Avaya Anyone?

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BTR

1522 posts

Uber Geek

#109968 1-Oct-2012 08:25

Just wanted to know if anyone has had any experience with the Avaya IP Telephony products and if so how you found them.

I am not interested if you have used something else I just want to know about Avaya as that is what I am going to have to work with for the next few months.

vespaman

88 posts

Master Geek

#695838 3-Oct-2012 21:19

Been doin ip office since 2.1. What do you need to know?

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blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#695892 3-Oct-2012 23:43

At the risk of highjacking this thread...

We have a solution proposal on the table from our most excellent account manager at TCL that involves IP Office IP500V2 with RC8 preferred edition, UC110, ip16xx phones for head office users and one-x mobility licenses for our 12 remote vodafone mobile users who are located throughout NZ. So I'm really interested in avaya right now.

The most compelling part of the solution is the one-x mobility and what I'm told it would mean for the remote users. Specifically, we would be able to treat these remote mobile phone users as local extensions from our head office, and the remote users will use the mobility app to initiate outgoing calls through the IP office system which would mean reduced calling costs (by using our SIP trunks) and more importantly it will mean we can tell at a glance when they are on another line/unavailable.

Do you have any experience with one-x mobility and remote users calling through IP office? I am a wee bit worried about what the user experience will be like with this setup. I understand for outgoing calls from the remote users, the one-x app initiates a data connection with IP Office telling it to dial the outgoing number, IP office then dials that outgoing number AND the vodafone mobile of the one-x user who requested the call (who presumably has to then answer the incoming call normally), then it connects the two calls together.

Do I have this right? Are there any latency or other user experience issues?

Are there any other major downsides of avaya for those of us considering it? (ignore pricing as it sounds like BTR has no say in that matter and I'm generally OK with pricing).

In terms of phones, we are looking at the ip16xx series, I also think we will go with the BM32 modules so that we can see the status of ALL user extensions. For business use, are there any practical downsides to the ip16xx series?

The ability to have remote users treated as local extensions will literally help transform the organisation, so I would need a very good reason not to accept the proposal I have on my desk.

Thanks
Blair

nzgman

111 posts

Master Geek

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#695944 4-Oct-2012 09:09

Hi Blair

I have been working on Avaya for 10 years now (since version 1) and It is a excellent phone system and a world leader. I have recently started my own company called Off the Hook Communications (www.offthehook.co.nz) and if I was not able to sell Avaya I would not have started the company.

I have one-X mobility set up on my system and it works great. The good things about it are that you are not using the data connection for the voice path so the call quality is the same as a normal cell phone call. As for latency there is no network latency as the call is not going through the network just the call set up signals. The only delay you get is the time it takes your office phone system to ring the mobile phone after they dial the number (user dials the number through one-X, phone system rings the mobile first and then the dialled number and connects the 2 together which uses 2 lines/sip channels)

if your office is going with 16xx phones which are ip phones make sure your data network has QOS throughout the whole network from your sip lines to your network switches. If you have any NON QOS gear in the network that the phones use it can cause poor voice quality. I prefer to use digital phones instead of IP phones unless there is a specific reason for needing the IP phones.

If you have any other questions let me know or if you want a 2nd price I have a company in Auckland I work closely with who also sell and install Avaya and there main tech has also been doing Avaya for around 10 years. If interested I can get you in contact with them.

Regards

Graham.

Graham

www.offthehook.co.nz

vespaman

88 posts

Master Geek

#695959 4-Oct-2012 10:17

As Graham has said, most of what you have asked is correct. I too prefer digital phones for QOS reasons and one less thing to manage and troubleshoot.

Originally IP Office was designed to be used with Phone Manager, a windows GUI for telephone management, and was a great product in the right environment. However key phone type users who were used to hardware BLF buttons struggled with the concept of using the PC for visibility etc. Later versions of IPO addressed this and now you can have a key type system with a phone management application.

One-x portal superceded PM and by being web based got around terminal services environments where PM struggled as an application installed on the local PC. The original licensing for IPO was incorporated by using paralell/serial dongles on the PBX or management server and has now been replaced by SD card technology in the new 500 chassis which has made life a lot easier for newer IPO techs.

IPO is very powerful, reasonably straight forward to manage and easy to use. The hardware is better now and the applications are a lot more stable than they were originally.

IMHO - The solution really shines in multi-site environments, basic call centre functionality(its not zeacom), mobility and applications. Theres a steep learning curve for PBX techs who aren't particularly IT savvy as far as installation goes but the management of the system once installed can be done by a reasonably competent administrator.

I'm based in the deep south but maintain a 10 site with call centre environment through out the SI.

blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#695967 4-Oct-2012 10:32

Thanks Graham.

It's really helpful to know that the feature works well.

I'm actually in Whakatane where head office is. I did see your website as part of my avaya searches, but TCL use downer for equipment and given the SIP trunks are TCL (and downer will come and install the new equipment for the SIP trunks), I want to stay with their recommended supplier for the core system in case there are any issues with the new system.

I was going to see if I could source the IP phones themselves from somewhere else though, I'll send a PM when I get to this point in case you are interested. I am also not sure what is happening with future configuration that is beyond my capability.

At head office each desk has 2x rj45 ports with cat5e wired back to a patch panel. We currently use 1 of these ports for our aria digital phones, I was planning to reuse this as a dedicated phone network without QOS. Given this separate network setup for phones, are there any reasons we should go digital instead of IP?

From what I understand the ip16xx series doesn't support HD/G.722, but if I understand correctly neither will most of the calls which will be via POTS/to mobiles over vodafone GSM so this won't be an issue anytime soon.

One question - I understood from my own research that some of the (high end?) phones had the ability to plug to an Internet connection, create a VPN tunnel back to IP office and then act as a normal extension of the PBX using the Internet. Do I have this right?

This could be helpful for me as I have good internet at home but bad mobile reception, but its not a core feature requirement for the system... I'm actually just interested as it sounds pretty cool.

blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#695968 4-Oct-2012 10:34

Cheers vespaman, feel free to comment on my post above as well. Sounds like its a pretty solid option for what we want.

nzgman

111 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#695983 4-Oct-2012 11:06

if you already have ports where you need phones I would get them to do a second quote using 14XX digital phones as it may end up cheaper and then there will be no QOS issues.

Yes there are ways to use a phone over the internet with a vpn tunnel but you can also use "soft phone" on your computer instead and then you don't need a physical phone at home. The main issue is going to be quality of the call though as it will be going over the internet there is no control over the quality.

A better way would be to use one-x with the correct licence and set up a home profile that works a lot like the mobility app on the cell phone. When you set up your home phone number in the profile you can then use one-x client on your pc to dial a number which gets the ip office to call your home number and then the dialled number and join the 2 together. This way would have no voice quality issues and you would not be making any calls from your home phone number just receiving calls. (person you call gets the caller id of your work system as it is the work phone system that called them and not your home phone number)

Also Avaya does do G.722 they recently added it in version 8 I think.

Also ask TCL about the experience of the tech's they will be using as a good end result relies on good techs (have seen some bad programming over the years by techs that don't really know what they are doing or just don't have the experence)

All going well you will be very happy with a Avaya phone system and it will be a very huge improvement on your Aria both in features and ease of use. If they have not shown you already get them to show you how easy it is to use voice mail through "Visual Voice-mail" on the phones.

Graham

www.offthehook.co.nz

vespaman

88 posts

Master Geek

#696009 4-Oct-2012 11:24

Use the 1408's for most handsets especially if you want headsets and 1416's for operators or whoever needs the expansion module for DSS buttons.

setting up the vpn can be a real pain plus you may have to troubleshoot so use the local trunk instead. Think of it as an external trunk transfer that just gets used to set up the call as that way your call is still in the pstn.

ip phones have advantages cabling wise and for DR purposes but add another layer to the cake - POE switches, QOS, VLANs.

BTR

1522 posts

Uber Geek

#696021 4-Oct-2012 11:42

Just reading the comments has reassured me. My system is a TCL solution with the 1600 series handsets. The reason we went with the IP handsets is we are located on a large site and have a very large network. All I really wanted to see from posting this thread is to make sure I wasn't going to get a response along the lines of " For the love of God man, what are you doing going with Avaya for VOIP"

Thanks again for your comments and reassurance.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
76388 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#696028 4-Oct-2012 11:50

Holy Thread Hijack, Batman!

Blair you should really have asked this in your own topic. The OP's questions have not been answered at all.

DO NOT HIJACK THREADS.

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blair003

557 posts

Ultimate Geek

#696044 4-Oct-2012 12:06

Thanks guys.

So the 14xx series pretty much the digital equivalent of 16xx ip phones if I understand correctly. Are the hand free headsets you can use different depending on if they are connecting to ip phones or digital? We have a bit of an 'investment' in the plantronics headsets for our current digital phones so would like to reuse them.

We operate a fairly flat way, so rather than have a receptionist its a matter of all hands on deck when the phone rings. If we just have 8 or 16 line appearance buttons on a phone, but we have say 25 extensions, how easy is it to tell whether the extensions for which we don't have a line appearance are available/busy? (the ability to easily tell who is available is why I was considering the button module for everyone)

Regarding the remote one-x mobility users, what are the limitations with this setup?
- Can they tell who is available while on a call and then easily transfer the call to someone available?
- Are there any ways in which they are not considered local?

Like I am imagining they can belong to ring groups and whatnot (but obviously if I have 5 remote users in a ring group every time that ring group is used its going to take 5 extra SIP trunks to make outgoing calls which may be beyond the system? Or at least put costs up to where its not worth it)

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#696046 4-Oct-2012 12:07

I'm locking this discussion. OP, I'm sorry for the thread hijack. Please create a new one and let's see if people behave.

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