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
Grandstream UCM series IP PBXs
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Grandstream presents the UCM series of IP PBX appliances as powerful yet easy to manage voice, video, data, and mobility communications platform, whichoffer an extensive set of unified communication features in an easy to manage on premise solution with no licensing fees, upgrade fees or costs per features. The Grandstream UCMs range from small and medium business deployments to small and medium enterprise solutions.
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.
As a PBX the UCM PBX can be cover the needs of all companies without exception. We think it is really a great and flexible solution that covers all the IP telephone needs a company may have. When we were researching the market to buy our pair of UCM 6308, we had also hoped to use it as a replacement for our Skype for Business installation, so to say to use it as our main solution for video conferencing. After trying to do this for a couple of years we would say that you can use Wave for video conferencing and I personally like it, but it is not well suited for bigger companies for using it as the main video conferencing solution. On the other hand, there are very few PBXs even offering a video conferencing solution and their solutions are not better that the UCM's solution!
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.
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.
The cluster implementation does not work on all network modes. Would be great if this was improved.
Wave on mobile phones works in a different way than on desktops and this makes it hard to set it up for use on the firewalls, as it requires different and more permissions than the desktop app. For example is one receives an invitation per email on the mobile phone and wants to participate in a Wave meeting as a guest, the still need access to the network ports needed to login the extension (while they only need / want to join the meeting as anonymous users). On the desktop app this is not needed.
There is a limit on the number of 1 device per connection type. We have an extension used in the maintenance department and is shared by 6 users. We were able to install it on 1 PC, 1 Wi-Fi phone and 1 Android shared mobile phone. We would like to install it on a second shared mobile phone, but this is not allowed by the UCM policy. We could use anther extension to do this, but the maintenance department does not want this. They want to accept calls with problem reports only on one extension. Would be great to be able to install the same extension on more than 1 Android devices.
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.
We are very happy with our UCB 6308 pair. We have some issues that we would like to see improved, but the UCM 6308 does more than cover the main functionality it is intended for and has given us the needed solution for our remote workers.
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.
Although we are very happy with our pair of UCM 6308, we still think there are some things that can be improved to make this a prefect product! Have mentioned the main points we think that should be improved on other parts of the review.
Grandstream almost always have a first response on any ticket within 24 hours, which is impressive. They do care to listen about customer problems and needs and are open suggestions / feature reuests, as long as there is a potential for the suggested change to benefit a big enough number of customers.
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.
We were considering a solution from Alcatel at first. Very stable implementation for sure, as there are no frequent updates and no new features. Also no conferencing solution was included. A separate solution was offered for extra cost. So the choice was between a very stable PBX which would be pretty much unchanged for ever and a dynamic solution that would constantly grow. Without any doubt we opted for the ever growing / changing solution, knowing this would cost us in minor problems / instabilities. We did NOT regret this decision. So having opted for a growing and constantly developed solution we also look into the solution provided by Yeastar. By comparing the 2 solutions it was obvious that the Grandstream UCM 6308 was the best solution for us.
