New phone system - siemens hipath or Avaya?

[robk]

I have to recommend a new phone system tomorrow which boils down to a choice of two vendors one supplying Siemens the other Avaya.

 

Does anyone have any pearls of wisdom they can share?

 

I was hoping that price would lead the process but sadly not.

[SYNACK]

I have not dealt with the Simons stuff but have the Avaya stuff and from a software point of view it is quite good and extendable.

 

The best of the ones that I have dealt with which admittedly is only three types including aria and samsung (1980s level of tech today).

[MatthewL]

I cannot fault the Avaya stuff one bit.

[FN-GM]

Have also used Avaya, works well, easy to use. They used siemens.

[glennda]

When I looked I would have gone with Avaya over the Siemens option - but I went with FreePBX in the end.

[rich_tech]

I have looked after avaya stuff in the past and it was indeed excellent stuff

[Netman]

We chose a Siemens HiPath system in 2004. After being told we could easily expect 10 years from it, 5 years later it was EOL and no longer supported by Siemens and we had resellers trying to hard sell us a newer model. For this alone we will not be considering Siemens as an option for our next purchase - Avaya is looking favourite for us in the next couple of years. Edited May 28, 2012 by Netman

[Gonk]

I've worked with the Siemens kit and found it very good (In my previous job, I linked two sites with an eps 8 circuit and two Siemens HiPath systems to make one IP system). The software is reativly easy to use, plus there's lots of support on the net.

[SYNACK]

From a lifetime point of view we still have phones and a module that are over 10 years old in one place (Avaya) some of the stuff gets EOLed but it does seem to keep going.

[Geoff]

The current Avaya system here is a pita. It keeps forgetting about one of its modules. It is ancient though.

[SYNACK]

The current Avaya system here is a pita. It keeps forgetting about one of its modules. It is ancient though.

 

Yea, our old core was a bit flakey but that probably had a lot to do with the ancient software on it and the ancient server it ran on along with the dodgey power supply. We upgraded the core box to a newer one that supported the latest software on a nice VM and all the issues evaporated. The plugin module which was about 5 years newer that the original core box hooked in fine to the new box with just a firmware update.

[Geoff]

It'll probably get ripped out and replaced with a FreePBX box and some new VOIP phones once I'm done with the call centre upstairs tbh.

[cbcouk]

We've just replaced our Cisco Call Manager with Microsoft LYNC - all IP SIP...and it's pretty damn cool being able to get your iphone/android/win7 smartphone to get your workplace to make your calls for you from home!

 

Cisco wasn't a bad offering - trouble is, anything we were saving in call costs went towards the maintenance cover (around £10k a year)

Edited May 28, 2012 by cbcouk