Avaya Infinity™ vs. Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

The Avaya Infinity™ is well suited to allow remote working for call center agents. Staff can log in and work from anywhere using Chrome and their user credentials. The technical issues and lack of some features have caused some frustration for our staff and made it difficult to get buy-in for this product across all call center groups. This is difficult because a solution like this is intended to make their work more efficient as opposed to causing frustration.

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

• The app and the ability to use the "office" phone while on the road.
• There's an easy implementation and training process to get everyone on board quickly.
• Flexibility of transferring calls to different mediums - I can switch a phone call to a conference or patch in other parties with ease.

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

• One are for improvement for Avaya is the ability to operate behind the VPN. For the virtual employee, this is an issue as we are unable to use it behind the VPN and it must be launched from the remote desktop.
• The color scheme could definitely use some updating. The charcoal gray background of Avaya's windows, coupled with the black font is not very contrasting. I have used Avaya for years and would love to see an update as to its color scheme to better fit the virtual employee.
• Avaya could also improve the way an employee moves within the program by titling the icons seen or expanding the Avaya window to allow for a better understanding of what each con does. For example, the Work History window would go unnoticed, had I not been playing with the software one day. These little items are unknown to many professionals in my industry as they sit in the window with no explanation.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I am really not the decision maker on this subject but given the cost of the investment in Avaya, I do not see the company not renewing the use of Avaya. The new licensing model no longer requires expensive upgrades to stay current with new features added to the system and really helps with the cost of investment.

Incentivized

Avaya is really a high-tech and feature-laden software that brings lots of automation to our business. Even from the first month, we have hit direct growth of 19% in our sales, and overall leads increased by 45%. So, for us, it has been a very useful software, and we are planning to use it for a longer duration.

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

I give it this rating because the support services of Avaya have proven to be reliable when needed. Great feedback for our queries has always been received from the support agents. 24/7 availability of support, which is very essential as our Call Center department also functions this way, therefore, the knowledge and technical support we require is always available to us.

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

Incentivized

No, everything was implemented by Avaya Support

Incentivized

Switched from Polycom to Avaya, although polycom worked well there were too many reoccuring connectivity issues and the turn around time for solving them was also too long. Avaya has fewer connectivity problems and their support is much better too. Pricing wise they were similar so we didn't have much to lose.

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

• It does what we need it to do, so we don't heavily invest in this technology but rather into the manufacturing end of our business.
• We believe we have more than achieved the return on our investment for the Avaya phone system and associated equipment.

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