Avaya UCaaS is an all-in-one business communications platform. Avaya UCaaS aims to set employees up for success with unified internal communication, supporting voice, chat, email, video, file sharing, and task management. The software enables users to create collaboration in real-time using any device or system through one platform.
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Webex Calling
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Webex Calling is Cisco’s flagship cloud calling solution with over 12 million users worldwide. It delivers an enterprise-grade calling experience that enables customers to replace PBX hardware with a cloud calling solution. Webex Calling's connectivity and collaboration experience includes calling, meetings, messaging, contact center, and integrated devices.
I Don't see any major difference between Avaya UCaaS and other similar products which includes webex, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. All of them provide more or less similar functionalities and have all integration. However, Avaya UCaaS is more holistic when compared to …
Avaya Cloud Office maintains important features that others do not (such as e-faxing). Can easily transfer a call from desktop phone, to mobile app seamlessly. More cost effective than Microsoft Teams once you factor in calling. More feature rich and reliable than Zoom or Webex.
Call centers where lots of calls come in per day are better suited for Cloud office. Small businesses or companies that don’t really make outgoing calls or receive a lot of incoming calls other than within the company would not really be suited for Avaya Cloud Office.
It seems quite able to handle the normal day to day voice call requirements quite well. Our previous Cisco phones had cameras that could do video calls, but if we need that we go to a Zoom session. Conference room use is not terribly convenient, although this might just be a case of us figuring out how to adapt the environment.
Internal calling can be done by searching user in directory or by dialing short code extensions for users. Pretty quick and easy to reach internal people.
Webex Calling integrated seamlessly with call recording solutions making it very useful for compliance call recording which is needed by customer service centres today.
Features like call forwarding, call transfer, conference, voice mail, etc are available.
User authorisation for different types of calls is available.
It provides basic call centre features as well so that companies requiring basic call centre features can use it within Webex Calling.
I think what it's doing is it is still the leader when it comes to being able to present calling platforms. And I mean I guess it's number one competitor from a software perspective is Microsoft Teams, Cisco is doing everything possible to provide open source to enable Microsoft and Cisco to work together, particularly when it comes to user room experiences so that no one is feeling like they're left alone or compromised or somewhat segregated when they're choosing one technology versus the other, which is a great thing.
Things change, business requirements change so when we come to renew we may explore other options, we might go all in on Teams or look at something different - we need something that allows us to increase and importantly decrease our licence count more flexably which Avaya / Ring Central don't allow.
The service can be intermittent and the call forwarding feature will not always work perfectly. There will be periods of time where the calling feature will not work at all and people on the other end can hear me but I am unable to hear them. It also requires a fairly strong signal which can be an issue if you work somewhere remote or a building without much service.
There are few times that we have not been able to take advantage of the tool, but those moments are related to the bandwidth of each person in [their] home. Those who have low signal cannot access meetings on the platform smoothly.
Cisco Webex Calling is an outstanding cloud collaboration that includes enterprise-grade cloud phone system designed for the modern hybrid workplace. Webex Calling integrates calling, messaging, and meetings into a single, intuitive platform, empowering your teams with unparalleled flexibility and productivity. Benefit from advanced features like HD audio and video, voicemail to email, call forwarding, and intelligent call routing, ensuring crystal-clear communication and efficient workflows from any device, anywhere. Webex Calling prioritizes security and reliability, offering redundant data centers and end-to-end encryption to safeguard your conversations. Its scalable architecture effortlessly adapts to your envolving business needs, providing a future-proof communication foundation. Enhance collaboration and streamline operations with a solution that's not just a phone system, but a comprehensive communication hub.
I've not actually had it ever be unavailable when I needed to use it. As mentioned before, a network outage would take it down, but we have redundant systems for our network connections with automatic failover.
I don't really see this impacting any other system performance at all. The client is very light use on resources, even on my iPhone. I don't know what else it connects to behind the scenes other then the campus directory, but I haven't seen or heard of any impacts. It seems fairly self contained except for wherever it interfaces with the general telephone system connectivity outside the campus.
I have never contacted support directly. However, my rep with Enterprise Systems is excellent. Since joining Avaya, all inquiries and/or concerns have always been resolved within a reasonable amount of time. If it's a less complex issue, it is resolved in real time. I receive a response within 30 minutes or less. When he is out of the office, he always has a backup.
I have been working for a long time with Cisco as a provider and also Cisco TAC and Cisco Support Engineers. The support starts right beforehand in the documentation of the product you are interested in. From the start you have a good, complete, and detailed and easy to read datasheet and there's always someone available to answer any questions.
Apart from Cisco Webex Calling/app no other vendor offers their own phones hardware, gateways. We need to add other vendors like yealink, Poly, Audiocodes to complete the solution. This makes things very difficult from management perspective. As you have to hire a person who can manage a multivendor environment. Also, in case of outage, multiple bridge open and every vendor blame others. Cisco is costly so we gave a chance to Avaya UCaaS based on its history and reputation in Calling market.
The company uses Microsoft Teams. They do use Microsoft Teams right now and for a long time a lot of the different practices have been using on-premise, contact Call Manager and Unified Communications Express. But Cisco WebEx, the cloud-based product is one of the new ones. And some of our other site practices are also using RingCentral. So cloud calling is not new to the company. For those of us who are familiar with Cisco products, the transition to WebEx calling is not as difficult as it might be for some other products. Going from on-prem to RingCentral, there is more of a learning curve with.
So far it has been very reliable, with very little down time that was associated with the product itself. We have had network outages due to external factors such as construction cutting a fiber link, but other than that kind of thing not much for failures.
This made working from home possible, allowing me to take calls that I wouldn't be able to without having them forwarded by our communications department
It works with Teams, realizing when I'm on a conf call and automatically sets a status of away, preventing my phone from ringing, but allowing me to see the voicemail via text so that I can respond
If I step out of the office for a little bit, I can have my calls go directly to my cellphone to make sure I'm still available if needed
Webex calling is a good solution for customer which are ready for cloud.
However some customers doesn't want to share their CDR to a UcaaS so Cisco shouldn't focus on cloud opportunity and up to me the gap of investment, marketing, evangelization is too big weighing the pros and cons for cloud too often
