atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News Home Depot switching to Cisco from Avaya

All the Local Home Depot's in my area seem to be switching to Cisco phones, I haven't had a close look to see if its connected to a true call manager or just sip to asterisk...

This has to be a big Hit to Avaya, wonder what went wrong with the Avaya deal?

Home depot probably has someone making the decision that is getting a BIG kickback from Cisco.

Closeout on Avaya phones in Aisle 127!

If it's anything like what Cisco does here, Home Depot probably had no choice. Cisco basically gives away the phone system when they sell network solutions. We don't even come close, with the steepest discounts, to what Cisco prices their voice equipment.

We just wait, because, within two years, the people HATE the Cisco systems and eventually come back asking for a solution that actually works. So, I think Avaya, initially, will feel the hit, but I wouldn't be surprised if, down the road, they come back.

Rcaman

I think you hit the nail on the head Rcaman,

A local regional bank around here drank the Cisco Kool-Aid a couple of years ago and took out all their ole Avaya Legend/Magix systems and went Cisco.
A couple of months ago,...... they took out the Cisco and went back with Avaya IP Office.

Of course I don't know about all the companies that have gone Cisco around the Pittsburgh area, but I know that every one that I know of that did switch is either so miserable and want the Cisco out or have had the systems replaced. I had one, rather large medical supply company, not only rip out the phone system, but were so upset, they removed every piece of Cisco network equipment and replaced it with HP. I asked the administrator what the ballpark cost, corporate wise, was to do that and he said in the millions of dollars. They did purchase an ESI IP solution from us, but they had us make it completely separate from their network. They paid us to, basically, install another network system for the IP telephones.

I came to really like the HP switches. GUI and actually quite user friendly.

Rcaman

I agree ....someone is getting paid!

Cisco does heavily discount their hardware when it comes to getting big deals, there's not much secret there. We've all said it comes down to the installer. If the installer/partner does a good job designing and installing the solution, it'll be there for a long time. The partner can make or break the solution. I imagine Home Depot has a good-sized enterprise-class Call Manager cluster centrally supporting all of the stores, and then SRST to support the stores if they lose their WAN connectivity, and probably some minimal local trunking. As long as the system is built right, they'll be on Cisco for some time.

Justin

I was at the local Graybar today and noticed they had Cisco phones. I asked an employee how he liked them and he said the call quality was good, but it was more difficult to use and the system has been down 3 times since it was installed. The old system (a Comdial I believe) never went down.

I have no idea, Do you buy from home depot? I didn't think anyone still did