Equinox Platform

[buthead]

Hello,
I'm reaching out to the group for any feedback regarding the Equinox platform. We've spent 13 months, and North of 6 digits, trying to get this thing off the ground. My last month was with Avaya CAP (Critical Account Program). They aggressively worked with us, providing access to Teir 4, and even sending an engineer to our facility. We had AADS, CES, AAC8, Breeze, you name it. It works, sort of, but there was always an issue with platform somewhere. Clients dont ring, call history incorrect, roaming issues (wi-fi to cellular) IOS issues, Android issues, no screen sharing from a chat issue. I could go on, but after a year, I've pulled the plug. I don't think this thing is ready for "Prime Time". What say you?

 

[kyle555]

I completely agree on the "need to be on a voice or video call to share the screen" - that's just stupid. I'm on conference calls all the time and someone chats with me and we screen share and get something done.

I had a run with it about a year ago on a 7.0 system with AADS/AAC8/AMM/etc and there are sometimes quirky endpoint issues that aren't easy to explain. My customer wanted to wait to get a Equinox conferencing instead of AAC8 and its still in the works.

I'd be curious to know what the results were of all that love you got. It should have translated to bug fixes and patches and progress at some level. I'd say the 7.0 stuff for a first kick at the can might not have been ready for primetime, but it was certainly usable. I'd expect the current versions of AADS and AMM to be better.

Was your deployment a 'single one of everything' or were there pairs and clusters of each element?

 

[buthead]

Yes Kyle, Microsoft Teams works that way right out of the box. For our Help Desk team, that's a great way to "get things done". 8 does have some fixes for our issues, but not all. I too have heard Equinox Conferencing is a bit behind AAC8 in terms of market readiness. Our original deployment of Aura was HA SBCE/CM/SM, and a single AAM. all on 6.3. When we decided to go the Equinox route we upgraded those, and only added standalone AADS/AAC8/and AMM.

 

[kyle555]

I've found it really hard - even from the training courses - to get a clear cut answer on what's different about AAC8 vs Equinox Conferencing - which parts are the same, which are different, etc.

From a component perspective, I get why chat doesn't escalate to collaboration being on AMM and not Equinox, but it's still ridiculous to me. As for the rest of the moving parts, I get that it's a big uplift for Avaya to wrangle all the components into a streamlined all-in-wonder-cluster UC use case and have all that stuff be cloud-capable.

I'll reserve judgement until I really kick the tires on it and test things both with and without the SBC - I find that to be a real weak point.

Avaya's always seemed to have lacked a complete task-based A-Z cookbook to put in a vanilla 'here it is, it all just works' install that you can tweak from there. I see it as a bit of a cashgrab for their pro services division.

 

[mattKnight]

Avaya's always seemed to have lacked a complete task-based A-Z cookbook to put in a vanilla 'here it is, it all just works' install that you can tweak from there. I see it as a bit of a cashgrab for their pro services division.

Agreed. However the issue with this approach is often "why" a certain configuration is applied. Knowing the "why" is as important as the "how

AAC8 is a bag of spanners... Bodged together to give a illusion of collaborative environment. Core services work ok well though.

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
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