Avaya IP Office vs. Evolve IP Unified Communications

The limitations of this unit are 2000 users, across 32 different locations. It is an SME product that is well past the border into enterprise territory with out having the enterprise expense. To top it off you can virtualize the servers! Anything outside of this scope would need to step into an Avaya Aura system. Do not forget to check with your vendor for leasing options if you do not want to have your new phone system fall into the category as a capitol project.

Incentivized

For small locations, it's perfect but maybe not for larger locations with more then 50 people. It would depend on your bandwidth availability and what type of redundancy you have in place.

• It is a phone system. It dials calls, makes sure there's a secure login, and keeps securities actually quite good on it. It provides and allows for VPN access into the VPN phones, into it via SIP or via IP sac, and has a good voicemail system.

Incentivized

• Unified Communications
• Centralized management of a distributed phone system
• Training

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• There are so many ways they need to improve. I can't list them all.
• First off, their tech support is the worst I've ever seen. They generally break something on at least half the tickets we submit. New accounts always have some kind of issue and it is amazing when one works 100%. Response times were terrible too. It could take 2-8 days just to get a new account setup.
• Reporting is inaccurate. Even trying to get it configured with their support team was a hassle and didn't work and wasn't even our data.
• Billing had mistakes often and there could be 3 SKUs for the same item. Same item number, description has the same words in a different order.
• Admin features are lacking. We can't even change the physical phone on an account. We can't create new accounts. Very limited options.
• The admin portal info is inaccurate. Some accounts show no phone associated even though they have one that is working on their account.
• There are times that randomly something stops working and not even the tier 1 support can fix it - a checkbox could "uncheck" itself magically and neither we nor the tier 1 tech can check the box again.
• When we ask to have licenses removed, they don't remove all the licenses. Then, when we re-use that DID (which is what the account is tied to) for a new user, the license applies to them - for instance, call recording. And we didn't ask for call recording on that new user.
• UC-One crashes all the time. It frustrates our users and has a few commonly seen issues.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Support? If I could do everything myself with the time I don't have, I would do it better than their support. I don't like saying it that way, but it is the truth. We hired someone from another company that also used Evolve IP and when they found out that is what we used here, he expressed all of the same complaints and stories that we had.

Incentivized

I've evaluated Cisco and Mitel as well. So from the phone system, while feature functionalities, they've all do some of the same things. The biggest benefit of the IP office is that it is hybrid. You can do digital analog and IP all out of the same box, the same telecom system.

Incentivized

Evolve is worse than Dialpad, Vonage, RingCentral, Genesys, MS Teams, 8x8, and any other system I've dealt with. These mentioned all have better features, work well, are simple to use and admin, and some of them cost less.

Incentivized

• When selling to a prospective customer, I always do a 10 yr ROI to show the benefits of Avaya IP Office or ACO and which scenario would fit best.
• CAPEX vs OPEX
• Number of phones needed as well as other features need to be considered to determine if Avaya IP Office fits best.

Incentivized

• Cost and time savings over supporting and maintaining on-premise PBX equipment.
• Increased flexibility for employees to stay connected from a variety of locations.
• Increased productivity in our phone room by allowing the use of a soft-client that can integrate into our workflows via features such as click-to-dial.

Incentivized