Avaya IP Office is a communications solution for small and medium-size businesses. It is available in the cloud, on premise or hybrid deployments are all supported with IP Office along with the ability to migrate from one to the other. The included Avaya Equinox experience provides a single app for voice, video, messaging, conferencing and calendar and keeps employees productive on any device, from any location.
$82
per user/per month
Cisco Unified Contact Center
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Unified Contact Center is a contact center platform that can support up to 24,000 agents. It supports call routing, omnichannel integrations, and a management portal for creating customer profiles, segmentation, and resource monitoring.
The base in the infrastructure for any architecture within the company has been Cisco and with CCX which is one of the most complete for the needs in the market we are covering.
I have used older Avaya ACD systems. Avaya had multiple platforms to perform what CUCC does on one platform. The CUCC user and programing interfaces are much more user friendly.
So I haven't had one where it's not appropriate at all unless somebody was going pure cloud. Obviously, this is not a cloud product, but from an on-premise solution like the IP office is, we've sold it to companies that have five users and we've sold it to customers that have thousands of users. So it's very expandable, adjustable to be it's hybrid, so it's IP and digital mix capabilities. So that's a strong suit.
I would recommend it to other people in my contact and business circle, but if I recommend it to someone who has certain difficulties in accessing some tools within Cisco, he may have great difficulty in getting help because of the support that is lacking in most of the times.
Centralization is key. If you want to have all of your facilities on one phone system, to help mitigate telecom costs this is the system for you. You purchase the necessary licensing (one time purchase) and the licenses stay with you as long as you stay on that platform!
Flexibility is fantastic. Whether you want to use the IP Office as a key system, or replace your existing partner system, or run as a PBX. This system will do it all, I was very impressed with the compatibility of the IP Office with legacy equipment. Have a Partner system? Not a problem. Have a Definity system? Not a problem!
Broad based technology. You can utilize CO trunks (POTS lines), ISDN/PRI, T1, SIP, etc.... What ever your carrier hands off to you the IP Office can integrate with. No need to work with a third party vendor to get your interface up and running. AVAYA is a one stop shop, and if you have an existing warranty, just upgrade your IPOSS information on the system and your new hardware is covered.
Provides you with a solid routing engine that was built to handle Service Provider level throughput - if you need stability and a work horse this is the platform for you.
The core features on the whole are good, but where UCCE is very good is the eco-system of Solutions Plus partner integrations that expand on the core capabilities with the market leaders in areas such as WFO, Campaign Management, Biometrics and Natural Language.
The investment Cisco makes in the CC space means they are always improving the platform features, scale and reliability.
Rush for updates. At times an updated will fix one problem, and inadvertently create another. However with due diligence from your business partner (Tektivity) patches are tested before being rolled out in production environments.
Part itemization. If you purchase a new system, the power cord does not come with the unit, that is a separate part. Very minor in the grand scheme of things but as a reseller and a customer still somewhat annoying.
Large convoluted organization. As a user trying to navigate the AVAYA website, and track down information can be daunting. Even calling support can be challenging, you never know if your call will be routed to India, Brazil, or Denver. That is why the relationship with Tektivity is so important. You can leverage your business partner to get the answers you need so you can spend your time tackling issues that need your attention.
After 25+ years, the product still requires experienced and highly skilled engineers to deploy the product properly per Cisco Best Practice guidelines.
Third-party integrations are also very cumbersome and require highly skilled and experienced engineers and significant time and financial investment to deploy.
Upgrading the product is cumbersome and requires Cisco ATP or Cisco AS which is time consuming and very expensive.
Oddly enough I have been impressed with the IP Office platform so much that I have integrated one into my home. My wife was not happy with it initially but once she started using it she was very happy with the results. It helped that I programmed it to work just like a home phone but with features and options that I can utilize remotely. I would be more than happy to put an AVAYA IP Office against any other phone system on the market, and let you be the judge.
Avaya IP Office is a great system that is somewhat affordable for most SMB's. However, In our experience, Avaya IP Office has a tendency to shelve some of the license as you upgrade the software release on the PBX switch without giving back any comparable license to compensate. The Voicemail Pro license is quite expensive and most of the functionality that most business needs are not covered in the standard voicemail offering.
Cisco Unified Contact Center is a scalable product . Can be used in amy organizational units not only the contact center . Can be used for many IT Helpdesk setups and any internal or external CC . We can use it to automate the outbound dialing as well for marketting and invoices and other use cases
Cisco Unified Contact center is a very smart & reliable solution to go for. Its active-active sight base architecture and [customizable] features really help to deliver efficient customer service, enhanced next-gen experience, and uninterrupted operations. I believe every [organization] should opt for it if required.
Much better feature set with Avaya IP Office, and I really feel you're getting feature-rich telephony for a well priced switch. The system is very adaptable and a much better fit than legacy key systems and cloud-based UCaaS solutions competing in the same market. With the Avaya brand behind the system, there is also a form of working with a Trusted partner with many years in the UC space.
Similar I guess, however, I feel like Avaya was more suited for a contact center and allowed for all information to be in one place. The QA Forms were more flexible and easy to review. Predicative analysis was available to assist with scheduling and staffing. It was easier to manipulate and implement- I didn't need to go through 3 different parties to make a simply modification.
Licenses are very expensive. The customer has to buy IP telephony or Unified Communication and Collaboration Licenses and for Contact Center Solution licenses separately. There must be a price tone down as the competition is really high. New customers are willing to go for cloud-based solutions [that] are cheaper and easy to deploy.
