2006-11-01 08:08:52 · 4 answers · asked by The Forgotten Dream 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Computer Networking
Cisco in some respects, Avaya in others. Don't let either vendor take you down into the rathole of doing a feature by feature bake-off, that would be a waste of time.
As with many technologies, it's often a game of leapfrog between vendors. You're best bet (lately) is to go with Cisco. Avaya has been restructuring and profits took a hit, and as the voice industry is evolving they're not likely to see any significant growth. Cisco on the other hand is well poised to have double-digit growth in this industry over the next couple years, at least, that's what industry analysts are saying, and they're only human like us.
2006-11-01 08:12:53 · answer #1 · answered by networkmaster 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I work for a cisco IP telephony partner. I have done a number of installs but have seen avatar's stuff in action.
Personally the big thing i don't like is cisco's phones. While they are really stylish and pretty comfortable, there simply isn't enough buttons on them to really do alot of good. Take a nortel phone for instance. Those things have 24 buttons on them, 16 of which can be line appearances. Cisco's best offering is the 7970 with has 8 line appearances. After that you have to get a 7914 side car which only gives you 14 more buttons. Still less than the nortel phone. After that you have to go to attendant console, which is a pc based phone management program.
Also, cisco solutions are NOT easy to set up. There are simply so many knobs and buttons in callmanager and the gateways that you can spend literally days trying to figure out what is wrong. On the other hand cisco's solution can slice and dice numbers like no other and they are continuously bringing new features to the system.
The huge benefit to cisco is their IOS. Their qos feature set is quite impressive which can really matter when you are trying to squeeze that last byte of bandwidth out of your circuits. And considering that cisco is the only provider that makes a total end to end solution (meaning they supply every piece of equipment along the ip path) they are hard to beat.
2006-11-01 08:36:34 · answer #2 · answered by I.T. Burnout 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I've worked with Avaya, it's good stuff. They still use Cisco products anyway.
2006-11-01 08:13:26 · answer #3 · answered by matthewc772001 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This really depends on what you are trying to accomplish? I assume this is for your business - considering a new phone system? There are many options to consider depending on the size of your business, number of locations, IT staff skills, budget$$
If you can provide more details I would be happy to help.
ml
2006-11-03 16:29:49 · answer #4 · answered by mlauricella 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋