Avaya OneCloud CCaaS vs Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE)

CCaaS 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.

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.

• Strengths of Avaya include the ability to answer incoming calls in a convenient format for employees.
• The use of Avaya proves the user-friendly design and a way for employees to adjust settings in a clear and concise manner to adjust for his or her preferences.
• Avaya also allows the employee to transfer and conference calls in an easy drag-and-drop method and is very user-friendly.
• The functionality of Avaya allows for the virtual employee to log in, choose various auxiliaries chosen by your company to ensure schedule adherence and maintain corroboration with other applications and software programs.

• B2B UA
• SIP profile
• Multiple tenants

• Avaya could use some improvement in moving calls off the system when they have arrived at a far destination. This is a technical point and will not be often encountered by users or most technicians and really is no fault of Avaya but crossing over into local telephone systems around the world would be a great advantage.
• The methods for interacting with some of the menus are rather involved. The system is highly complex but at this time it is mature enough to start bringing all the control features under one roof rather than through three separate interfaces.

• Syntax input should be easier to read and write. For I.E: voice, translations are similar to SED (Stream Editor). Sometimes regular expression is hard to understand for new users.
• Virtual Cube software stability
• Cube redundancy setup (defining control interfaces, tracks, setting thresholds and reloads). Redundancy setup should be an automated process, where a user can initiate a setup wizard and then just input key information such as the IP address of Cubes and the exclusive IP address, etc.

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.

I find Avaya easy to use but I am not a beginner. I think it is much more difficult for beginners unless the administrator has some basic programming skills. The system is getting more difficult to use but I enjoy learning and haven't found myself stumped yet.

The flexibility is great for leveraging SIP profiles and dial peers.

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.

I've been using Cube for years and I like the way Cube handles a call. Minimum administration required once everything is set up correctly.

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.

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.

• Seamless implementation. If your access to the PSTN is through one of the major carriers, integrating the IP Office is quick, and easy. If you are in a market similar to ours where there are smaller carriers to work with, relying on your local Avaya business partner will allow for that same seamless integration.
• Users will find the menus on their new phones easy to navigate. It never hurts to have a cheat sheet provided by you installer. The system is very intuitive, even for system administrators.
• A new system paired with a new circuit contract has the potential for a cost savings that can pay for the new phone system in a 3 year time frame. We have customers that can attest to that!

• 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.