Avaya Aura vs. Universal Connectivity

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

Universal Connectivity didn't mind that we are a small company--they helped us get where we needed to be with our communication system, and I appreciate that.

• 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

• Communications with the Universal Connectivity team are well communicated and presented in a non-technical way, making it so much easier to understand.
• The solutions offered are comprehensive and complete.

• 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

• I wish I could use them at home!

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

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

• 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

• The ROI has allowed us to stay in business during this COVID crisis. We are all working remotely and communications with each of our team members and our clients is mission critical. The Universal Connectivity team had maximum positive impact on our ROI.