Mitel 5000 or Avay Office IP Switch?

S

srhutch

Legend
 East Sussex, UK
Anybody out there had any dealings with both of these bits of kit. I have the task of replacing the current system out our Head Office.

We also have 5 remote offices, two of which already run one of the above systems. Question is going forward do we stick with what we've got or make the switch and replace all the other five over time or stick and just replace 3.

The reason for looking at the alternative system is that my boss (the owner) has a friend in the business and they offer the alternative.

Cost wise there is a fag paper in it, but are the two systems like for like.

I know I haven't said which one we use currently but I want an unbiased view. Looking for usual functionality voicemail, hot desking, ACD, twinning with mobiles, intergration with Outlook with 120 users (not all users will have all functions).
 
Neither.

To be fair, I've never used Mitel but we have an IP Office where I work and I don't like them. The management is just a bit 90's for my liking.
Having said that I preferred managing our old Nortel system in my former place of work, which you managed direct from handsets for all config.

We eventually replaced it with a ShoreTel system, which was superb!
 
I have Nortel Option 11 (being replaced) and 3 Nortel BCM50's (remote branches). The BCM50 has been the best system for managing. Would hate to do all programming through handset though.
 
Mitel will sting you on licences for every little feature. Personally I wouldn't even consider a traditional phone system - take a look at hosted voice.

The only issue with hosted is you need a good connection. Imo every multi site company vaguely techy should have a private mpls network with a single secure Internet breakout. All systems should be hosted in the core of the mpls and qos in place to guarantee mission critical apps (voice/vc/Citrix etc).

It all sounds very expensive but you'll see massive direct savings by delivering voice and data on a single circuit, let alone a single system (instead of many) plus all the management advantages (one point of admin). You'll also have DR as standard.

Worth a thought.


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We just moved head office. 120 odd users. I looked at shoretel and came from a mitel system before.

Shopped around and ended up installing a splicecom. British made system has gone really well and a hit with our people. All web interface configuration so easy to manage. We saved 50% per workstation on cable costs by running voice and data on single cable. System itself sits in the mpls so connecting in our branches will be easy. Shoretel was probably better but for what we wanted it wasnt worth the extra coin.

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Looked and trialed hosted, not for us at present.

Biggest issue I have is system has to be in five weeks so the two solutions are the options going forward. With regard to MPLS, will be looking at this in the future when the links are better to our remote sites so would only need one other system for fail over and then us SIP trunking.

Guess I'll have to toss a coin.
 
Splicecom was about 10 day lead for delivery and about 3 day install.... just need some poe switches and an ip address and your away. Got iphone integration. Desktop screen popping etc.

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Prefaced with 'I'm in sales, not a technical specialist' :P

One of my last customers had Mitel over an MPLS network. Loved the system, hated the support they got from Mitel directly - they were shambolic, and as said they stung them over and over for licences and upgrades. When the customer refused to upgrade they either marked the units out of support or charged a huge premium for continuing 'to support obsolescence'. The customer solved the problem by moving support from Mitel direct to using a small company called Britannic based in Guildford (I think) to do all the installation, configuration and maintenance. The customer concerned will in future move to a secure hosted Microsoft Lync solution though (when one that is IL3 certified is available) as they use that for UC apps already and want to expand capability globally.

Avaya is very highly rated, and in my opinion are ahead of the game, especially now the Nortel product set is fully integrated into theirs. However I don't profess to know the ins and outs of the technical detail of their capability vs. Mitel. My other ex-customer has a Cisco Call Manager solution that they are moving to hosted Cisco voice, but in their call centres they use Siemens over IP for 1,800 users worldwide - they just made the decision to move those seats to an Avaya IP solution... Though I don't think Mitel are in the call centre game so perhaps not a great reference.

With regard to MPLS, if it was a while since you looked then you should have another poke around. With the advent of local Ethernet services prices have dropped massively. I don't have a price list to hand, but in a recent deal my customer was looking for new 10Mb flex bearers (variable bandwidth, so say a 4Mb port speed) and we ended up putting 100Mb bearers in everywhere as there was virtually no difference in the access price... They pay for a small port now and don't have to worry about access line upgrades in the future when their requirements bust 10Mb. That said, you'd need to look at a 3 year price for it to cost in probably.

Just my tuppence worth... :D
 
I had Avaya in my previous life (Communications Manager 3 was new then so a while ago), and definitys before that. Brilliant system imo, so flexible, but everything required an RTU (licence), so the cost was prohibitive unless you were many thousands of seats like we were.

as with all IT solutions it is often what is on the horizon (of your business, not necessarily the technology horizon) that decides what you should do today.

Lync is being bandied about a lot at the moment isnt it, not really sure its mature enough yet to be mainstream though? an IL3 certified version of it would be good news for it though!

agree with bing on bearers.... get the biggest bearer you can make stack up, and just use a small port speed, you might be surprised what bearer you can get for good money these days!

all good fun, we are just considering re-designing our whole network to embrace cloud delivery (office 365 etc.) possibly local breakout from branch....

got to pay for the petrol for the big red ///M somehow!! :thumbsup: :driving:
 
10mb bearers have been withdrawn by Openreach now, not officially, just to the point where they're now more expensive than a 100mb.

As for figures:
5Mb EFM DIA - £169pm
10Mb EFM DIA - £269pm
10/100Mb Ethernet DIA - from £375pm
100Mb Ethernet DIA - from £500pm

Obviously dependent on location though.

If within an MPLS environment costs will increase by approx. 20%.

Entry level bandwidth on a 100mb bearer is 10mb. Can have less but it's not worth saving £20-£30pm IMO.

What are you guys doing security wise? Have you come across AET threats? The entire industry seems to be ignoring them, apart from one security firm.
 
My only real issue with the avaya is the ingergration with outlook and smart devices. But ith software support only 200 pa we would get that as an when. Would have to pay for end user licenses as required of course.
 
Apps is where the money in IPT - or UC as it is being called ubiquitously (and gratuitously IMO) - so apps licences is where the money is made, not the telephony licence itself. A little bit here, a little bit there... But as more large corporates take them on the price will drop for smaller companies, just simple economics of re-usability.

Integration with outlook and smart devices being an issue with Avaya - I did not know that, and it surprises me. I'd have thought that was a fundamental requirement.

Spearman is right that location counts for a lot when it comes to EFM/MPLS pricing, but Openreach has over 1,100 PoPs now, so you have to be pretty remote / be in a very new location - or require seriously high bandwidth, like Gb services - to be in 'laughable' pricing territory. Well worth a look. If you are managing your own routers and taking a wires-only service then that helps keep the costs down.

Lync is powerful, really powerful, and of course comes with the ability to fully integrate with MS apps, mobile devices etc. The BT One proposition based on hosted Lync is very impressive in the way you can make, pass and integrate calls, apps and video between different devices - but it is not large corporate-grade yet... I actually no-bid a 40,000 seat Lync RFP (!) because it is all shared infrastructure right now, and the client needed IL3. However they didn't really understand the implications of what they were asking for, or the costs, and we couldn't pull something together at the time or in time (they gave us 2 weeks to respond). BT does a lot for government, and I am sure they are working on secure Lync for them (don't know for sure of course), but you can't have that ;-)

I reckon it could be a valid consideration for a small company though, and uses a familiar interface, reduces the need for desk phones, moves quietly and gracefully to IP... You just end up trapped in the MS space even more - not necessarily a bad thing.

As for Office 365 - I bought that accidentally instead of the 'ordinary' version when I bought Wee Bing a new laptop :slaphead:

I have not got a clue what it does or how it works, but I like what they have done with the 2013 Office Apps - subtle but not stupidly different like previous recent changes. I actually have to go read a feckin' manual though, in order to figure out how the hell to make the best of the annual subscribed services I now have that I didn't want. If i can find a manual of course... What a twat :roll:
 
Have you thought about a hosted solution? We can do some of what you need for a fraction of the cost.. if not the company I work for specialise is on premise voice recording solutions if you need one of those. Unfortunately my background is hosted telephony so cant help with those specific switches, although word around the office is that Mitel are a nightmare to deal with..
 
srhutch said:
We trialed hosted at one of our remote branches for 12 months, not somethng i want to do again.
Click to expand...

Out of interest, why not ?
 
Bing said:
srhutch said:
We trialed hosted at one of our remote branches for 12 months, not somethng i want to do again.
Click to expand...

Out of interest, why not ?
Click to expand...

Number of reasons.

The hosted system we connected to I believe was a CS1000, but because in effect it shared with other users we could not configure exactly as we would like. I'm sure other systems are different and can be configured exactly as we want but there will be that concern in the back of our minds.

Call quality was an issue. This was partly our fault and the providers as a dedicated line with QOS was not provided, but the concern of Metal Micky returning is not one I want to risk.

We purchase our equipment outright, I don't believe that hosting will provide such a cost effective solution. Our existing switch is 14 years old and we only pay £1k a year maintenance for all 6 sites. Yes we are taking a slight risk as it's not full maintenance but how often does the switch actually fail, and we have the ability to transfer call to one of the other sites if required.
 
I am VERY surprised your provider did not state a QoS enabled service as a prerequisite for the trial - it's absolutely essential for business grade IP voice. It is even possible to deliver good quality voice over DSL as there are QoS capable services now - which would probably have been ideal for a small trial.

The sizing and routing has to be bang on to... Something that is fairly simple to do in the first instance, but gets forgotten about over time. The customer with Mitel had a system that worked great (not hosted) but then they started closing sites, opening new ones and adding significant numbers of users. Mitel moved all the kit around around as requested, but paid no attention to routing and QoS bandwidth - eventually it all started falling over... Turned out the system was routing calls back and forth across the network before connecting them, causing all sorts of issues with dropped calls and congestion, particularly for users who were logged in somewhere that was not their 'home' site. Really pi$$ed the board and a number of customers off - they thought it was the network, of course and Mitel did virtually nothing to help them figure it out. Don't do Mitel - or at least don't do support from Mitel, use someone else to do that like Britannic or BT Servassure. And if you try hosted again then work with a provider who has sufficient bandwidth at the head end data centre and knows about data as well as voice. This is where Cisco consistently falls down actually, but the other way round - they are great at data, but they still don't have voice completely sussed.
 
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