atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Looking to get in

Hey all,

We are looking to get into selling Avaya. Needing a bit of advice. Wondering what distributors you all use and what your experience with everything has been? Also who possibly provides the best support, aside from the wonderful people here on the forums. Any advice or pointers would be great. We have mainly just dealt with Partner and Magix systems but not we are gonna full dive into Avaya as our main system. So could use all the advice we can get.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

Are you an Avaya Business Partner? You can't legally sell Avaya unless you are. Support comes from training and experience, not asking questions on the internet or from your supplier. If you are going to sell a product you need to be able to solve any problem when you encounter it, not tell the customer "I'll be back tomorrow" then try to find the answer on the internet.

That said, in my opinion you missed the bus by 10 years anyway. Manufacturers of on-premises phone systems are dropping like flies, latest is Samsung. This is a dying industry. How long do you think the Avaya IPO is going to last? I don't know that I would put all that effort and money into something and have them pull the plug in a couple of years.

-Hal

Actually we have become an Avaya business partner. We have diverted from the unfortunate Samsung demise. We have been selling Samsung for over 2 decades. So now we are trying to get to another solution. We know the process of training and experience. We are not new to the industry. Just jumping from one sinking ship to another one that's not in a worse position. Hence my question as to who everyone is using as a dependable distributor and support. We are wanting to make sure that we give our customers the best service possible.

Ok, fair enough. Catalyst or Jenne.

-Hal

If you are already a Avaya BP, then use that distributor, but like Hal said, Why, IP Ofiice will not be around much longer..

IP Office is not going anywhere.
If you are an Avaya BP, you are free to go to any distributor you want to.

Between Jenne and Catalyst/Scansource i would say Jenne if you are an IP Office partner, and Scansource if you are more enterprise....

I have to laugh at the "not going anywhere" line. Who would have thought that Toshiba, Samsung, Nortel, or Panasonic (DBS, TDA/TDE series) were going to go?

I guess they'll be here until they're not. But we all know that.

Carl

Wasn't trying to start a debate here. Just needed a bit of insight. Reason we are going with IP Office is because our customer base isn't tailored to the new age era of hosted or other solutions. While we are trying to break from the norm a bit we still have to make sure we give them something that is dependable and working well. So between NEC and Avaya, we chose the later.

With that being said, trying to find a good distributor with good support is a big deal.

What has been your experience with Jenne? We have attempted to use them for buying some other stuff like cable and other things and have not had a good experience. Some of their sales reps do not respond in a timely manner.

This is not to debate or anything but this is how it seemed to work in our area. Originally I would have agreed with the idea that on site is dying whole heartedly. The "Hosted" IP came in hard and heavy and promised a lot and then some things could not be delivered, This in and of itself could be another long discussion. Moving on, we got a huge influx of customers back that wanted the in house systems back due to the issues with internet based "Hosted". mostly because of the idea of the trouble like an internet line being cut, router going down, rerouting of data packets due to an outage and the response being too high, or worse yet the movement of a phone and 911 being called to the wrong location (yes the last did actually happen). Those that came back wanted something hybrid ON SITE, so we have deployed may SIP trunk based systems with POTS or PRI backup.

Toshiba, Samsung, Nortel, and Panasonic (DBS, TDA/TDE series) sold and continued to sell 30 year old technology.

The future, at this point, is with an "In House" IP-PBX and SIP Trunks.

Hosted Service may work for some, but old time multi line Key System users struggle with it and the lack of "On Site" training and support kills it.

"Reason we are going with IP Office is because our customer base isn't tailored to the new age era of hosted or other solutions."
Really?
Any sharp, professional Telecom salesperson can shoot down digital key systems all day long.
That's because your customer may not know how VOIP can improve their business and you sure didn't tell them what they are missing.

Don't think so?
How many customers have you lost to modern VOIP Technology?
(and I don't mean hosted)

Why did a customer, that you serviced for many years, buy a VOIP system from their IT Guy instead of your system?

For the same reason they have computers instead of RoloDexs and typewriters.

"While we are trying to break from the norm a bit we still have to make sure we give them something that is dependable and working well."
Well, you sure do not want to offer Avaya (IP Office).
Long time Techs here in the US and UK know where this product is going. Something about a snowball and a hill....
Just go to tek-tips.com and look over the Avaya IP Office forum.

NEC?
Don't get me started....
It is sold to alarm companies, electricians and anyone with a pulse, credit card and a box of wire.
Maybe plumbers too. You never know.
They will be your lowball price competition.

Have you ever seen an install done by either???
It is like they never heard of Punch Blocks...

I couldnt have said it better. Because I started in IT before telcom i was pushing for VOIP as soon as i saw the advantages. The issue was that the sales people didnt know how to market it and the old telecom people didnt know how to install it. and lets be honest, adding a couple of switches did look nicer that a bunch of new wires. We also made sure the customer was trained on the useage and capabilities of the system, this made for a whole lot of ease later. as for the punch down blocks i agree. If i see one more wiring closet with twisted wires or wire nuts, i think i might scream.

LOL I just cleaned up a job where they beanied and UR'd all the drops in the ceiling. But, the job was pretty labor intensive. 5 drops, and the outside feed, my SMAK-4 :-) and bridge clips. Still not a fortune, but 3 hours of labor to split everything off and still keep the customer in service. Fishing each drop, one at a time, to take only one phone out of service at a time worked pretty slowly. Oh for the flash cut.

I think SIP trunking is in this customer's future because the local telco and I have a difference of opinion on who is at fault for the static and cutoff's. My last 92' is not the problem.

Anyway, VoIP seems to be the wave of the future. I like the phones (Grandstream 2160's or Yealink T-29's being my current favorites). The nicest part is that you can set up mobility extensions to ring the owner's cell phones and they act as extensions on the main switch.

I have never done a 'cloud' system, I prefer the on-premise IPPBX.

Carl

Challenge accepted. When you have the flexibility of the IP Office that can do both full IP, or digital or a combo of both, we can offer a fully digital solution with the features of IP.

What are the reasons to go IP? To move stations around? Can do that with analog or digital on IP Office. To control a deskphone with an app or a web page, click to dial etc....IP office can do that with Analog or Digital stations.
Remote workers? I can have a digital/analog station in the office, and an App or softphone at home, off of the same IP Office.

Want the benefits of a hosted system, trunks and applications in the cloud, but still want some survivability? IP Office can do that. Hybrid cloud.

IP Office differs from the other cloud systems, as the way i would classify it would be a cloud PBX, rather than a cloud phone system. Some of the other cloud vendors can not do Bridged call appearances, coverage etc. IP office cloud or premise can.

IP Office has added a feature in 10.1 where you can use SIP trunks, and make it seem like a key system. For BOTH premise and cloud (server edition) systems. There is a current road map for the IP 500 for the next 3 years. Is it ever going away? Sure, as all things change. Does Avaya still see a market for teh premise box? It would be continuing R&D if there wasnt.....

First of all I'll just say that the boat carrying the digital vs VOIP argument not only sailed probably 10 years ago but was lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Make no mistake- we are here but for the grace of the manufacturers. When manufacturers decided to switch to IP telephony it was because they had a plan. Manufacturers are only interested in ONE thing- making money for themselves. They didn't push their IP systems on the IT community because of their stellar credentials. The manufacturers knew that IT people were already embedded in many companies, so marketing to the management of those companies would be a lot easier if they pushed the savings by eliminating outsourcing their phone maintenance. I still can remember the complaints from IT techs when their bosses dumped their telecom work on them- "I'm a computer guy, I don't know or want to know anything about telephones!"

So in short, we got crapped on and you got crapped on and the manufacturers are doing it again. The manufacturers don't really care much what customers want either or else we would still have Avaya making the Partner system that 90% of the businesses in this country would still buy. (Yes I know Matt, you're sick of hearing that.) Many customers are not in favor of hosted for any number of valid reasons. But as we've seen, on-premises systems are being phased out.

The manufacturers giveth and the manufacturers taketh away.

-Hal

Come on Hal - if the manufacturers weren't making money, they wouldn't be making phone systems at all. Want bigger sales? Make bigger systems. Want a bigger audience to buy your systems? Market them to more than dedicated "phone guys" who can't wrap their minds around IP telephony. Integrate the phones with the existing data network, oh, and produce Ethernet switches that pretty much program themselves to be used with your systems (Still miss Avaya ERS switches, but Extreme is doing a great job with the product). Most every IP implementation I've done, the in-house IT guys are afraid of IP Telephony, and want us to hold their hands through the process. They might become comfortable doing moves, but always come back to us to handle their programming needs.

Carriers using SIP for transport, makes sense to use IP phones and SIP trunking. Have multiple sites? Put the IPO in the cloud, it still programs the same way as on site, you just need PoE switches for the phones on premise, and it's easy for home workers.

Partner is wonderful for 2 analog lines and 5 phones for a Mom and Pop office or retail store. Magix took it as far as it could, but it really needs to go away, compared to the ease and flexibility of setting up call flows on IP Office.

Actually I was addressing this comment that talked about the past:


IP has been around for so long by now that there aren't any of those "old telecom people" around anymore. We're all pretty comfortable with our respective products. So I think the landscape has changed.


-Hal