PBXtech.info - View Single Post - IP telephony

PBXBear · May 17th, 2005, 02:10 PM

I've worked as a Telecom Consultant and PM deploying both Cisco Call Managers and AVAYA (Lucent, AT&T...etc) systems and in my professional opinion - hands down AVAYA has the better product.

No matter what deployment or installation I've seen, I do not believe Cisco is five 9's. No matter what they say. In addition, advanced call center features (such as Advocate and AVAYA Virtual Routing...) can't be matched.

In theory, their products seem good. And their one big call center sell point - "Enterprise Queuing" - is no longer a stumbling block for AVAYA with the new "FaC" architecture ("Flatten and Consolidate").

The last place I worked had 2 Cisco Call Manager clusters, 1 Cisco IPCC Express, and 1 Cisco IPCC Enterprise - the amount of babysitting the systems required and the lack of true voice and contact center knowledge that Cisco has/had - made upper management want to kick the product out the door.

The only reason the product was kept around was to keep AVAYA in check - for whatever good that did.

Professional colleagues of mine have told me story after story of nightmare Cisco VoIP deployments and mainteance "overhauls".

The major question you need to ask - Do you consider voice a critical application in your enterprise/company/corporation?

If your answer is Yes - then you need to go with a vendor and product line that can ASSURE you five 9's.
If your answer is No - then feel free to experiment. Cisco, IPBX's, xPBXs, Nortel, Siemens...etc.

As an old boss once said to me: "If you can't bet your job on it, don't deploy it."

Additionally, as other have mentioned, the feature set can't be beat on Communication Manager / MultiVantage. And you gain a LOT of flexibility in terms of TDM, VoIP, IPT...etc...in comparison.

Just my opinion. Though, I might be jaded a bit after giving up countless evening and weekends applying patches, upgrades, .dot releases to Cisco Call Managers and IPCC.

Final point, unless Cisco finally released "Green Dragon" - it's still a Microsoft based platform... Need I say more. :-)

Regards,

Chris

May 17th, 2005, 02:10 PM	#6 (permalink)
PBXBear PBXtech GOLD 100+ posts Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 116	Re: IP telephony - Avaya vs Cisco I've worked as a Telecom Consultant and PM deploying both Cisco Call Managers and AVAYA (Lucent, AT&T...etc) systems and in my professional opinion - hands down AVAYA has the better product. No matter what deployment or installation I've seen, I do not believe Cisco is five 9's. No matter what they say. In addition, advanced call center features (such as Advocate and AVAYA Virtual Routing...) can't be matched. In theory, their products seem good. And their one big call center sell point - "Enterprise Queuing" - is no longer a stumbling block for AVAYA with the new "FaC" architecture ("Flatten and Consolidate"). The last place I worked had 2 Cisco Call Manager clusters, 1 Cisco IPCC Express, and 1 Cisco IPCC Enterprise - the amount of babysitting the systems required and the lack of true voice and contact center knowledge that Cisco has/had - made upper management want to kick the product out the door. The only reason the product was kept around was to keep AVAYA in check - for whatever good that did. Professional colleagues of mine have told me story after story of nightmare Cisco VoIP deployments and mainteance "overhauls". The major question you need to ask - Do you consider voice a critical application in your enterprise/company/corporation? If your answer is Yes - then you need to go with a vendor and product line that can ASSURE you five 9's. If your answer is No - then feel free to experiment. Cisco, IPBX's, xPBXs, Nortel, Siemens...etc. As an old boss once said to me: "If you can't bet your job on it, don't deploy it." Additionally, as other have mentioned, the feature set can't be beat on Communication Manager / MultiVantage. And you gain a LOT of flexibility in terms of TDM, VoIP, IPT...etc...in comparison. Just my opinion. Though, I might be jaded a bit after giving up countless evening and weekends applying patches, upgrades, .dot releases to Cisco Call Managers and IPCC. Final point, unless Cisco finally released "Green Dragon" - it's still a Microsoft based platform... Need I say more. :-) Regards, Chris