and inflection. Traditional phone systems miss allot of the nuances of communication. VoIP concerned with smaller packet size misses even more of the nuance. I agree that Cisco has cornered the network market, but not voice, far from it. Consider this, the telecom market is a 1.3 trillion per year business worldwide, Cisco only anticipates generating a few billion each year in the industry as per Chambers most recent interviews. Additionally Cisco is loosing dealer’s right after left in the IP telephone market. This is Cisco’s second time around with the voice product, they first released it in 1998 and failed, took them two years to reorganize and remarket.
Cisco Smartnet can be a challenge, the scripting, well how much time do you want to spend learning something that can be done easily using other quality call center products.
Avaya is driven by its partners, period. The IP office from Avaya is not the best product they have ever put out, so I agree with the earlier statement. But if it’s the S8700, I beg to differ, which leads me back to whom the Avaya dealer is and their competence level.
Also from a VoIP PBX perspective there is:
Asterisk from Digium the open source pbx
Mitel 3300
Artisoft
Toshiba CTX
Just to let you know I have installed everyone of these products which may help put my opinion into perspective.
Kindest regards,
Joel_Sisko
Agreed, the Definity level Avaya product is completely different. I have no experience with that.
The IPOffice product was not Avaya's to begin with. They purchased it from another company.
I stand by every Avaya Partner and Magix that have been installed, but the IPO has definately taken a backseat to the Asterisk boxes we have installed.
We have lost more money on the IP Office systems going back for patches, fixes and updates than any of the dozens of Asterisk systems we have installed.
I disagree with the Smartnet asessment. I think it is orders of magnitude better than the Voda / Avaya support chain.
-Darren
Darren,
Never knew that the IPO was purchased from another company.
Cisco's support and smartnet used to be the top of the heap. When they had the big layoffs a few years ago it was the support teams that took some of the biggest hits. Since then I have seen support issues take two weeks to be resolved, prior to that 24 to 48 hours.
But its agreed that even Avaya support has gone down hill, I remeber the days of calling Colorado for supprot, long as you knew how to F-0-0 they would talk to you.
Joel
I must say that we are using Cisco's VOIP system, Call Manager and I love it! I have three locations in California and they connect to our HQ via a point to point T1, and we all have linking extensions. We are separated by a combined 900 miles but, we communicate clearly, and uninterrupted. More over, using Cisco's 831 router at home using a cable Internet connection, connecting VIA VPN to our Cisco 1711 here in HQ, I am able to work from home and when my extension rings here in the office, I get it at home too. It is great for the Mobil user too. IP Communicator is a nice feature too. I have had several opportunities, while abroad, to make a VPN connection and use it (IP Communicator) via my laptop and make international calls, or rather local calls that would under normal circumstances be international. Going with Cisco's Call Manager suite is the best communication decision that we have ever made.
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by: dwright1542Posted on 2005-08-31 at 21:25:52ID: 14799486
Yup! Run away from the Avaya system. I am a channel partner with the second largest Avaya dealership in an Eastern state. Our company does all of the router / network side for thier installs.
The Avaya product is, in many cases, sophmoric and shortsighted. For example, any changes made on the server requrie a reboot! Get that, all calls lost!
The Avaya licensing scheme is a nightmare....to connect a softphone requires 2 licenses!
Voicemail: There is no data only backup. If you loose the voicemail server, there is no way to restore the data side of the voicemail....it's gone, even if you have a backup.
And tech support. Cisco's is plain wonderful. Avaya? ::LAUGH:: If you get thru.
It is so bad that we have developed an asterisk based system that we have started marketing. I'd take the asterisk system with Cisco phones ten times over the Avaya.
-Darren