Cisco vs Avaya

vCole

Trying to find the differences between Cisco & Avaya. Anyone know any information on either? (I know a good amount about Avaya, because of using it prior.)

Any experiences (good or bad) are appreciated. As well as facts.

hypnotoad

FadeToBright wrote: »

Trying to find the differences between Cisco & Avaya. Anyone know any information on either? (I know a good amount about Avaya, because of using it prior.)

Any experiences (good or bad) are appreciated. As well as facts.

Cisco - expensive, complicated.
Avaya - expensive, complicated.

msteinhilber

FadeToBright wrote: »

Trying to find the differences between Cisco & Avaya. Anyone know any information on either? (I know a good amount about Avaya, because of using it prior.)

Any experiences (good or bad) are appreciated. As well as facts.

Just don't let your exceptionally frugal boss learn about Nortel's situation.... they might want to try and see if they could get a slick bargain on Nortel gear

ColbyG

I prefer Cisco... but I'm biased.:D

mikej412

I prefer Cisco - but that could be the CCVP talking.

And I don't have anything bad to say about Avaya -- but that could just be because I refuse to acknowledge their existence.

There are CHEAP solutions out there and companies/consultants that would love to sell them to you (and make even more money supporting them).

There may be a link hidden all the way at the bottom of the Cisco CCVP Forum FAQ thread that points to some interesting software.... starting there you can search for the "boxed solutions" available and the companies/consultants in your area "selling solutions" and supporting them.

But if you went with a Cisco Solution you could possibly gain the skills necessary for the CCNA:Voice (assuming you also sneak in the prerequisite CCNA). It's probably worth pricing out a CME solution (and the support costs) to get a baseline for price comparisons with Avaya & the CHEAP solutions.

I'll leave it to you to guess if I mean CHEAP as in "not as expensive" or CHEAP as in "you get what you pay for"

royal

Just go with OCS R2 Enterprise Voice with SIP Trunking (PBX in the cloud) and get Polycom OCS Phones (Tanjay) and you're all set! Now you'll have IM, Web Conferencing, Dial-In Conferencing like Hosted Live Meeting, Phone Capabilities, and Exchange UM be your OCS Voice Mail Platform with no need to enter your PIN/Extension if you dial from your Tanjay/Communicator since you're already authenticated with Kerberos/NTLM! And you can have me set this all up for you!

vCole

msteinhilber wrote: »

Just don't let your exceptionally frugal boss learn about Nortel's situation.... they might want to try and see if they could get a slick bargain on Nortel gear

We actually use Norstar now

I told her not to go with Nortel or ShorTel.


I think we're going with Avaya due to only having 2 people in IT to manage it (1 actually, since my boss has never used VoIP).

I got a lot of great input from a boss from my first job in IT (whose opinion I value GREATLY) and forwarded those emails to my boss.

She seemed pleased.