jsena

One thing that I heard while attending an Avaya session on this very subject was that the Cisco system needs a mesh network, whereas the Avaya system works on a star network. I don't know whether this is factual or not anymore. If it is, then it is quite the deal breaker for Cisco. The whole star versus mesh network is hard to explain without diagrams, but basically in a mesh network, you need a direct connection between every site, and you don't with a star network. Also Cisco isn't as feature-rich, espcially when you're talking call center. When I went to the Avaya session, Cisco had not implemented service observing yet (for example) -- I don't know if they have since. Also their phones only have 2 appearances, which may be a problem depending one the coverage you use.

I hope that this info isn't outdated -- I am definitely not trying to create FUD. Avaya's product is a lot more robust, and I can't imagine that if you already have a heavy Avaya infrastructure that it would make any sense to switch it to Cisco. For a new site, we might be talking about something different...