The on-premises Avaya Aura Platform delivers unified communications and customer service solutions, designed to enhance employee and customer experiences. It is presented as real time communications architecture using session-based collaboration technologies, and is used to enable multi-modal unified communications and omnichannel customer experience solutions.
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Cisco UC-One
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Cisco's UC-One (formerly BroadSoft) is a Unified Communications as a Service platform that allows users to work from desktops, tablets, desk phones, or smartphones, and move between devices. UC-One includes business phone services, messaging, audio and video conferencing, screen sharing, file sharing, virtual meeting rooms, etc. which are integrated in the UC-One Hub interface.
Cisco announced their acquisition of BroadSoft in October 2017.
Avaya Aura is secure and reliable; in our case, for customers that looking for stable solutions on voice, Avaya Aura is that solution fit. In a scenario where our customer is looking for digitalization, I think Avaya Aura is less appropriate.
UC-One is an extremely versatile app that works well in literally a single user shop, or a multi-hundred user company - especially for those who need mobility options to conduct business properly. With its built-in collaboration features, built-in softphone, and just general instant messaging features it allows you to work literally anywhere you have an internet connection. It is also handy in case there are onsite issues preventing you from using your hard phone (such as power or internet issues) where your cellphone will allow you to continue to work.
So one of the things it's done well is it's stable. It's networked at all the sites. We have five-digit dialing everywhere, and one of the features we like is the crisis alert feature. So if somebody calls 911 at a particular school, it sets an alarm off on the phones upfront and displays the extension number and the room number of who called 911. So they can respond and they know where to send first responders. So it's pretty cool.
Avaya Aura is extremely complex. Now that AI has come into the fold, Avaya needs to apply AI processes and tools to help identify and resolve issues with an installed platform. In addition, proactively identify potential issues. Ayaya has had some financial difficulties over the last few years. This may be why they outsource their expensive support. Our customer experience would benefit by having access to Avaya knowledgeable Engineers for questions about products and services as needed.
So I've seen the Cisco product out there. I've seen the old Nortel products, Mitel, I've been doing this for a long time. I've seen a lot of other products. And Avaya, Nortel were the Western Electric and Northern Electric of the world way back when. So pretty much the grandparents of all the other stuff that's out there. So their foundation is really strong. So I think this product stacks up amazing, especially for places that are mission critical, like hospitals, maybe the military, and stuff like that. They have the app, if you need an app, they do stuff on mobile devices, and that you can have remote workers. So I think they stack up really well against the other companies. The problem is probably advertising and the schools that are teaching this stuff are promoting a particular product and that's where the other products have the advantage. They're in the schools and it's, I call it indoctrination, but they're in the schools and they're teaching the people. The other product, their competitors are teaching in the schools, their product line. And that's how they can do promotion better.
We moved to Cisco UC-One because we wanted an integrated program to provide unified communication services as well as the ability to meet, message and share documents. The cost differential was minimal when you realize the time and convenience of Cisco UC-One. Our team down load the app to their cell and have one fewer device to carry, too.
As far as a negative impact on a surface level, not too much negative impact was to go right into that and we had the scare eight months ago. Well, we didn't know if Avaya was a product we were going to be able to continue with. But after this conference, we got the warm and fuzzies back. That is a product that we can keep for a number of years and they'll continue to grow and keep on upgrading it and stay current. So we'll be sticking with that.