Avaya Aura vs. Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

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.

Incentivized

If you are in an environment that is primarily Cisco and switching from PRI circuits or other non-SIP circuits and are generally considered to be on an enterprise-grade platform, CUBE is likely a solid choice for you. From my experience, I cannot speak to the video handling that CUBE offers as we do not employ that, so hopefully other reviews will provide insight on that.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Call accounting (Integration with 3rd party applications for ease of use and comprehensive CDR's)
• Address hiding (Keeping your internal network secure with PSTN calls)
• Internetworking between multiple protocols
• SIP profiles (message/header customization)
• Billing, cost counting

Incentivized

• Pricing is always a concern.
• How to maintain the attractive price point as they transition from perpetual licensing to subscription-based.
• Offering the benefits of 'economies of scale' even in situations where the transitioning is not wholesale from the onset but incremental over time.

Incentivized

• The way to configure is not so intuitive.
• It cannot show SIP ladder diagram directly.
• The learning curve is a bit steep.

Incentivized

We are happy with this product since we have used until now around 10 years.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I rated Cisco Unified Border Element’s (CUBE) usability an 9 out of 10. It offers excellent flexibility, reliability, and integration with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. However, its configuration can be complex for non-experts. Once properly implemented, it provides powerful SIP control, security, and scalability in both virtual and hybrid voice environments that we require.

Incentivized

It is very powerful and secure. However, for most people, it is a bit difficult to learn how to configure and debug.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We previously used other SBC's but weren't satisfied with the performance. The support wasn't there and constant RMA's for defective hardware. Although the CUBE is expensive, it saves time and resources on support. Robust features and no downtime in 3 years. I don't believe many vendors offer products to compete in this space. You will regret to decision to go with cheaper SBC's.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Positive impact, saving on monthly phone bills due to sip trunk migration.
• Positive, using a couple of CUBEs to concentrate several SIP trunk.
• Positive, using a couple of CUBEs to route several branch outbound and inbound calls.

Incentivized