The on-premises Avaya Aura Platform delivers unified communications and customer service solutions, designed to enhance employee and customer experiences. It is presented as real time communications architecture using session-based collaboration technologies, and is used to enable multi-modal unified communications and omnichannel customer experience solutions.
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Webex Calling
Score 8.7 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.
Avaya Aura is secure and reliable; in our case, for customers that looking for stable solutions on voice, Avaya Aura is that solution fit. In a scenario where our customer is looking for digitalization, I think Avaya Aura is less appropriate.
Webex calling has efficient call monitoring systems and advanced call logging tools. Unlike other call management service providers, Webex calling has a flexible pricing plan and personalised customer care services. The product allows for customization to meet the unique needs of individual users. It has global coverage capabilities and unlimited implementation. Software user friendliness and availability of unlimited integration options.
So one of the things it's done well is it's stable. It's networked at all the sites. We have five-digit dialing everywhere, and one of the features we like is the crisis alert feature. So if somebody calls 911 at a particular school, it sets an alarm off on the phones upfront and displays the extension number and the room number of who called 911. So they can respond and they know where to send first responders. So it's pretty cool.
Webex Calling supports limited codecs that are generally accepted all over the world but it would be good to see if they add transcoding support.
The local gateway option is designed more for on premise PBX communication. It would be good to see if it is developed more as a local PSTN breakout where local SIP trunk or local PRI is terminated.
We would like to see more of the dial plan features like CLI manipulation, translation, etc.
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.
Avaya Aura is extremely complex. Now that AI has come into the fold, Avaya needs to apply AI processes and tools to help identify and resolve issues with an installed platform. In addition, proactively identify potential issues. Ayaya has had some financial difficulties over the last few years. This may be why they outsource their expensive support. Our customer experience would benefit by having access to Avaya knowledgeable Engineers for questions about products and services as needed.
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 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.
So I've seen the Cisco product out there. I've seen the old Nortel products, Mitel, I've been doing this for a long time. I've seen a lot of other products. And Avaya, Nortel were the Western Electric and Northern Electric of the world way back when. So pretty much the grandparents of all the other stuff that's out there. So their foundation is really strong. So I think this product stacks up amazing, especially for places that are mission critical, like hospitals, maybe the military, and stuff like that. They have the app, if you need an app, they do stuff on mobile devices, and that you can have remote workers. So I think they stack up really well against the other companies. The problem is probably advertising and the schools that are teaching this stuff are promoting a particular product and that's where the other products have the advantage. They're in the schools and it's, I call it indoctrination, but they're in the schools and they're teaching the people. The other product, their competitors are teaching in the schools, their product line. And that's how they can do promotion better.
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.
As far as a negative impact on a surface level, not too much negative impact was to go right into that and we had the scare eight months ago. Well, we didn't know if Avaya was a product we were going to be able to continue with. But after this conference, we got the warm and fuzzies back. That is a product that we can keep for a number of years and they'll continue to grow and keep on upgrading it and stay current. So we'll be sticking with that.
Certainly when it comes to my client base, they certainly understand the benefits of the full end-to-end, Cisco stack. And when I talk about a calling platform in regards to it simply being a call from one end to another or a message from one end to another, Cisco provides so much more because it enables all that AI and I guess analytical data of which the endpoints cover. So when it comes to integrating with a meeting room experience and you're in a meeting room that can cater for up to 20 people, but say for example, only two or three people on average utilize that room, that type of safe spacing information gets transmitted into other business decisions that can benefit the business from an ROI perspective such as rearranging the interior design to create better outcomes for worker experiences. So much more than just a calling platform.
