sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Help Avaya win.

I'm in charge of implementing a phone system for a small-medium business. ~125 employees, ~50 sets. We've narrowed it down to Avaya IP Office 406 and Nortel BCM 400. We are looking for a completely new system. I want Avaya, but we've been on an old Nortel for years and years. Off the top of your heads how can I win over the people at my company to go with Avaya?!?!

Many thanks in advance.

I bet you'll get responses all over the spectrum on this one.

Cash usually works. to the forum.

That's a really tough one. Those are probably the two biggest names around and in a side-by-side comparison (and with an open checkbook), they both will do fine in most applications.

I can't speak from experience with either product from a hands-on perspective. I will say that from information I have gathered just being at this site alone would tilt my opinion in favor of Nortel. I also have friends who sell both systems and they too agree that Avaya's Office IP is "OK" but not great. I am not particularly fond of Nortel either, but it seems as if I have seen or heard more complaints about Avaya than Nortel. Maybe it's just due to market share.

Good luck with this one. You definitely have your work cut out for you. I wish I could give better advice, but I just don't think there is any that's going to be that much of a tie-breaker.

Both are icky imho. Talk them in to a S8300

I would ask my equip vendor to put together a comparison chart between the two.

We do it all the time for customers that need some reassurance.

Naturally, I am a Avaya fan because that is what we sale and service. But I think you will find that Avaya is know world wide as being the leader in IP telephony.

Good luck,

S8300 is a much better choice. And if you are going to be the administrator then the S8300 is going to look great on your resume as the Definity product line is used at many large companies.

AVAYA is now the leader in IP. This is now there main focus. Good technology. Based on my experience (we do both AVAYA and Nortel),
AVAYA is the way to go, but you will not go wrong with Nortel either.

Speaking from experience, I have 4 of the IPOffice systems in use and am very pleased. However I am not using them as IP phones, just wanted to be able to do that in the future. I work for a fairly large school district and the fact that they are on PEPPM helps considerably.(This means we can just buy and do not have to put it out for bid.)
Hope this helps.
I hear a lot of people complaining about these systems, however no specifics.
I cannot think of any complaints that I have at this point.

I would have to agree with you dcohick. And am pleased you are happy with the product.

Like I have said all along it is all in the set-up.

The IPO is a very stable system.

When the 403 first came out it had some issuses on the IP phones but they seem to have that worked out now also.